#lara-su chronicles

[larasuchronicles]

Lara-Su Chronicles #1 - Pg. 4

#Lara-Su Chronicles #Archie Sonic #Lara-Su the Echidna #webcomic #Rutan the Echidna #Jaker the Echidna #Salma the Chameleon

[neofox]

Redraw of a character from Ken Pender’s Lara-su Chronicles. You can go more realistic without becoming some uncanny valley nightmare. Lean more towards animal and less towards human. Echidnas have quills not tentacles. So it makes sense to have the quills be more hair like than adding some bad wig. Everything else is just style choices. I coloured it cuz why not. I went with purple/pink to get away from 'echidna red'. Ken said the colour of the dress was unexpected, so I went with a light colour, since Lien-da seems to wear black/dark colours. BONUS: Lien-da with hair more like her hair style in the comics. I do feel bad for Lien-da fans. He really butchered her character. You can see more of my redraws here: [link]

#redraw #sonic the hedgehog #lien-da #lienda #ken penders #lara-su chronicles

[crusherthedoctor]

Are you going to pick-up the Lara-Su Chronicles book, just for yucks?

I wouldn't even do it at gunpoint.

#Crusher's Asks #Lara-Su Chronicles

[blazehedgehog]

Hey there Hotdog Laserhouse, what do you think of Ken Penders?

Controversial opinion: early Ken Penders is fine. When all he's doing is writing generic, simple SatAM-esque cartoon stories, they're okay. Not the greatest things ever written, but fine. I assume a lot of these stories were written when he was still treating the Archie books as "a job." He has openly bragged about not being familiar with the Sonic franchise, about having a certain detachment from the source material, and that's where these stories fall. When Ken Penders is writing just to cash a paycheck, it's passable.

It's when he starts to care. When he starts to take ownership. When he starts to write bigger, more complex stories, and it kind of gets too big for him to keep track of all at once. That's when we got story arcs that he started but forgot to finish. And when he started getting protective of his narrative and refused to let other writers play in his sandbox. He spent a lot of time undoing other writers work just to preserve the sanctity of his own plans (which would then stall out and become forgotten).

Unfortunately, there's more of that then there are the simple stories. And more of Ken Penders looking selfish and egotistical. More of Ken Penders trying to command a kind of attention he didn't deserve or earn.

In short, I don't like Ken Penders, and I haven't liked Ken Penders for a long, long time. And it isn't just from his lawsuits, either. He dramatically overstayed his welcome at Archie, something he once outright admitted himself. His books were canceled and he got fired for a reason. The fact that he continues to maintain the facade of his Lara-Su Chronicles "expanded universe" or whatever is frankly embarrassing.

The "Mobius: 25 Years Later" stuff that introduced his Lara-Su character was one of the most sluggish, bloated, slow, overwrought things Ken ever did while writing for the Archie Sonic book. It was very clearly an excuse to give him his own self-contained playground totally divorced from what any of the other writers were doing. While everyone else could write their silly little adventures about the present-day versions of the characters, Ken wanted to give himself the satisfaction of holding the keys to these characters futures. To be the one that wrote how Sonic the Hedgehog ends. To always literally be ten steps ahead of everyone else, in a place where nobody would be allowed to change his plans. And it would be something that would always be set in stone even after he left Archie. For as long as the Sonic book ran, he would always have the last word. His ultimate, egotistical legacy.

If you ask me, that's the trick behind his Lara-Su Chronicles book and why he fought so hard for ownership*. He still wants to be the one to say "I hold the ultimate power over the future and ending of this universe and nobody can take that from me." He gets to invent and own all the descendants of all your favorite licensed characters and play in his special quarantined sandbox forever, rather than accept the reality that he was fired for a reason and using that to experience growth as a creator. He's still living like it's going to be 2004 forever.

I think that's also why the book isn't out yet, after years and years and years. If he spends forever tweaking and perfecting it, it will always remain a piece of iconography for him. A symbol of what he once was, not who he currently is. He can always point at it in his own mind and say, "This will be my magnum opus some day." If that day never comes, he never has to reckon with what it might actually be. And so he can say that Lara-Su Chronicles could become a movie franchise, or a video game, or whatever. He can pretend forever and ever to still be relevant. All he has to do is drop some off-the-cuff tidbit on Twitter about Princess Sally's lost virginity and suddenly all the hornets in their nests start buzzing his name again, just like old times.

And as long as he can still do that, it will always be 2004 for him, this will always be his magnum opus, and he will always control the future of that universe.

And that's depressing.

*This might also be why Ian Flynn has become public enemy number one to Ken. When Ian introduced himself as a writer for Archie Sonic, one of the first stories he did was messing with "25 Years Later." He later compounded the problem by introducing his own offshoot, called "30 Years Later." Suddenly, Ken's legacy wasn't his anymore, and Ian had literally scooped him by writing from a slightly-more-futuristic date. No surprise that all of Ken's "Sonic was just a job to me, I know I'm writing on a licensed book and I own nothing, and it was definitely time overdue for me to leave" sentimentality went out the window. In fact, Ken quietly began his war for ownership in January of 2009 -- the same time the first "30 Years Later" story was mostly likely starting production. Ain't that something?

#questions #Anonymous #ken penders #archie sonic #sega #sonic the hedgehog #archie comics #lara-su chronicles #princess sally

[konnichibot]

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE THE MOMENT I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLIONS OF PRINTED CIRCUTS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOARMSTRONG OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR ECH'Y'D'NYAS AT THIS MICRO INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

#the lara su chronicles #ken penders is a douche

[jimintomystery]

Original character do not steal

Kinda fell down a rabbit hole the other day reading about Ken Penders, the writer/artist who sued Archie Comics to gain ownership of 250 Sonic the Hedgehog characters. Most of them look like this:

You may now be asking yourself: What does one do with 250 Sonic the Hedgehog characters? The answer may surprise you!

I'll try not to get too deep into this, since Bobby Schroeder and Comic Drake have thoroughly covered the story already, and I can't improve on their work. But even the short-short version is going to take a while.

Basically, Penders contributed to Archie's Sonic comics from 1994 to 2006. I'm not certain that he's the only reason the Sonic comics in those days were so overwrought and a little horny. But it's far to say he's representative of that tone, and he really leaned into it.

Penders's worldbuilding was especially prolific in Knuckles the Echidna, where he introduced a lost city of Echidnaopolis. In this sense you could kinda compare him to Carl Barks, who created the "Duck Universe" within Disney's line of Mickey Mouse comics. Of course, the biggest difference between Barks and Penders is that Ken claimed ownership of his work. Normally this never goes well for work-for-hire comics creators. But in this case, Archie literally lost the paperwork that said Penders was work-for-hire in the first place.

Without a leg to stand on, Archie was forced to settle. This meant both sides had to go through the Sonic comics and determine which Sonic recolors unambiguously belonged to Sega, and which ones would be ceded to Penders. I like to think the negotiations were akin to that Beanie Baby divorce photo.

Now, the problem with owning dozens of Sonic recolors is that they're not much good for anything except appearing in Sonic stories. But Archie and Sega weren't about to pay Penders to license his weird little guys to them, when Sonic still had plenty of other weird little guys to hang around with. And so, in Sonic The Hedgehog #244 (January 2013), a villain reveals that he teleported the echidnas away forever. After that, none of Ken's concepts were directly referred to again. All that stuff was implicitly erased from history with a soft reboot in #251-252, followed by a hard reboot when the comics moved from Archie to IDW in 2017-2018.

However, Penders already had plans to move forward with his creations without Archie, Sega, or Sonic continuity. In December 2011, he announced The Lara-Su Chronicles, a series of seven graphic novels starring Knuckles's future daughter, who first appeared in Sonic #131. The character designs manage to be legally distinct from the Sonic art style while maintaining the most obnoxious traits. You'd think this would be an opportunity to get away from giant cartoon eyes and "quills" that look like tentacles. But no, Lara-Su still resembles a hot woman wearing a giant fursuit head, except now the fursuit head always looks like it's smelling rotten eggs.

Anyway, it's been nearly twelve years since Penders formally announced The Lara-Su Chronicles, and as far as I can tell he hasn't actually published any of it yet. His website is currently taking pre-orders for the first volume, which is supposed to ship around January 2024. But even that is mostly reprints of Penders's stories from Sonic #131-144, with a new ending tacked on. I'm not sure Ken can reprint Sonic comics, but this should be an interesting way to find out.

From a creative standpoint, I admire the gumption it took for Penders to wrest control of his characters from Archie and forge ahead without the Sonic IP. But strategically, the whole endeavor looks like a huge misfire. The entire selling point of Lara-Su is to revisit an era of Sonic comics that has largely faded into obscurity. Even within that limited audience of the people nostalgic for that era, they mainly liked Ken's melodramatic storytelling because it added depth to the Sonic IP, and not for its own sake. For those Sonic fans, Lara-Su will always be more about what Penders took away "from them" than anything he can give back. And while that may not be entirely fair, I'm not sure it was entirely unforeseeable.

#comics #archie comics #sonic the hedgehog #ken penders #the lara-su chronicles

[janetkwallace]

A redesign of Lara-Su done last night. I think she looks cute.

Once again, I borrowed some inspiration from some of the drawings done by @neofox

#fanart #traditional art #watercolor #painting #lara su chronicles #ken penders #lara su #echidna #redesign

[artfromsaturn]

Apparently the Lara-Su Chronicles are actually going to come out soon which is kind of impressive. The announcement inspired me to try and re-design Lara Su in my own style, since Penders draws much differently than I would. And with much different artistic choices.

Seriously, if you have some free time, why not trying to redesign Lara-Su yourself?

#lara-su #lara su the echidna #the lara-su chronicles #ken penders #archie sonic #sonic comics #digital #digital ink #character design #redesign

[sonknuxadow]

WAIT THE LARA SU CHRONICLES IS ACTUALLY COMING OUT SOON ? FOR REAL THIS TIME ?

#HEEEEEELP #wait i just looked it up and part of it is just a reprint of mobius 25 years later... WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO MAKE THEN #i am curious how exactly that would be handled though because hes trying to completely separate lara su chronicles from sonic #and m25yl has sonic characters he doesnt own in it #from what ive seen knuckles is still in lara su chronicles. he just changed his name and called it a day #is he gonna do that with sonic sally etc too or is everything involving them cut out #did the original m25yl stories even have anything going on plot wise #all i remember is people sitting around talking about nothing #and sally saying sonic and tails havent talked in years and me getting sooo mad about it because no that would not happen

[whisper-and-tangle]

sobbing

#a friend posted the lara-su chronicles image in a discord server and i immediately thought of the fnaf image 😭 😭

[thescrump]

nobody told me there would be a fucking lara su chronicles reference in the new tomska video

#a glimpse into my world #tomska #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #lara su chronicles

[larasuchronicles]

Lara-Su Chronicles #1 - Pg. 5

#Lara-Su Chronicles #Archie Sonic #Lara-Su the Echidna #webcomic #Rutan the Echidna

[crusherthedoctor]

So uh, have you been keeping track about the latest news about the Lara-Su Chronicles?

No, because I can only focus on one shitty comic at a time.

#Crusher's Asks #Lara-Su Chronicles

[transgender-battlekukku]

I cooked something here

#sth #archie sonic #sonic chronicles #lara su the echidna #jani ca the echidna #julie su the echidna #shade the echidna #traditional art #traditional drawing

[toaarcan]

So, after a literal fucking decade, Ken "Squirrel Years" Penders has finally opened preorders for The Lara-Su Chronicles.

The first (and likely only) volume is a 160-page graphic novel. 140 of those pages are reprints of the original Mobius: 25 Years Later comics, with the final page of the final story being edited to lead into 20 pages of 'original' TLSC material.

Only way this man isn't getting sued is if SEGA don't give enough of a fuck to fight him.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Ken Penders #Ken 'Squirrel Years' Penders #The Lara-Su Chronicles #Archie Sonic #Mobius: 25 Years Later #Please sue his ass SEGA #It'd be so goddamn funny

[rondo-of-blog]

On the Beginnings of The Lara-Su Chronicles

Today is, as of writing, the last day you can pre-order The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings if you want to make it into the Special Thanks section of the book. Anyone who pre-orders after will be in the app, still, but I think it goes without saying the significance of having your name make it into the first printing. You can pre-order here.

Whether you go and pre-order it now or later, or if you’re looking back at this after the book’s come out, I think it’s gonna be worth the read. Today, I feel moved to write a little about what The Lara-Su Chronicles means to me.

It all started with the Archie Sonic comics. A gag comic that metamorphosed into the bonafide superhero book it came to be known as, that was inarguably the blueprint for what Sonic comics get published today. These things aren’t predestined, no divine hand laid its knowing finger on it to move it from one to another - no, it was the freelance creators who put in the work to make Archie Sonic what it was.

And no freelancer who touched the book can be said to have had a greater impact on it than one Ken Penders. Not Mike Gallagher, who wrote the very first issues; not Scott Fulop, who oversaw the initial transformation the book underwent as the editor; not even Karl Bollers, an incredible talent whose original concepts & characters come the very closest to rivaling Ken’s.

It was Ken who wanted more for the comic, for it to become what the readers of the time wanted it to be. Ken, whose eyes were trained on the countless fan-letters that flooded in, who would test each story idea of his first on his son to determine if he was going the right direction. Sonic comics and everyone who’s helped make them over the years owe him a great deal, whether they want to admit it or not, but it was the Knuckles comic series where he truly shined.

Though it’s become fashionable in some circles to claim he ‘shoved Knuckles down reader throats,’ it doesn’t take too long a memory to remember how popular Knuckles was - and is to this day. One need only look at the incredible reaction to the reveal of Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and the very fact that there is going to be another Knuckles series on Paramount Plus, to know Knuckles stands out in the cast of Sonic the Hedgehog.

But where does Knuckles come from? Who is he? You can refer to wiki articles that note his species and status as a former rival of Sonic, you can watch YouTube videos collecting all the cutscenes for his story in the video game Sonic Adventure, but, as a ‘life-long fan’ of Sonic who is also a writer, I can tell you none of those get us a true insight into the interiority of Knuckles the Echidna.

You can restate his character’s premise like a dog chasing its tail, you can try and mine his angst at being so alone on his island until you’re blue in the face, but neither of those take the character himself in any kind of direction. Not forward, not backward, but stagnant. Only in the Knuckles comics did we see a true step forward, where words met action and the story of the echidna’s past finally had anything meaningful to say about the story ahead of Knuckles.

In the initial miniseries Sonic’s Friendly Nemesis Knuckles the Echidna, after B-stories and C-stories in the Archie Sonic series had laid the groundwork, Knuckles’s past came back for the first time. This was before Sonic Adventure, before Tikal and Chaos, and crucially… it was Knuckles’s story, first and foremost, not Sonic’s as it was in the end for Sonic Adventure.

The follow-up miniseries and ensuing ongoing comic series would expand upon Knuckles’s family, the society they had lived in the past as well as where they lived in the present, and even Knuckles himself. While the Chaotix may be familiar to Sonic fans, they and the Knuckles of these comics live lives and make decisions that SEGA’s characters have not and will not ever know.

In the Knuckles series, Knuckles doesn’t just reunite with his mother and eventually his father. He doesn’t just get into battles with greater stakes for his life than anything he had or would later experience in the video games, face foes more personal and meaningful than the leftovers Sonic leaves for him, and accomplish more than his official SEGA counterpart has in all the decades of history he’s had since. He gets a life - a home with people, not just an emerald and an empty island, to protect. And another soul, who starts off as an enemy, for him to fall in love with.

I’ve never met a Sonic fan who’s been able to reconcile this Knuckles with the echidna that SEGA calls Knuckles. In point of fact, every Sonic fan I’ve ever encountered considers the Knuckles series and every story of Ken’s that came before and after to bear so little resemblance to the source material as to no longer have the right to call itself Knuckles or to claim to have anything to do with what SEGA has done with the character. From their lips, this is an insult. To me, it is both the Knuckles comics’ ultimate badge of honor and greatest strength.

What’s the use of perpetually spinning your wheels and refusing to grow and change? What has Knuckles gained in the three decades since the character debuted, sitting on an island as the last survivor of a dead people? The right to mention every now and then he might take a break from being a guardian, and never seeming to follow-through on that? The right to star in animated shorts where he once again illustrates how little has changed since 1998?

I don’t say all this as a hater, either. I happen to like Sonic Team’s video games, I liked Sonic Frontiers, and heck - I’ve even enjoyed some of the comics they’ve printed in the current ongoing series of Sonic books. The simple fact remains that it’s 2024, Knuckles is still on Angel Island and he still has nothing but ghosts. In every way that matters, SEGA’s Knuckles the Echidna is as dead as his people.

Maybe SEGA does something new with the character in the future, maybe the writers they’ve entrusted with the comics become bolder with their plans, I don’t know and I don’t claim to know what will or won’t happen there. My point stands that today, all these years later, there still is no story told of SEGA’s Knuckles that gives him even half the dignity and respect that Ken’s stories have.

Now, all these years later, what is to become The Lara-Su Chronicles series of graphic novels is finally set to begin with the upcoming release of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings. In it, after a reprint of the unforgettably-excellent Mobius: 25 Years Later story, we’ll be seeing what awaits Lara-Su in the next chapter of her life and in the wake of her father’s death.

I’ve read literal hundreds of Sonic comics over the years. The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings is not one of them.

But that was always the beauty of the Knuckles series, now succeeded by The Lara-Su Chronicles. It started in Sonic, but emerged from it like a butterfly from a chrysalis into something unlike anything a humble caterpillar could imagine - and the sky’s the limit.

#The Lara-Su Chronicles #TL-SC #The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings #knuckles the echidna #archie sonic #knuckles comics