(Video link is here, since I canā€™t do both a custom thumbnail and a link.) So evidently, Ken Penders is making a reprint of Mobius: 25 years later. After almost a decade of owning his OCs he got back from Sega, heā€™s finally going to be doing something with themā€¦and itā€™s a reprint of the old Archie comics, specifically, the Light Mobius Arc, issues 131-144. Granted, he will be adding on a section to replace what would be the normal end of 144 that diverges from the canon ending so that itā€™ll tie into his Lara-Su series, but thereā€™s a lot in there that he simply doesnā€™t own.

Originally, I was only going to post the video here, but I had a lot of questions after watching it. Was he even the one who drew the art for this comic? Was he going to attempt any superficial changes to avoid getting sued? I did some digging beyond the video, and found that he has his own website dedicated to this thing.

So he didnā€™t draw most of the art in the comics, and a lot of it seems to have been drawn by other artists, like Steven Butler. I rooted around a bit in the archives on Penderā€™s site, and it seems like heā€™s planning on redrawing at least a few panels for his comicā€”like this one here:

Steveā€™s normal echidnas

Kenā€™s uncanny valley echidnas

(In case it wasnā€™t obvious, the art on the right is by Ken Penders, the left is by Steven Butler.) He said here that he redrew this scene to better match the context for his new series, so it seems like he might be doing more than just reprinting the old comics. Which honestlyā€¦I guess itā€™s good that heā€™s not profiting off of other artistsā€™ work without compensation, but at the same timeā€¦the new art is uncanny as hell.

Also, it wasnā€™t really clear just from looking at his website whether he was going to rename any of the other Sonic characters not owned by him (e.g., Rotor, Sonic), or if he was just going to keep their names. But in some of the archives, Knuckles was reffered to a Kā€™nox, so itā€™s possible the other characters were changed too.

Thereā€™s been a lot of discourse about this lately, and itā€™ll beā€¦interesting, to say the least, to hear about what the final comic will look like (cause I sure as heck ainā€™t buying it!)

(Iā€™d like to note that Iā€™ve never actually read the Light Mobius arc myself, and most of my research came from Ken Penderā€™s website, the r/FuckKenPenders* subreddit, and, of course, the linked video.

*Link goes to rdx.overdevs, a Reddit mirror created by the awesome overdevs@lemmy.world so you donā€™t have to give Reddit more clicks than you have to :)>

  • @VolcanoWonderpantsOP
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    2ā€¢4 months ago

    Whatā€™s wow? The fact that heā€™s reprinting a comic that he pretty much has no legal right to print? His uncanny valley echidnaā€”sorry, ā€œEchydā€™nyaā€ art? The fact that the guy has a whole subreddit dedicated to bashing him? The fact that we donā€™t have a whole community dedicated to bashing him? I must know!

    • @liquidparasyte
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      2ā€¢4 months ago

      ā€˜A lot,ā€™ is what it is šŸ„“