Stubble Telescope

brings a metal plate to the table, wearing a waiter's outfit The house's finest dump, for our esteemed guest.

Let's talk about Terrible Sonic Archie Comic Lore today. Half the fun of this dump is the lore itself, the other half is the lore BEHIND the lore. So let's talk about Ken Penders.

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Ken Penders is by all accounts an absolutely atrocious human being. He has his good moments (he recently announced he's considering leaving Twitter because Elon Musk is too transphobic) but most of the time he's just bad.

Ken Penders always wanted to write for comic books. He was a HUGE comic book boomer nerd, and it was his dream. Unfortunately for Ken Penders, his writing is pretty not great, and his art looks like this.

So let's start at the beginning. The very start of the Archie Sonic Comics is a weird period where it doesn't know what it wants to be yet. It has a template, and characters, but no other ideas. That very same template would be used for the SATAM cartoon, which is why they're so similar btw despite having none of the same writers. The first 15 or so Archie comics were written by a few different writers with no overarching plot. It was a lot of goofy slapstick and referential humor that I'm sure was funny at some time.

This actually is at least a little funny cause of Steve Urkel's actor also voicing Sonic but anyway

Eventually, Ken Penders, who was just a writer at this point, became a writer on Sonic. Why this guy and not anyone else? Because no one else really wanted it. No one cared. Sonic was a new IP but like, the story wasn't important. But remember, Penders wanted to write big arching comic narratives, like his favorite comics as a kid. So he did his best to move the comic into that direction, adding new characters, new plots, and new ideas. This brings us toooooo

all the fucking echidnas.

So, Penders has full control of a comic's story that Sega is only half paying attention to. What can he do? Well, he can't fuck with Sonic too much. Like, the character. That might make Sega actually look at him. Plus he kinda hates Sonic? (this is evident in his writing) So instead, let's focus on a character that Sega doesn't care too much about. Knuckles! Penders early on found out Sega would let him do whatever he wanted with Knux's backstory, which was RIPE for exploitation. He was just some red dude on an island guarding the master emerald. Let's expand that a bit! Let's give him a family! Let's build on his people's backstory, and- oh. Oh no.

Yeah, so Penders REALLY wanted to push all this Echidna stuff. It was very important to him now, cause it was HIS story he was able to build, as opposed to the stuff with Sonic and Robotnik (which we'll get to later) that was under a bit more scrutiny. He was given his own side comic, the Knuckles Comics, to make this stuff in. Turns out though, people didn't like it very much? The Knuckles side comics never sold well, and after like 20 issues, they were cancelled. This didn't stop Penders, who being the lead writer, then FORCED THE STORYLINE INTO THE MAIN COMICS. At the end of each issue, now, there was a chapter for the Echidna storyline, which went into some.... locations.

My favorite, ironically for me, is this Charmy Bee side story. It's SO BATSHIT that I can't help but love it, despite having PTSD involving drug use stuff. You might immediately go "wtf?" but JUST WAIT.

So, Charmy and his best friend Mello Bee are going to an amusement park for a nice day out! They eat some chili dogs, and immediately start tripping balls. Mello overdoses and dies. Turns out, the park owner is lacing his fucking chili with a substance called "Lemon Sundrop Dandelion" (I cannot make this shit up) to get kids addicted so they'll come to his park. The Chaotix go to investigate, and then like fucking idiots eat the chilidogs and start tripping in the middle of the park. It's very, very fucking stupid.

Other plotlines involve basically a three-way war for Echidnopolis. There are three major factions.

1. Traditionalists who think technology is evil and sealed it away when it got to be too much... except they didn't. They still have guns, and nukes, and all other kinds of technology.

2. A group called The Dark Legion, who are goosestepping echidna first xenophobes who wanted to keep the status quo and demanded they be allowed to keep their technology (except the traditionalists never really took it but y'know). This group eventually BECOMES GOOD GUYS AND BY THAT I MEAN DOESN'T CHANGE AT ALL EXCEPT THAT THEY ARE PORTRAYED AS GOOD NOW AND HELP OUT THE HEROES.

3. The Dingos. They're refugees from another country who are poor, beaten down, with no rights. The Echidnas LITERALLY stole their land to make the Floating Island. These are the bad guys. They are DIRECTLY compared to the nazis, as opposed to the Dark Legion who just have the Vibe.

Here's Helmut von Stryker, the violent military leader of the Dingo Regime, who wants to bring rights to his people by Fucking Killing Everyone Else. You may go, "But Liz, isn't it weird to portray the poor minority as also the evil ones?" and wow YES IT SURE IS HUH.

The other plotline with the Echnidna shit I wanna talk about involves Knuckles. See, Knuckles' dad is named Locke, and he and Knux come from a long line of guardians. Locke is a Shitty Dad, which is VERY common in this series, because Ken Penders has self admitted daddy issues. Locke had a prophetic vision one night in his sleep, of his unborn son fighting a giant robot and saving the world. This robot is actually NOT Robotnik, but instead some other fucking villain Penders wanted to write into the comic but never was really allowed to. He had some other evil doctor villain from the comics he'd been shoppng around for years no one wanted to hire him to write, and he was just gonna force him in as a replacement for Robotnik.

Anyways, Locke wakes up from his "prophetic vision", and immediately steals his unborn son's egg without telling his wife, irradiating him with the master emerald's energy to give him super powers. This is lovingly known in the fandom as "Had a bad dream, time to microwave the baby". This gives Knuckles his signature knuckles. He's literally a mutant. Also it's the reason he becomes Grunkles later on,

Yeah Knuckles becomes supercharged with emerald energy and just, turns green. For years. It's as stupid as it sounds.

At the same time that Knuckles has a Chosen One Prophecy, Tails ALSO has a Chosen One Prophecy. Yes, Tails did not escape from Pender's bullshit. Tails is apparently the chosen one in a prophecy to take out the ULTIMATE VILLAIN, MAMMOTH MOGUL! ...You... you don't know who Mammoth Mogul is, do you? Mammoth Mogul is some dude who had the chaos emeralds like a million years ago and ruled the world, but was sealed away in the emerald. It got shattered, and now he's back, and TAILS is the one destined to stop him! By doing THIS!

Christ on the cross. Apparently, the original idea was that Titan Tails would be Tails going full kitsune, nine tails and everything. That would have been WAY better but Penders fucking vetoed it cause kids in America wouldn't know what a fucking Kitsune is. Please ignore that Naruto is picking up speed at this point and becoming VERY popular.

So while Titan Tails is living out Pender's muscle macro fantasies, what is Sonic doing? Well... not a WHOLE lot! Sonic and Sally were infamously kinda underloved during this time period, because Penders did not like them. He constantly had characters shit-talk Sonic, but had to begrudgingly still keep him around and write him doing cool things because of Mandates.

This was mostly cause Penders hates kids though. The adults were fine (except of course for the Shitty Dad Squad who were SHOWN as fine but were really fucking bad). But Sonic still had stuff to do. There was the Endgame Saga, the 50th issue special, which had been lead up to for months, and where I got into the comics as a kid! It was BIG, it was EXCITING! They were CERTAIN it was going to be the final issue. And what do they do for the final issues? They kill of Sally Acorn, and then finally Robotnik.

The plan was absolutely to kill off both of them. Sally was written back in after MASSIVE fan outcry, but Robotnik did legit fucking die. Honestly, despite everything I've said so far, this is the best arc of Pender's run. It's like, legit kinda good, but with just enough Penders Fuckery to keep it fun to talk about. Pender's plan was to kill off Robotnik and Sally, cause Sally was "cramping Sonic's style", and he wanted to replace Robotnik with his OWN villain, but Sega was like "WRITE HIM BACK IN. NOW." so he had to create a NEW Robotnik, from an alternate universe, who called himself Eggman. It's a bit more complicated than that but it works out.

Also like, following with that "not everything Penders wrote was trash" idea, I wanna talk about someone who is ALMOST my favorite Penders character for a moment. Scourge the Hedgehog. You see, early on during the slapstick era, there's a plot where Sonic goes to an alternate universe where all the good guys and bad guys are flipped. There's Evil Sonic (the name he goes by), and the kindly Dr. Kintobor, a nice veterinarian. Evil Sonic disappears for like, a hundred issues, but is eventually written back in, sneaking into Sonic's universe and causing.... Issues. And by issues, I mean sexual assault. He pretends to be Sonic and THIS HAPPENS.

Gross as fuck. Actually, BECAUSE of this, the other writers were like "NOPE NEVER AGAIN" and changed Evil Sonic's color to green. He falls in a vat of acid or whatever, turns green, and changes his name to Scourge the Hedgehog, where he becomes a pretty fucking sick character, thanks Ian Flynn/Karl Bollers. But even one of the coolest parts of the Archie comics has to be thrown out with the rest of it cause Penders can't help but make everything he touches garbage.

Eventually, things were becoming too much. The other writers were kinda getting sick of Penders, who was also controlling of THEIR stories. Like this time one of the writers gave Knuckles a little brother named Kneecaps.

This writer was fucking with HIS characters. HIS plot!! Penders was livid. But eventually, enough was enough. Sega, and the Archie execs themselves, kinda realized what Penders was doing. Y'know, being a shit writer. So he got fired, and Ian Flynn took over as lead writer, and he tried desperately to clean up Pender's shit. But Dark Storms were on the horizon...

Penders sued Sega and Archie. He claimed that they had no rights to use the characters he had made. Archie laughed, like "uh? You, and ALL the writers, have to sign a document giving us the rights to the characters and stories you made?" Penders just smiled. They couldn't find the document. They couldn't prove he ever signed it. There are a LOT of rumors that Penders stole it or that there was some fuckery going on, but Penders actually won this lawsuit. Sega could never use any of his characters.

Oh no. What else will we do without Sleuth Doggy Dawg, Joffrey St. John the ACTUAL PEDOPHILE, and the nazi dingos???

Oh yeah, Joffrey St. John is a pedophile. Here's this tweet, where Penders brags that his adult character slept with a 15 year old.

Everything this man touches turns to trash. And not the kind I like, neither. Anyways, now Sega and Archie can't use any of his characters. This man wrote this comic for like a decade and a half, what are they to do?! IAN FLYNN TO THE RESCUE!

Let's talk about THE GENESIS WAVE.

So, Ian Flynn was also the lead writer on the Archie Mega Man Comics. I have not read them, I hear they're legit. He gets a crossover going, and it's WILD. It's the Worlds Collide Saga, and it's long running. Characters get turned into Robot Masters. Wily and Eggman team up, but are secretly being controlled by SIGMA, it's interesting stuff. Eventually it cultimates in the doctor's weapon, the GENESIS WAVE, going apeshit. It rewrites reality, but Sonic and Megaman go super and stop it from going TOO FAR.

In the end, reality is changed. And what truly changed? Well, everyone feels things aren't... QUITE the same, but doesn't know why or how. Reality just got a big reboot. And woah, conveniently, EVERY CHARACTER Penders ever made is written out! This is also funny considering the Mobius 25 Years Later plotline, which showed the future. GOD I DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT THAT. Okay one last thing.

Mobius 25 years later was a side story plotline for a timeskip where Sonic and Sally are king and queen, and everything is at peace with Eggman beaten for good. It ended on a cliffhanger, and nothing ever really happened in it. Ian Flynn kinda took the bones of it and tried to do SOMETHING after Penders left, but this resulted in the dumbest situation ever. See, there was this unimportant character next to Rotor a lot, his assistant, in the timeskip storyline. Ian Flynn kills him off, as he's unimportant, and Penders cried on Twitter, going "IAN FLYNN JUST KILLED OFF THE FIRST GAY SONIC CHARACTER, AND ROTOR'S HUSBAND"

And everyone is like "WHAT THE FUCK?!" This was NEVER implied, in any way. It's just canon now. Penders Dumbledore'd this shit. Like, straight up, he's bragged that this hinting about Rotor's sexuality paved the way for more queer rep in the comic. Meanwhile Ian Flynn had been trying FOR YEARS to get Sally and Nicole to be an explicit item and Sega kept going "no. No lesbians. That's icky."

Actually the whole romance stuff is another fun thing to talk about. Okay, ONE MORE THINiG. So, romance in the pre-genesis wave Archie comics was... messy. But it was a BIG THING. It was pushed a lot, and there were a few major ships. Sonic/Sally was the big one. Sonic/Amy was another one, which is kinda icky cause Amy was like 9 years old, but they literally had Amy steal a wish that was going to be used to save lives so she could wish herself to be older, so they could ship them. That's as icky as it sounds.

This was also an excuse to get her in her new Adventure design.

Anyways, the third ship was Sonic/Mina Mongoose. At least I THINK it's Mina. I googled it and couldn't find it. Coulda been someone else.

Mina is cute. Anyways, they were kinda shipping Sonic with ANYONE for that good drama. This came to a head though with one specific issue, where the hate mail from Amy and Sally shippers was SO INTENSE that one of the writers (Karl Bollers, the only black writer on the entire staff, because of COURSE it was him who got all the hate) got actual fucking death threats in the mail. This DID get the attention of Sega, who ALSO got some of this hate mail, and they literally went "WHAT ARE YOU DOING NO STOP"

A mandate came through, one to this day. Sonic is not allowed to show romantic interest in ANYONE. Sonc is now canonically ace. We get our first ACTUAL queer rep in the Sonic universe, and it's because of some fucking death threats over a cartoon hedgehog kissing a mongoose and not a squirrel.

Also real quick, shout outs to Karl Bollers for putting this into one of the comics. Literally the best thing in any Archie comic, ever.

Anyways, that's all I wanted to talk about for now. I like just loredumping about my favorite lore, even if it's really batshit wild fucked up shit like Penders. I could have gone even FURTHER, I DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT THE TANG. But I could literally be here for hours.

Ask me more asks like this lmfao I like asks where I can just write for years about shit I like. Anyways thanks for reading.