Ken Penders, an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his work on the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series published by Archie Comics, has recently announced on Twitter that he will be re-releasing the comics under a new “Floating Island Productions MOBIAN LINE” banner.
This announcement followed soon after the release of Penders’ 13-year long project, The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings. This project consists of reprints of the “Mobius: 25 Years Later” stories originally published in Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog series, issues 131 through 144, with the last page of the story “The Die is Cast” being replaced with all-new material. This new material continues into an all-new story titled “The Storm,” which leads into the opening chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows.
That is certainly a bold claim! Many people have since questioned in the comments of this Tweet whether these re-releases are legally feasible, with Penders claiming that he will be offering advance royalty payments before a single book is pre-ordered or sold. He also posted an extensive thread explaining why a lawsuit by SEGA or Archie isn’t happening.
Penders also clarifies that these reprints would include every issue, not just the ones he worked on. This means that even issues 160 and beyond, which were overseen by Ian Flynn after Penders’ departure from Archie, will be included, except for the Mega Man crossover series and the Sonic X adaptations.
What do you think about the possible reprints of the Archie Sonic comics? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to keep it locked to Sonic City for more Sonic news and updates!
Yeah, seeing Ken’s post on why Sega and Archie won’t sue him, it just continues to prove he does not know how the law really works. In fact, the only reason he won his characters is because he got lucky with Archie being careless and losing the original contract that they made with him to prove their case.
While he does own the characters he made for Archie Sonic as well as the stories he wrote (hence why the Sonic Archives and other Archie Sonic re-release that Archie did would start crediting him and the other formers writers on the front covers). they still contain characters owned by Sega of Japan and Sonic Team, and while Sega is okay with fangames, they let them stay on since the fans who made them made the free (and even went as far as to hire one of these fangame makers to make some ports of past Sonic games as well as Sonic Mania). However, what Penders is doing is reprinting these comics and selling them for his own profit, and as we all know, that can be considered copyright infringement.
While I am glad someone is trying to bring Archie Sonic to a new generation of comic readers, how Ken is doing it is not the right way, as he needs Sega’s okay to reprint comics that contain Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and the other game characters. The way Ken is doing it is what Big the Cat would call “a no-no”. Only time will tell whether Sega will actually allow Ken to get away with this or not, but this is basically going to be another case of Ken Penders doing what Ken Penders does best: being the entire circus.