I know everyone hates Ken Penders’ writing for the archie Sonic comics, but like… what did he even write?? I haven’t read all of the comics and the ones I have read are completely out of order, so what did he do??
What did he do, fandom??
Ken Penders gets a bad rep for being responsible for the Archie Sonic comic series being soft rebooted and eventually cancelled thanks to him suing over the rights to characters he created during his time as head writer. This went into effect around issue 264 causing a universe spanning reboot that wiped beloved characters that he had originally created from existence. This meant current story lines were abruptly ended and it allowed for stricter regulations on the comic going forward from Sega. Many great characters like Mina Mongoose, Sonics parents, and Knuckles family and entire race, along with fantastic villains like Mammoth Mogul and Enjerak are now gone forever thanks to Archie somehow not having the paper work that they should have had that would state that they own any characters he created. He won the case and changed decades of Archie Sonic stories and characters forever.
As far as his writing was concerned he would often take things happening in the story a little to seriously and thus it would feel a bit melodramatic, this coupled with the sometimes uncanny hyper proportions of the characters in the art style made his art come off even cornier than it might have actually been.
I for one think Ken Penders was a terrible writer for the character of Sonic but was amazing at writing Knuckles. Penders would have Sonic come off as bland, melodramatic, or corny. Knuckles he made a naive boy who over time became strong leader who tried to do the best he could to help his people and the world at large. He had a loving girlfriend who was his partner in crime, The Chaotix who were his friends who he would goof off with and had fun nicknames for, and he had a ton of lore given to him. Some of it was needlessly convoluted, but for the most part Knuckles had a ton of heart and drive given to him and it was great!
Ken Penders also was a poor choice to write basically any other character. Shadow was hyper aggressive, all the female characters were pretty stock and boring, he really made the freedom fighters darker and brooding. It seemed like he wanted to craft his own dark and interesting world, but he was stuck with Sonic characters. But instead of working within that limitation and creating stakes and obstacles that would work for Sonic, he just had no self awareness as to what this story was and it led to him getting fired and replaced by Ian Flynn who wrote for Archie up until cancellation of the comic and is the current head writer of the IDW Sonic comic. The first 10 or so issues of Ians run on Archie Sonic were just him getting rid of or resolving all the plot points he didnt like that were Ken Penders. There was a plot point about some great prophecy that Tails was going to unite dimensions, or that Eggman had a terminator daughter and a computer son named Adam. There were also characters that nobody enjoyed like Tommy the Turtle, who Ian killed off, and Tails Uncle who is a wizard named Merlin, who Ian eventually sent away never to be seen again.
Overall Ken Penders had a drastically different writing style than that was appropriate in tone for a Sonic the Hedgehog comic. He created some great lore for Knuckles and some characters that are really loved like Julie-Su (knuckles girlfriend). But in the end his greatest “crime” was being responsible for ending some really great story arcs and eventually convincing Sega to end their partnership with Archie thanks to his numerous lawsuits putting them into a situation over and over again that never should have been able to happen in the first place.
