Storytime of Pain & Knuckles

Ken Penders' Wild Ride marches on

Part 1 (Issues 1-8)

Nah, that story was meant to be standalone. It actually did so well this became an ongoing.

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Is anyone here?

I actually miss this Remington character. He seems down to earth. It's a shame he's been mutilated.

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>That render of him Penders put on his Twitter
Why. Why would god allow this?

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Someone needs to play the role of Satan.

Oh yeah, I forgot to point out Mogul anticlimactically showing up

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I'm kind of waiting for the time when the comic steals a Holocaust poem. Granted, that isn't for a while, but I'm still along for the ride.

Glad to see you here user

Nice to see the FFs, though I wish that stupid fucking skunk wasn't there.

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That caps off issue 9. However, instead of jumping to issue 10, we'll be taking a brief detour and doing an issue of the main book to wrap up this story

As usual, Spaz's covers are amazing

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Ken Penders once said that Mina Mongoose was the first character he used that was created by another comic writer.

Yet here we have a creation of Mike Gallagher.

Fun fact: this issue was written by Scott Fulop, (the first editor of the comic) using the pseudonym of Kent Taylor. He is not the only editor to use pseudonyms. In fact, Gabrie (The editor at the time) was notorious for his usage of pseudonyms, which included Romy Chacon, Freddie Gray, and Many Hands
You are correct...kind of. Iirc, Mogul was a Fulop creation, but Penders still did use a Gallagher character: Athair

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Fulop actually.

Athair is Gallagher though so moot point.

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You know, for as dumb as Bollers' future plans were, at least they advanced the plot a bit instead of leaving it in a boring, frustrating status quo that went fucking nowhere

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Penders had some weird compulsion to only ever advance the plot during milestone issues. That's about the only thing I remember about his future plans for the comic.

>84686142
There are people who insist the comic went downhill only when Ian Flynn came onto the book and ruined their favorite series.

And those milestone issues were Antoine asking Bunnie to marry him, and Bunnie saying yes. Those are two DIFFERENT milestone issues, that would take about four years to resolve.

Not even that. The story he wrote for 150 was absolutely fucking pointless It was another
I can understand why people liked Penders' stuff as kids, but I am baffled by the select few people that think that Penders' stuff is still anywhere near good. I mean, at least some of Bollers' stuff holds up well. Not even Endgame holds up outside of the fantastic art
Thank god both of those got resolved within 2 issues and the 175 we got was fucking great

...Knuckles isn't even in his super mode, goddammit. WHY DOES THIS MAKE ME SO ASPERGIC.

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Because you have a functional brain

The first was going to be 175 and the second was going to be 225. Do I remember that correctly?

No. The first was 175 with the proposal, and 200 was the wedding.

Oh hi Tails

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Because it shows how little of a shit the team gave.

What's funny is Bollers doesn't even get fans like Penders does (except for a couple trolls on this board for a while, but that was some of the most blatant shitposting.) Even though his work was less offensively bad, Penders was the "big ambitious" one who "elevated the series to a greater whole." Penders fans mostly hate Bollers, and Gallagher, and pretty much everybody that worked on the book that wasn't him. I think the most amazing delusion though, is how many people thought that the Bollers/Penders runs had better art than the modern comic.

I still think that the Knuckles series was better (BETTER, mind you) than the Sonic stories of the day. It felt much more focused, since this was when the writers couldn't think of a good main threat to replace Robotnik. Before they just brought in an alternate universe Robotnik.

I'd agree that the Knuckles comic is better than Sonic at the time before Knuckles meets his dad. After that, it's just completely irredeemable and loses any drive it pretended to have. It becomes even MORE meandering than the main book, as Sonic was starting to tighten its focus just a little.

>What's funny is Bollers doesn't even get fans like Penders does (except for a couple trolls on this board for a while, but that was some of the most blatant shitposting.) Even though his work was less offensively bad, Penders was the "big ambitious" one who "elevated the series to a greater whole." Penders fans mostly hate Bollers, and Gallagher, and pretty much everybody that worked on the book that wasn't him. I think the most amazing delusion though, is how many people thought that the Bollers/Penders runs had better art than the modern comic.
The only consistent interior artist from that era worth any thought was Axer and maybe Butler when he actually tried. Spaz did interiors too infrequently to count. It's kind of funny though, for how important Penders claims he is, in the grand scheme of things, his impact on anything outside of Knuckles after Endgame was minimal
I can see where you're coming from. Like you said, the main comic was just kind of meandering trying to find a direction, and the first half of the Knuckles comic isn't too offensive outside of that dumb Chaotix arc. It's only after issue 16 of Knuckles where things get really bad.
However, I think the characters Bollers introduced in the main comic were more interesting than those Penders introduced in the Knuckles comics with one exception, and even then, in terms of the character, Bollers did the heavy lifting on that one

I honestly think the Very Special Episode is the least bad portion of this series.

See, I'd argue issue 16 is where things go downhill, because after that you have the really bad attempt at a Nazi analogue, the dumb switcheroo plot with Tobor, and then Locke
It's pretty bad, and honestly while there's some enjoyment to be had from how absurd it is, it only highlights Penders' lack of skill in creating interesting characters because he expects us to care about the death of a character we never knew

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Was that before or after he meets his dad? I can't remember the sequence of most of this fucking comic, as events have little relation to each other.

Whenever I read this issue, I keep thinking, "What the hell is wrong with Mogul's feet?" In fact, he's oddly drawn in general, like he lost his eyes and is made of jello.

Issue 25 is the one where he meets his dad, so it's before. Everything after that is awful though. In fact, the Chaotix Caper arc will probably be the last thing I do tonight. Can't say I blame you for forgetting though. Hell, I just had to check to make sure when one of the stories was

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Alright, back to Chuckles

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You know, I really do hate how similar most of the echidna designs are. I get that they're the same species, but jesus fucking christ Penders barely tried

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Sorry for the hold up. Had to go deal with something

All the artists and writers did that though, it only stands out so much with Penders because he made fucking fifty echidnas instead of say, four. The only artists to put any variety in same-species characters were Sega.

You're right, but at least as of the reboot, in terms of design diversity within species, the comic's gotten a lot better. Also Penders didn't just do this with echidnas, but also the bees and chameleons that randomly showed up. His design sense overall is just dreadful

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The modern run's been a lot better about that, I'm talking about the era Penders wrote in. All the echidnas, bees, hedgehogs, chameleons, squirrels, any race that first came from a Sega or SataM character was just a shitty knockoff or cosplaying clone. And then all the other cast members were typical 90's cartoons, or actual animals with shoes on. Nobody had any goddamn clue how to draw a new character that looked like they belonged with Sonic and friends, to the point that Sonic's actual cast looked like aliens in a world of furries.

Oh yeah, in that case I completely agree. I mean, just look at the Substitute Freedom Fighters. Their designs are incredibly lazy. It's just "an animal" with nothing unique or interesting that tells us anything about them. Or the opposite problem: Penders' echidnas often had random crap on them for pure aesthetic appeal, but again, it didn't tell us anything about them. Forgetting PEnders for a second, Mina has one of my favorite designs for a pre-reboot character, but her design is incredibly out of place and jarring in the comic.

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Mina's one of the best designs made before the modern run, and that's so sad. I really liked her story as I interpreted it initially, although it was clearly never what the authors intended. A kawaii not-hedgehog who's clearly designed to try and look more Sega, but instead fumbles into these clumsy weeaboo references with long purple hair and kimono dresses just happens to have Sonic's super speed and falls in love with him, and is also an amazing pop star who everybody loves. She's the most stock fan-character you could ever design, but in the end her whole story is that she doesn't really belong in Sonic's world or story, and that's alright. In the same way that Scourge was an intentional piss-take on fanfiction from boys, I thought Mina was an unintentional deconstruction on fanfiction from girls. Both characters fall into every cliche that the DeviantArt masses thrive in, but when they're forced to interact with the actual story, they end up failing and having to deal with their own superficiality. I don't know, I just thought that Mina ending up not a Freedom Fighter and having to get over Sonic because he wasn't interested was an interesting subversion on a mostly awful storyline. It's super clumsily told though,horribly executed, so I guess I mostly just like it in concept.

My internet is ass: more at 11
I've never heard that interpretation of Mina before. I always took her as a "Girl next door" type character whose purpose was to find inspiration in Sonic to become better, but your version is really damn interesting and I wish that the book was self aware enough to run with that

Also I wanted to like Mina because unlike 90% of the other characters introduced at this point she had an actual arc and it was kind of cute, but I fucking hated the love triangle romance bullshit that plagued the book

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"Sonic's actual cast looked like aliens in a world of furries"

I've been reading the British comics, so I can tell you that's a very common problem with Sonic artists.