Ken Penders

Career Prior to working in the comics business, Penders's earliest jobs as a commercial artist included silk screening T-shirts at age 16, serving as a technical illustrator in the US Air Force, and working as a graphics illustrator at a Boston engineering firm. According to Penders, he first got work in the comic book industry working on DC Comics' Who's Who In Star Trek miniseries in 1986, later working on their run of Star Trek: The Next Generation comics in the early 90s. He was hired to work on the latter at the request of regular Star Trek author Robert Greenberger. Penders also accepted a contract illustrating for DC's Captain Atom series after being selected as a finalist in a comic book drawing contest sponsored by Marvel Comics in 1989 and agreeing to visit weekly seminars. Penders continued to work on the comic as lead writer until he left Archie in 2006, Outside of the comic, Penders illustrated the cover of the complete series DVD set of Sonic the Hedgehog.

In addition to his works for Sonic and Star Trek, Penders created his own original comic IP for Image Comics in March 2000, The Lost Ones, releasing a single issue before it was cancelled. He has also worked in other media, including producing children's activity books and creating graphics for CD-ROM games. Penders also has credits for storyboards on two episodes of King of the Hill and the movie Bratz: Super Babyz, and created concept art for advertisements for the Motorola Razr.

Sonic movie pitch alt=A piece of concept art for Penders's Sonic Armageddon pitch. To the left the characters of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sally Acorn are depicted crying in each other's arms, with Sally having visible tears. The planet Mobius exploding in the background. In 2002, Sonic the Hedgehog writer Ben Hurst attempted to pitch an animated film continuation of the series, proposing his idea to a Sega executive. Hurst stated the executive was interested in the project, and that he was later called about the film by Penders, at the time lead writer of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series; the comic originated as an off-shoot of the animated series. Hurst said of the call that he "generously offered to include [Penders] in the effort and told [Penders his] strategy." Not much is known about the pitch, except that the film would have followed Sonic and friends after their home planet of Mobius explodes, something shown in pitch art and stated by Penders himself. According to Penders, he had the support of both X-Men director Larry Houston and Sega of America licensing manager Robert Leffer behind him and cites the opportunity to make the film as to why he left his position as lead writer of the Sonic comic at Archie.

The Lara-Su Chronicles In July 2010, after the US Copyright Office had certified his claims over his work for the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie series, Penders announced his intentions to continue the story of Lara-Su, one of his original characters created for Sonic and the in-universe daughter of Knuckles the Echidna, along with the other echidna characters he had created for the Archie comic. The series also is set to feature many other characters created during his time at Archie, with it serving as a continuation of a story he had written for the Sonic comic, "Mobius: 25 Years Later". an alien species. Penders stated reasons for the change were that he needed to make some adjustments to broaden the audience, that he wanted to give longtime fans answers and resolution, and because of the apparent difficulty he has seen with people pronouncing the word "echidna".

Penders stated in a later interview that his goals with The Lara-Su Chronicles are to "[inspire] the next generation to do their own thing as opposed to playing in someone else's sandbox" and sees an effort to finish what he began with "Mobius: 25 Years Later." The compilation contains two preview chapters for The Lara-Su Chronicles''' first volume, "The Storm" and "Shattered Tomorrows. "However, the app for the series has yet to be released.

Lawsuits

Archie Comics vs Penders In January 2009, three years after leaving Archie Comics, Penders began filing for copyright of every story, character, and artwork that he had created for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-offs, with the claims certified as of April 2010 by the US Copyright Office. Penders planned on continuing his "Mobius: 25 Years Later, he told the story independently of the publisher and declared that everything using his copyrighted works since issue #160 of the main Sonic comic was "essentially unauthorised". He had been prompted to do so after fans of his had contacted him asking if he had anything to do with the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which he did not; Penders alleged the game used concepts and characters similar to those he had written for the comic series.

Archie Comics filed a lawsuit against Penders in the fall of 2010 in an attempt to retain their copyright holdings of his characters and concepts; Archie alleged that Penders had violated his contract with them. However, the only copy of this contract that Archie could produce for the court was a photocopy, which Penders claimed was a forgery; the reproduced nature of the photocopy meant that its validity could be questioned.

In 2013, the lawsuit ended with prejudice, with Penders gaining the rights to an estimated over 200 characters from the comic in a confidential settlement with Archie Comics. He would later turn the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" continuation project into The Lara-Su Chronicles. Archie would initially write his characters out of future comics, rewriting issues mid-lawsuit to remove any references to them and not republishing stories involving them, before rebooting the canon entirely to retcon out not only his but any other former writers' original characters and concepts fully. When asked about this reboot in an interview, Penders stated that the retcon wasn't necessary, and that Archie could have continued using his copyrighted characters and concepts to some degree. Fulop's lawsuits were dismissed a year later due to insufficient evidence.

Penders vs SEGA and EA Penders filed a lawsuit against Sega and EA Games in 2011 for alleged copyright infringement in the game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which was developed by EA's subsidiary BioWare. In particular, Penders claimed the game had stolen the concept of Nocturnus Clan from his own Dark Legion, along with many other concepts from the Knuckles the Echidna spin-off series he had written—something brought to his attention after fans of his asked if he worked on the game based on the similarities. The case was dismissed without prejudice September 26, 2011, then again in February 2012, after the case had been refiled four days after it was originally dismissed, despite warnings from Judge Otis Wright, who dismissed the case both times. In October 2013, the CA 9th Appellate Court upheld Judge Wright's initial ruling.

Other potential lawsuits In October 2015, Penders made a post to his Twitter some interpreted to be directed at Archie Comics, about comic publishers not "believ[ing] in living up to their side of the bargain" and not to "blame [him] for what happens next"; the tweet was believed to be in response to planned reprints by Archie. However, no lawsuits against Archie have been filed by Penders since.

In April 2022, after the release of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie, fans noted the film gave the character of Knuckles the Echidna an on-screen father, something no media for the series had done since Penders's lawsuit had given him copyright of the Archie Comics incarnation of his father, Locke. Penders took to Twitter to state that he believed the character in the film to be a version of Locke, and that he believed another echidna in the film to be another character of his, Enerjak. Upon a user asking him if he had grounds to sue, Penders responded that he would "let the attorneys hash that out", leading many to believe he was preparing for another lawsuit. However, as of 2026, no lawsuit has materialzsed.