Netflix's Sonic Prime

Ken Penders was the longtime writer of the Archie Sonic comics and creator of most of the characters not originally from the games. At one point decided to be an asshole and claim ownership of them. He then proceeded to sue Archie for the rights which ended with them having to reboot the 250+ issue continuity to remove all trace of his stories.

Edit: The comics weren't always amazing but they had some fairly decent stories occasionally. The fact they had to throw it all away was sad. They also can't use any of the material in games or cartoons which is unfortunate in my opinion.

Edited by Kostya on Dec 15th 2020 at 9:05:47 AM

But, they can still take in story elements from the comics without using Ken Penders' characters, right? Like, did Ken Penders also sue for the rights to the stories or just the characters?

I think it went for story concepts too, since the lawsuit was sparked by Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood having similar- but not identical- story beats to some of the stuff Penders wrote for Archie.

Needless to say, he won the lawsuit which forced a Cosmic Retcon on the comic side of things and caused SEGA to take a more proactive approach to other people's adaptations from that point onward.

I guess I can understand why SEGA is being so hands on with the portrayal of Sonic in recent years since they probably don't want to go through another lawsuit. But still, they could try to let the writers bring something new to the franchise.

Thing is when Archie lost rights to Penders' characters, the comic kept going for a few issues while keeping those characters out of the picture - and since he created so many of them, it wasn't easy - before rebooting. An in the reboot, they've kicked every character created for the comic except those created for current writer, Ian Flynn.

Problem is that Flynn was very much Continuity Porn kind of guy. He used tons of past characters, many of them very minor before he got his hands on them and even those he created, tended to be derivative on existing concepts. Alternative universe counterparts, members of pre-established groups and races... For example, Trash the Tasmanian Devil was the last anthro-devil and he wanted revenge on echidnas for experiments they performed on his people. And most of this is based on something Ken Penders wrote.

Out of Flynn's characters, the only ones to make it to reboot were one group of Freedom Fighters, Woodland Kingsmen* and 3 out of Eggman's Grandmasters (now called Egg Bosses since the name was based on Penders' organization) Akhlut, Conquering Storm (previously Bride of Conquering Storm but the concept of Brides didn't survive a reboot) and Lord Mordred Hood.

• And even then, it was lucky that when Flynn introduced them in previous continuity, he couldn't use Rob O'Hedge and Mari-An, so he created his own characters as replacements.

Of course, Flynn created brand new characters for Reboot. Still, Archie Sonic lived 2 years more and then was abruptly canceled. Later IDW Sonic comics started with new characters, which could mean one of two things. 1) Flynn's previous characters belong to Archie and Sega and Archie likely aren't much on speaking terms right now. 2) Sega decided to have a clean fresh start with as few connections to the past (Unlike Archie, IDW isn't using characters from old Sonic cartoons) as possible so they're intentionally distancing themselves from Archie, making it unlikely that cartoon will have any connections.

It would be more likely that the cartoon would be based on IDW comic, however, that one is very new. It has less than 50 comics, some concepts are too undeveloped and stories too young to adapt them. Best case scenario, a few characters like Tangle the Lemur or Whisper the Wolf could make it in.

So, since Ian Flynn created Tangle and Whisper, would there still be legal disputes about using those characters? I mean, I know that Tangle and Whisper were in the Sonic Forces mobile game, so is it possible to introduce them into the cartoon series?

It's definitely possible to introduce them into the new cartoon. Sonic Underground had a comic original character in Athair appear, and since there's no lost paperwork, the comics characters can be used easier.

IDW characters could totally be used, it just a way smaller number than even Archie characters, even counting only those from Reboot continuity.

Tangle, Whisper, Jewel, Diamond Cutters, Mimic, Dr. Starline, and Rough & Tumble. That's about it. I highly doubt any of the few finished storylines like Metal Virus would be adapted either.

I should bring up that the worst part about the Penders Lawsuit is that he really shouldn't have even won.

The only reason he did was because a fire at Archie lost them a lot of records that would have prevented his suit from getting off the ground....I think. It's been a while so I'm not 100% sure on the details.

It would be great if they could introduce some characters from the IDW comics, although I would love to see them have a better portrayal of both Silver and Blaze in the cartoon, if they show up.

Ken Penders is just a hypocrite. Have you heard how he stole a Holocaust poem, didn't credit the original author, and claimed it was all fair use? If not, there's a blog thankskenpenders (used sarcastically) on tumblr that knows all about Ken history and how he yelled at some Jewish reader who claimed the poem was in poor taste and needed credit if it was to be used at all. The story wasn't even reprinted, in a time when the comics was big on reprinting past issues through the archive collections.

Edited by GlitterCat on Dec 15th 2020 at 6:44:47 AM

Considering Man of Action's other work I don't really think this will be dramatic at all.

Shit like this is why Marvel and DC contractually claim ownership of anything their writers create. That has its own different problems, mind. It's not necessarily better, especially for the writers. But this is the literal exact reason why they do it.

Yeah, but Archie was unfortunately shitty with its paperwork, hence why Penders was able to win.

Of course, it was a Pyrrhic Victory anyway. He got all his characters from Archie but his name is essentially mud in the comics community these days.

It's worth noting that the Penders situation doesn't so much as prevent Sonic Team from using comics concepts as much as the whole debacle made Sonic Team wary of touching the comics continuity at all. It's very a much a "we'd rather not risk it, as last time we got burned, so we're not going to bother with it going forward" situation.

They give the Archie team their mandates and marching orders, and then has anything made there stay in its lane, including having them reboot to be more like the games instead of having their own largely distinct continuity rules.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 15th 2020 at 7:45:19 AM

Yeah. Since the incident, Sega's been a lot more hands on with the adaptations of their properties.

Of course, that's lead to things like Vegeta SHADOW the Hedgehog and all that.

That being said, the way they've been handling their comics, while frustrating, at least makes some sense.

That's what I think Sega should do with the comics moving forward. Allow the writers to write the stories they want, but SEGA should alert them that whatever stories they write belong to the company or something like that.

Most, if not all, of the new IDW characters were actually designed by Tyson Hesse. All of the new characters unquestionably belong to SEGA. Rights issues are actually why the Freedom Fighters cant show up with their rebooted designs. SEGA does have full rights to the original Freedom Fighters.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Dec 16th 2020 at 3:08:51 PM

Where'd you hear he designed/created most of the IDW og(s)?

Edited by randomness4 on Dec 16th 2020 at 12:21:01 PM

https://kotaku.com/meet-rough-and-tumble-two-brand-new-sonic-comic-villai-1823070013

“Ian’s pretty much able to come up with folks on the fly and any major characters we run by Sega for approval,” said Mariotte of the creation process. “There are a few stages, from Ian’s initial paragraph or two description of the character, to getting someone like the talented Tyson Hesse to draw up designs and turnarounds for Sega to see the character, to having a final design and solidifying their personality in the script.”

Ian does concepts and writing, Hesse does design. I know that the designs for Tangle, Whisper, Rough and Tumble were all penned by Hesse.

See, I still can't wrap my head around how that's possible. It's like if DC couldn't use the New 52 designs of Superman or Batman because some other guy called dibs on them...

Thanks for absolutely nothing, Ken Penders.

Penders isn't even an artist? What the hell?

Edited by Kostya on Dec 16th 2020 at 8:54:01 AM

He is...

Oh, right, Flynn mentioned that if Freedom Fighters come back they will have to get new redesigns. That basically proves that Sega doesn't own anything from Archie anymore.

Is he? I thought he was just the writer. I didn't realize he also did the artwork for them.