as someone who likes sonic the hedgehog but hasnt gone balls deep into the lore
what the fuck is the deal w ken penders
ken penders was a really not great artist for the sonic comics, who introduced loads of brand new characters who would never be seen outside of them, including basically an entire race of space echidnas. some of those characters included a pink girl echidna literally named lara-su (whether it was done in reference to the mary sue trope or not I honestly dont know)
Ken tried to sue sega due to the evil badguys in sonic chronicles (yes, that sonic chronicles) being supposedly similar to his. The case was dropped, but that wasn’t the end.
Ken, rather than backing down, decided to go all-in and claimed copyright on all of his characters he created for the sonic comics. All of them, including ones in current story arcs. Archie tried to argue that due to his contract the characters were actually now the property of SEGA… only to be unable to find the actual contract he signed (ken probably swiped it on the way out).
This meant that the publishers had to actually reboot the entire current plot because they could not legally use these characters anymore. Every single hanging plot thread had to be retconned, and theres years of comics that are now officially not canon because of it.
Ken, now having full right over his echidna OCs, changed them to be not echidnas but an alien race called ‘Echydnya’ (yeah), and he’s gonna give them their own visual novel series:
its uh.. yeah. and theres the foot fetish thing too, but honestly that feels almost like a minor point.
