BEFORE YOU READ: KEN PENDERS IS NOW ACCEPTING ORDERS FOR HIS COMIC CONTAINING THE CHARACTERS, AND ALOT OF THE COMIC IS A REPRINT OF ARCHIE SONIC ISSUES, THE BOOK IS OUT. YOU MAY CONTINUE READING NOW:

• Since 2009 Ken Penders has been using/claiming to own countless characters from the Sonic Archie comic series because of a series of lawsuits and legal issues surrounding him, Archie and Sega. After a legal incident between him and the game Sonic Chronicles, he asked for his original contract with Archie that made sure any characters and concepts he created belonged to Sega and Archie, they couldn't find the contract so he began registering copyright on any issues of the comics that his characters appeared in, Sega and Archie were notified but failed to do anything in time, so Ken's copyright went through. He later announced that he would be creating an original comic series containing a majority of his echidna characters from the Sonic comics that resulted in Archie filing a lawsuit against him. Archie proceeded to finally find evidence of him signing a contract in the form of a copy of a contract that was signed/made 2 years after the original, Ken claimed it was fake even going so far to say he never signed a contract (which would be perjury except for how he worded it and his BS explanations for any times he slips up on Twitter), there are even legal documents from the lawsuits proving him wrong, but after all these legal issues, archie fired their incompetent legal team and since the judge apparently had no idea about the franchise and parts of media etc and had never done a copyright case before, the judges verdict was that all his characters as a whole are distinct enough from the cast of the games that they could be Kens IP, as well as saying Ken has extra claim since SEGA "abandoned" the rights to them. After that Ken took his characters and continued using them in his works: NFTs, his comic series etc. He even claims since Shade and the Nocturnus Clan from Sonic Chronicles are similar to the characters he claims to own that he owns Shade and the Clan and has been using her without permission from her actual owners. 

The Main Characters of Interest are:

Scourge/Evil Sonic/Anti-Sonic, Shade/Julie Su, Nicole (future version), Boomer Walrus, Dr. Eggman (Light Mobius), Nicolette the Weasel, Cyborg Sonic, Knox, Green/Chaos Knuckles, Robo-Robotnik and Shard.

Other Characters That I am unsure of:

Every Echidna, Geoffrey St.John, Sonic's parents, other variants of the main Sonic cast.

Scourge started as an evil Sonic with a jacket and sunglasses, but when Penders was no longer involved, Patrick Spaziante along with Ian Flynn and Mike Pellerito redesigned and renamed Evil Sonic into Scourge with a design based off of the Ashura glitch in Sonic 2. Shard is canonically (in Archie timeline) the same character as the Metal Sonic from CD as well as Mecha Sonic and his redesign and renaming was also done by people other than Penders meaning that Shard and Scourge are both derivative and not completely by him. His character of Julie Su was merged with the character of Shade for Ken's new comic series, which means if Shade is owned by Sega and Julie is Shade then Sega owns Julie. K'nox is just Penders' iteration of Knuckles (Knux) renamed to not get sued, but Knux is just Knuckles' OVA design with a robot eye and the new K'nox version is just that in Ken's style. He also claims to own the concept of echidnas that have a power link of sorts to the master emerald, which he says to be his explanation for why he's planning on suing the creators of the Sonic movie. He also claims he should own Knuckles (and is putting knuckles in his nfts) and he already claims to own a green coloured Super form called Green/Chaos Knuckles as well as a variant of the Robotnik from the Saturday morning cartoon Sonic Series called Robo-Robotnik which is a Robotnik that roboticised himself and that design of Robotnik along with getting roboticised are both things owned by Sega and Wildbrain. Geoffrey St. John is apparently also not entirely Ken's as Ken wasn't his creator (I'm not sure but apparently so), his comics also could give him charges of obscenity for his paraphrasing of the holocaust and an attempt at making a story about an underage Sally Acorn losing her virginity. I'd prefer it if they sued him and instead of fines or prison, he just gets hired by IDW with Sega reclaiming the characters I just mentioned with free licensing for the rest instead of Ken's deal of 10000 dollars which is just unreasonable. 

New stuff:

Well, he's done it, the book is out, available on his website here. and its been looked through, and it is true, the vast majority of the book is a reprint of the Archie Sonic Miniseries: Mobius 25 Years Later (which contains iconic copyrighted and trademarked characters from the sonic series including Knuckles, Sonic and Sally Acorn), with the last few pages being perverted versions of Sega characters including Knuckles and various Archie Sonic characters with content such as nudity and breastfeeding, you can see here:

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

He has also confirmed directly that he will be reprinting all issues of Archie's Sonic The Hedgehog series up to issue 159.

  This can NOT go on, he is reprinting content made by other writers and artists that use concepts/characters he made under 2 work for hire contracts (one from around 1992 which may not have been signed according to various early staff for the comic who also recount not signing a contract and one from around 1996 that we have a copy of, but Ken has made a claim of being forged, although he has slipped up about these claims multiple times on X/Twitter) that are mostly derivative of characters and designs from the Sonic franchise, and also include content from other Sonic media with rights issues (such as the Sonic OVA which has many references/appearances in pre-issue 159 comics, the most notable being Knuckles' hat and Metal Robotnik who was featured in issue 101 albeit with a discoloration which was common with early Archie Sonic).

 

On r/fuckkenpenders one user has directly emailed Sega's legal team to enquire about this, so if they didnt know then, they will definitely know now.

 

This man is profiting off of Content he didnt make for containing derivative works he created under a work for hire contract, since there is a decline in Sonic IDW comics and a growing need for preservation on the internet, many people are turning to Ken Penders to re-experience remastered Archie Sonic The Hedgehog comics they can access easily either through a digital scan or a compiled hardcover book available on his website, this will be a financial negative for Sega and they have every right to send a cease and desist, or at the very least make companies block/deny him distribution of the Lara-Su Chronicles or any other reprints/stories containing Sonic The Hedgehog characters.