Sonic Comics were WEIRD (ft. My Friends) 

Saltydkdan

Saltydkdan

Hopefully Steven Butler can recover from having his work mistaken for Ken Penders', a comparison like that can do horrible things to a man. With enough chad energy, though, he'll pull through.

Saltydkdan

*CORRECTION* That was a singular correction

can confirm

yeah she got me

Sonic flash games were the first domino for me

@@LoreSeamstress same 🙏

I wouldn't say it was Sally, it was probably the other guy who's name starts with an S

Tails is a menace

excuse me WHAT

@@SailorDee It’s a long story, but basically, it was a test of character for Tails.

@@geoffreyrichards6079 Don't you dare omit the part about him being given that test by a literal unicorn wizard X'D

Or how Sonic straigh up broke someone's ankle because they tried on his shoes

Not just an adult, a royal guard, she's a princess after all, further I believe he wanted to set that story when she was 15 or so. When people on Twitter asked him about the weird creepy pedo vibes he defended himself by saying she was legal in some states.

i'd say something like #PendersIsOverParty but penders was over before he started

Penders is a strange man isn’t he

So statutory rape (unless you're in a place with 16 as AOC. Still creepy). Great.

In most of the western world, 16 is the age of consent.

Sonic vs. Tails is actually quite an interesting concept. I wouldn't mind seeing them fight again in a comic or TV show.

@@DipperPines1986 just don't throw a tails love interest scenario

​@@wolfenden9805 in fairness, the writer Ian did it to get rid of that "Tails liked Fiona and was upset at Sonic for being with her" plot point, and get rid of the tensions/anger, and show Sonic didn't intentionally try to hurt his friend.

Not for me really, I knew like with his battles with Knuckles, Shadow, Blaze, Silver, ect. things would work out in the end, and they would be friends again. Sonic fighting his friends or frenemies is basically a common Sonic trope.

@@DipperPines1986 so what do you think now ?

Yeah, I won’t deny that Archie Sonic didn’t have perfect history, it had decent start, but it ended up going downhill during the Late 90’s and Early 2000’s, When Ian Flynn took over, he improved the series until it got rebooted. The reboot somewhat neutered the series, But not as bad as the games from the Meta Era.

@@Micktrap397 and Ian is doing a fantastic job with the IDW series while working within SEGA’s restrictions.

Archie is like the hardest sell ever. I fucking love it and think its some of the highest quality writing and art in the franchise, but *man* do you have to skip over or wade through some crazy shit to get the good stuff.

@@Micktrap397 I think as limited as the reboot was, it didn't crowd the main cast. I kind of miss that feeling in IDW, of a core vast where many can have their own subplots.

@@paperluigi6132 Sadly I have issues with the new series as well. For one it suffers the exact opposite problem of Archie. If that was too weird and unhinged, than IDW is too restrained and market friendly.

Huh. That's... actually a pretty good idea!

Yeah but haha bee get crippling brain damage

And charmy the first would be too busy with royal duties to work with the chaotix so instead his son does it

SEGA still might’ve shot that down, honestly. Mandates funny.

Honestly, given how bullshit the current mandates are, i wouldn't be surprised if they were told that they couldn't just do that

The whole brain damage thing actually happened because they got Charmy's age wrong. Canonically, he's supposed to be a little kid, but American writers thought he was 16 and wrote him as a teenager. When Sega found out, they demanded his personality be changed to be more like the games. The best the comic writers could come up with was giving him brain damage to regress his personality.

The best/worst thing, that isn't the darkest thing that happened in that comic issue.

@@vioveo7440 uh... The video literally describes this very thing. It's not that they got the age wrong, it's that when they introduced Charmy, all they had to go for him was his description in Knuckles Chaotix, which describes him as a 16 year old, so they used that until Sonic Heroes came out, which retconned his original bio and made him 6.

@@KrandelCalibur the english bio haf him as 16. He was always 6 in japan I think. So yeah still not the comic writers fault.

@@KrandelCalibur the original japanece description says that he is younger, that was a mistranslation

say goodbye to your kneecaps *has a whole new meaning now*

He’s Knuckles’ half brother. Ken Penders wanted to name the baby just Mace, but another writer (Karl Bollers) was just ‘ok but what if I make this good but also funny because he’s the brother to KNUCKLES’ His full name is Knecapeon Mace His nickname is *Kneecaps the Echidna* and has a little comic about Knux telling his mom ‘that’s a silly name!’ then telling his giggling friends behind him to can it Penders hated the name

At times?

@@ashikjaman1940 It's because the other times it was nonsensical.

Borderline???

BORDERLINE?

The reason It's only Borderline Nonsensical, is because It's 100% Fucking Batshit to the point where everything that did make sense also made no sense and so to the people reading the comics, it made sense because it made no sense, and thus a paradox ensues.

Sally and the Freedom Fighters were not created by Ken Penders, nor did he ever lay any claim to them. They were created by SEGA of America for the Saturday morning cartoon simply titled "Sonic the Hedgehog," or as fans refer to it; Sonic SatAM. Nobody at Archie ever laid claim to them, either. SEGA owns Sally and the Freedom Fighters. Not Ken Penders. Never has, never will.

@@sonicstar917 I'll admit, I was wrong about that. However, Ken did kill any chances for Ben Hurst concluding the show in favor of pitching his own movie that never went into production. Regardless, you are right, and I should have looked into it further.

I also saw in a video that one rule is that Sonic will never get with Amy, even if it's just a kiss or two sided hand holding

@@lxi.. Very stupid rule, yet I can see where they're coming from with all the sexual stuff Ken tried to sneak in

@@nellewoodruff6337 either that or they want Amy to exclusively have a crush on Sonic only and not pull an Avatar and have them get together at the end

Their was a movie way back where he would come to real world in the suburbs that is now just a bunch of disjointed concept pieces

The movie concept of a videogame/cartoon character jumping out of their world and into ours seemed to be a popular idea among movie directors at the time for some reason as I remember a couple of movies with that very premise.

I think it was a way for the director to get away from ACTUALLY adapting the series, and just throw the character in "The Real World"

@@donnelwaddledee965 Probably cheaper to have one animated character back then than a whole cast of them, plus environments.

@@Keyboardeater1 I agree, they knew they're limits and didn't try , prolly would'a sucked if they did

I wish Chaos Knuckles was the Canonical Replacement of Super Knuckles in the games lore wise.

I would have Canonized Chaos Knuckles, & Rename him Master Knuckles.

damn I forgot echnidas laid eggs. when people say that only platypi lay eggs I remember but the information only seems to pop up in connection with platypi

Also Black Doom and his Black Arms forces (from Shadow the Hedgehog) never invaded in the comics canon, as they were too busy fighting against the aquatic tentacle aliens the comics introduced. Lol

That whole arc was aggressively stupid. Sonic being a lapdog to any kind of authority, let alone a kingdom, is so egregiously against his entire concept as a character it's baffling it even went past the concept stage. Also this was an Ian Flynn arc, shockingly enough.

This. Fucking sentence. It’s an SCP from beyond our dimension and has breached containment, it is not supposed to BE HERE,WHAT IS THAT COMBINATION OF WORDS YOU CALL A SUMMARY?! What were they SMOKING!! Agkcczxzsrrvbsdg!?’vnv

@felixdaniels37 Ian was only keeping it in-character as far as the comic’s original context was concerned. As contradictory as it now is, the original Archie Sonic was loyal to the royal family. There’s zero chance of something like that being written for the Archie reboot or the IDW series today.

Sonic is a fucking royalist

WHAT?!

@@MarbleSodaPop It's how Knuckles became a living chaos emerald.

@@darksquigglyboy W H A T

@@tntalchemist Knuckles' Dad had a dream premonition and in the middle of the night hastily blasted Knuckles with Chaos Emerald microwave radiation. It's why Knuckles' can fly, why he's so strong, why he can sense the Chaos Emerald from miles away, why he's essentially immortal, all of it. Literally he had a nightmare and microwaved his baby to turn him into an immortal super soldier.

@@boanoah6362 I tried this once. Pro-Tip, remember to differentiate between “Chaos Microwave Energy” and “Normal Microwave Energy.”

Minor correction: most of the Sonic Adventure arc was penned by Karl Bollers, the last issue just fell to Penders for whatever reason

To be fair they did kill of Robotnik for YEARS and it was actually pretty successful.

I just feel like both the comics and the games are in safe hands if Ian has any hand in them.

They couldn't just make up a little brother charmy take the role of the excitable kid or something? THATS what they landed on???!

This is a universe full of magic and amazing science. But I guess they just wanted to give a kid brain damage

oh if you thought charmy getting de-aged via brain damage was bad, charmy ALSO has a friend overdose on LSD-spiked chili dogs and DIE, simultaneously as an A-plot and a footnote while some other members of the cast eat those same chili dogs and trip out. shit's wild and I think there's gotta be something wrong with us longtime sonic fans to put up with gut punches of weirdness like these.

Ian did say that plot point was one of his major regrets. At that point he was having to clean up the mess of characters and plotlines from previous writers so it got...messy

@@thag_simmons dont forget its implied that the lsd was given to "young minds" while a panel of echnida versions of the rugrats are shown. Yes apparently "young" means toddlers.

To be clear: in that instance, "departed" is literal. He just went home, that's all it meant.

here's the real question, who's more of an asshole. Fleetway Sonic, or Archie Sonic when he keeps cucking his own best friend by stealing his girl, TWICE let's just be glad Penders started being out of the picture when Sonic X happened, otherwise Penders would find a way to fuck up sonic x season 3 by having Sonic somehow steal Cosmo from Tails before her death

@@woobgamer5210 I feel like Fleetway Sonic was an asshole more consistently, but Archie Sonic's asshole moments were worse than the former. BUT YEAH YOU HAVE A POINT ABOUT SONIC X... GEEZ I FEAR THAT TIMELINE

Fleetway still had the better writing. Super Sonic... holy shit....

I mean Fleetway did have Tails have to assassinate Robotnik ala JFK as a test of character and that's not the weirdest.

I agree that Fleetway Sonic was certainly stranger overall, but I think Archie Sonic’s WTF elements just had something to them that made them hit a bit harder, if that makes sense. It could absolutely vary by personal experience but with Fleetway I just kind of became numb to how bizarre it was after a while but with Archie several things just left me questioning for longer. Maybe it’s something to do with the different types of strange things that varies between the different comics or the consistency of how often things were just wild.

Oh, so he's a Keffals, then?

He is built to be a shield so

@@senritsujumpsuit6021 If the sheild is being ripped a part by wolves in the forest what good is the sheild?

@@lakamokolaka Still absorbs damage just less of it in long term

To be clear: he dies once and comes back (Penders wanted him to stay dead, if you can believe it)

INFATUATED

It's always such a shame people only ever talk about Archie as if only Penders wrote it, and never give the other writers their due respect. I feel like Archie, when it was written by Flynn were some of the best Sonic stories ever.

@@sezunemizuhana3870 To help- I think the problems with pre-Flynn Archie wasn't strictly Penders, as a lot of early-early Archie did not age well either (not just Geoff's crush on Sally, but also Robotnik's own in the Halloween special, the gag-dense nature, the repetitive plot threads between Mecha Madness and Endgame, Amy being pushed aside until they chose to not retcon her age as they did with one-5 year old Tails, Bunnie and Rotor being underutitilized- especially with Robian drama). Scott Shaw was a little too newspaper comic for Sonic, Spaz's detail is neat and responsible for many styles, Jon Gray was the first one to bring game-accurate looks to Angel Island, Karl Bollers is Benny Lee, Many Hands happened twice, and the creator of Holo-Lynx Nicole also did the Rush adaptation a n d now supports NFTs. Footnote: Gray is actually most of why we have Blue Shoe Ray, not Flynn. Still refer to Return to Angel Island.

Imagine thinking Ian Flynn is infallible and can do no wrong. Truth is he's had his own share of bad writing, regardless of SEGA's "mandates." Like how he gave Charmy brain damage to be more in line with his personality from Sonic Heroes onward. Or how he made Rouge so unabashedly selfish to the point she was willing to let Blaze's world *DIE* just to get the Sol Emerald. Not to mention, his portrayal of Shadow in Archie (a pushover) is proof that he doesn't really respect the character. Heck, a good chunk of his plots have characters act like idiots in order for the plot to advance, and nowhere is this more evident than in the IDW comic's Zombot Arc. From Eggman not having a backup plan (which goes against the GAMES), to Sonic REFUSING to take responsibility for his actions, and the most egregious example; Shadow in Issue 19. And before you say "SEGA's mandates are the reason why it turned out so bad," that's not entirely true; Flynn wanted Shadow, in his arrogance, to remove his Inhibitor Rings and become Chaos Shadow, thinking that would burn off the Metal Virus, only for it to backfire. SEGA shot the idea down because "Chaos Shadow" isn't a thing in the games, and Flynn himself later confirmed that the reason he had Shadow get infected in the first place was "to escalate things." *TL:DR; He made Shadow act like an idiot in order for his plot to advance.* That is bad writing, and I'm sick and tired of this fanbase scapegoating SEGA to protect an overrated fanfiction writer from admitting that his writing isn't "peak Sonic." He got lucky when he got hired, and Sonic is ALL he has going for him. You can say the same thing about Ken Penders, but Ian Flynn himself said that he has no other job skills as a writer so he's "clinging to this spiky blue moneymaker for as long as I can." Without Sonic, Ian Flynn is a nobody. And frankly, telling people that Sonic is a "children's fantasy" that shouldn't be taken so seriously and that older folks should "go read adult material" if they aren't satisfied with his style of writing, falls short when you consider the Metal Virus Arc. Arrogance and hypocrisy is all I see from Flynn.

@@amesstarline5482 Which artist/writer are you referring to in regards to Nicole? Just out of curiosity

@@sonicstar917 mucho texto

Gotta say, your vampire sonic is really cool looking. How old were you when you drew that?

What Religion was Knuckles a part of?

this is good shit. We need more of this.

The Mort part makes so much sense being placed right after the feet panel.

Oh I want to hear your podcast, what's the name of your podcast and what's the episode title where you discussed about the Ken Penders situation?

@@ruke2566 it's called Archie Sonic Digest. Its all up on my channel here. The one you're looking for is titled The Ken Penders Lawsuit

@@TheSpeedPlays Will check it out (as well as your entire podcast too) soon enough!

​@@TheSpeedPlaysShoulda been called "the Penders problem" *Seinfeld theme* I'll see my way out

It’s true, but now that you mentioned the art style, it kinda reminds me of the first sonic design for the movie. It really appears to be a realistic design of his own creation coming to life. The teeth is what got me. 😬

I genuinely think he doesn’t know any better, kids like someone with special needs

Apparently he once drew the Digimon Emperor on the cover of a copy of Digimon Beckett

Remember the time someone commissioned him to draw foot fetish art and he (penders) tried to make some excuse as to why it was actually super deep with subtle meanings?

He also killed any chances of a Sonic SatAM continuation while Ben Hurst was still alive. He’s destroyed two different canons.

Just like in IT. All those memories flood back

Yep. Sonic Super Special 11, in the story Sally's Acension. I feel like there were probably a lot of young, soon to be furries feeling very confusing feelings reading that issue. We also have Ken Penders to thank for that story, of course.

A magic pool that looks like piss.

@@collaterale1 "I pissed on your wife Sonic, she's mine now." - Ken Penders

​@@fuckthisstupidasshandleshit "I've come to make an announcement. Ken Penders is a-"

It should be noted that when that story was reprinted in a trade paperback, they edited the art, so she was now wearing clothes. Also, that, and a few other instances of edited art in the trades, really pissed Ken Penders off big time.

God, same

Most of those covers were drawn by the legendary Patrick Spaziante, who had a real knack for making the Archie comics look way more interesting than they actually were. We've been covering them over on my channel, and there's a point where it almost feels like false advertising for the cover to look _that good_ and then the actual comic is drawn by Dave Manak or even Penders himself.

@@Shaddytheguy oh my god don’t EVEN GET ME STARTED! When I got stable internet and learned like almost a decade later that I can just google the comics and read them online I was disappointed with what was actually happening in the story. I wanna around like 2010 and maybe even a couple years before that, the stories were actually getting cohesive and had pretty good conflict and character moments. I’m gonna miss Archie comics and all its characters.

god i wish i had the mega collection or even a gamecube still

That's what I did on the GameCube, one of my defining childhood memories

They didnt show it in the video but sally was robotized for a while. Like she stayed that way and it was after an aliean race just got rid of robotization for alk but sonics dad. Oh he and sonics mom were secretly robotized those first 50 issues and the uncke didnt tell sonic.

I don't think that's an unpopular opinion, the reboot is generally pretty well-liked. It's just a shame it was shot down in its infancy

Technically we eventually will...it'll just be a really long time, because Ian Flynn would be jeopardizing his relationship with SEGA to reveal it while he still works for them.

I think Penders just wanted to draw the echidnas as twileks

@@Shaddytheguy LOL, I was thinking the same thing but with Nautolans.

He was actually canonically 11 by this point in the comic's continuity. Not that that's much better, granted.

I REMEMBER THAT ISSUE! Wasn’t it Sonics dad, not Chuck?

@@splattwig yeah, it was jules. Having the robot war vet punk Scourge the fuck out was great

@@splattwig Oh snap, I thought it was Chuck due to the crippled, robot-like, state the guy was in, since it's kind of Chuck's thing from what I remembered. (Which made his survivial through sheer verbal brutality so much more impactful.)

@@realfromtherealreality4148 It's kinda the other way around. Chuck invented the roboticizer, and was easily the robian whom we saw the most in the series. But Jules was the first test subject because his injuries from the war were going to kill him otherwise. This is why he remained Roboticized when the Bem turned everyone back to normal; if he weren't a robot, he'd be dead.

Same

Wait which one is your art

@@Soupurman the Sonic head

The green alternate reality Sonic is actually the same one mentioned at 1:32 .

Oh wow, yeah, that's great! XD

Whoa, if this is real then I feel bad for you, but seriously that's hilarious asf-

As funny as that sounds, I'm calling bullshit

@@percher4824 lmao ya

This definitely seems something Kenneth W. Penderson II from the ARCHIE Sonic Comic series would do. Even if this does turn out to be fake, this is still funny to think about.

Isn’t that what Chris Chan did?

It's because they were only looking at the main series in this video; all the weird Nazi shit is in the Knuckles spinoff series.

yoo dom

If you want more of Scourge, then I'm pretty sure that between her green fur, character and being made by the same guy (ian flynn), Surge the Tenrec in the IDW comics is pretty much scourge on estrogen and with lightning powers

Are you from Jacksonville?

OH SHIT NO

I introduce to you: Ken penders echidnas 🤢🤮

Scourge only became something great literally right after he left

@@bagelgod946 Yeah and that's somehow HIS charecter

Didn’t he win a lawsuit vs Sega and now owns like 100s of “original” sonic characters or something?

Ken pender-verse

@@SMA2343 he didn't "win" sega just didn't care enough

​@@SMA2343 unfortunately yes. Now he throws a hissy fit when echidnas exist

@@SMA2343 Yeah, SEGA and Archie (think mostly Archie) messed up badly by losing his contract, twice apparently.

Well there's the time evil sonic, pretending to be sonic, is heavily implied to have had sex with the robot bunny. That one was penders.

225 would have been a *fantastic* first issue!

I'm kinda glad they scrapped Scourge and ended up having to make Surge instead, she's an infinitely better character.

I mean. Rewriting Evil Sonic means the character is still Evil Sonic, so he does own Scourge. it'd be way too easy to exploit if you could just transform a guy into a slightly different guy and say you own the new guy even if his backstory is tied to the old guy

@@NAFEDUDE "It'd be way too easy to exploit if you could just transform a guy into a slightly different guy and say you own the new guy even if his backstory is tied to the old guy" You mean like how Penders tried to sue for the rights to Evil Sonic (a slightly different version of Sonic) and say he owned him?

@@NAFEDUDE the issue I have with that is the fact at the end of the day. Its still fucking sonic. You can't give sunglasses to mario make him start punching a cat and claim he's your copyright. Pen also didn't make the design for scourge either so nothing about scourge he owns.

@@59hawks Exactly. Same with how Ken owns Green Knuckles somehow. It's stupid