Mr. Grumpy Espio

The important part is that the person who contacted me (we'll call them Party B) genuinely did believe that they were working on an "official" Scourge comic. The story starts when their acquaintance (we'll call them Party A) realized that they already had Ken's contact info from doing some sort of interview with him and went "what if I asked him for Scourge," then supposedly got in contact with Penders over Skype and did just that. Party A came back with details about a Scourge deal that did not exist, claiming to not just be the licensee of Scourge (and "connected characters") but the new owner of Scourge

Through a series of faked documents including a completely fabricated contract and eventually a fake receipt for wiring the money to Penders, Party A convinced Party B and a group of other young creatives that they would be working on an official Scourge the Hedgehog comic - or as official as one with permission from Penders but not from Sega can be, at least. A Twitter account was made for the project, plans started to be formulated, and the possibility of licensing out Scourge to Sonic fangame creators was even floated. Again - Party A did not actually have the rights to Scourge, but this group believed that they did due to an elaborate string of lies that Party A kept up for weeks. It seems that they had every intention to release something eventually, and this could have gotten Very Bad if Penders caught wind of it

Party B didn't really know much about the Archie Sonic comics, so to clear some things up regarding the legal battle and who owns what characters they got in touch with me via Twitter DMs. (Party A also claimed they would be able to use Fiona Fox and the Fearsome Foursome, who were created by Mike Gallagher and Scott Fulop respectively, not Penders.) This is where I first learned about this deal that, as I would be informed weeks later, did not actually exist. Party B said that Party A "owned" Scourge now, which should have been a red flag since I knew Penders was only licensing his characters, not selling them, but as Party B didn't even know who Penders was before all this I just assumed they were getting that detail mixed up

I never learned the identity of Party A until later, so when Scourge the Speed Demon was announced, I assumed that this was the thing I'd heard about. It seems that the announcement of Scourge the Speed Demon was the point where things started to fall apart for Party A, however, and they tried to cover their tracks by making up ANOTHER story about Penders suddenly revoking their contract and keeping the money, then giving the rights to this other team. Party B would report this to me at the time, and they also got in touch with members of the Speed Demon team to be like "hey, what the hell happened, I thought we had the license." But a few days later they poked enough holes in Party A's stories to realize that it was all fake, as were the alleged legal documents presented as "proof" of the deal

They decided to cut out the middle man and ask Penders directly if Party A had ever made a deal, and no. Penders had spoken to Party A previously, but they never had a serious discussion about licensing or selling Scourge. The team behind Scourge the Speed Demon was the only group he had ever licensed Scourge to, as he's stated this whole time. (And, in fact, that team probably still has the license for the duration of their contract, even with that comic being canceled due to the backlash, as Penders says he's still honoring the deal.)

And so here we are

I know this doesn't exactly help my case here, but I'm not going to link directly to the receipts Party B has now released, or name any names. And that's because, as I only learned after being told that it was all a lie... Party A is 17 years old. (Trust me when I say I never would have believed any of this had I known this earlier than this week.) And on principle I, an adult, am not going to use my Sonic comic blog to boost a lengthy Google Docs callout post for a 17-year-old

Pre-announcement

August 18th, 2021: Penders announces that he intends to license out his Acorn Kingdom-based Archie Sonic characters. (Licensing them, not selling them. People keep saying he's selling them. He's not.) Specifically named are supporting characters like Prince Elias, Geoffrey St. John, and Queen Alicia, but most notably, Evil Sonic AKA Anti-Sonic AKA Scourge is on the list. This offer is aimed at fans and third parties, but also Sega and IDW, as Ken believes that them licensing his characters would be mutually beneficial. Fans mostly continue to be bewildered and outraged by the fact that Ken owns a character who originated as Sonic but with a leather jacket and sunglasses, although some who still like the guy instead optimistically respond with "Yay, the Archie characters are coming back!" (They're not.)

(I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of the copyright situation because I Am Not A Lawyer and we'd be here all day, but yes, Penders does own Scourge. He just can't say he's Sonic the Hedgehog anymore. No, it isn't fair, but he does. Archie losing the contracts made everything more complicated. This was all settled in court years ago.)

August 23rd: During a BumbleKast Q&A, Ian Flynn is asked about the licensing offer and the prospect of Sega striking a deal with Ken to use those characters in the IDW comics. Listen to the linked podcast clip if you want Ian's full explanation, but a partial summary:

Ian states up front very clearly that he's just a freelancer and that he doesn't represent Sega or IDW. But in his opinion, they probably wouldn't think it was worth the trouble to license old supporting characters from a third party, especially when Sega currently doesn't want the comics to reference SatAM at all. Characters like Elias and Alicia would need to be radically altered to separate them from Sally, and at that point they might as well just make new characters. Keep that last comment in mind, as it'll become relevant very soon... (Ian does, however, add that he loves writing Elias, and reminds listeners that getting to work on the original Archie Sonic universe was a dream come true for him. He just doesn't think Sega would go for it.)

But, again, Ian says that this is just his personal guess, and that if a deal was made he would happily admit he was wrong

Later that night: Outraged by an inaccurate secondhand account of Ian's podcast answer, Ken releases an outline of his proposed licensing deal in an attempt to explain why Ian's reasoning is, in his words, "absolute bullshit." He argues that he "really is easy to deal with," and that Ian simply doesn't want to work with non-game characters, which is absolutely not what he said at all. When confronted about what Ian actually said, Ken tells people to Google it because he "doesn't spend his time searching this stuff out."

Said licensing deal is widely derided by Sonic fans, mostly because of the relatively steep asking price of $10,000 up front against royalties for a two year license, but also in part because he pads out the list of characters on the table with uber-obscure extras like Lt. Smiley and Dynamac-3000. Fans generally do not agree with Ken's assertion that "IDW and Sega would only benefit from the inclusion of his material."

August 26th: Following the initial solicits of IDW's Sonic: Imposter Syndrome miniseries from August 20th, we get the proper unveiling of Surge the Tenrec, a new evil green and black doppelganger of Sonic who's immediately compared to Scourge by fans for obvious reasons. While the influence is undeniable, writer Ian Flynn had wanted to include Surge and her companion Kit the Fennec in the IDW series since day one to form a villainous glitch character trio with Dr. Starline, with Surge being a tribute to the ever-popular "Ashura" glitch. Surge and Kit are immediately greeted with a massive wave of hype and fanart

August 30th: Nobody seems to bite with the $10k bulk licensing deal, but Ken says that several parties are interested in licensing individual characters or groups of characters from him for a lower amount

[Edit 11/21: This post originally contained a section detailing a rumor about an alleged Scourge licensing deal that I had been privately contacted about in October, and how said deal later supposedly fell apart. This information has since been proven to be an elaborate lie. The Scourge comic that we're about to talk about is the only one ever licensed by Penders. I apologize sincerely for adding to the confusion here. [Edit 11/26: If you want more info on the fake deal, here's a separate post.]]

Post-announcement

November 15th: "Scourge the Speed Demon" is announced

RUSH! Comics in association with @KenPenders is proud to announce production on a 4-issue mini-series, Scourge The Speed Demon! 🔥The Official Revival Of The King🔥 #ScourgeComic #Scourge Follow Scourge & his Hellfire Gang as they conquer The Wasteland.

Yes. He has a cigar now. I wonder whether or not he's still supposed to be 17 here

The Patreon-funded Scourge the Speed Demon (which, yes, was going to be a commercial product, not a free fancomic) is immediately hit with a massive wave of criticism via hundreds of replies and quote tweets. Fans are upset that Penders is not only licensing out the evil AU version of Sonic, but his Scourge persona in particular, which Ken had no involvement with. The makeover and name change were conceived by editor Mike Pellerito and artist Patrick Spaziante, and he was developed into a fan favorite character in stories by Ian Flynn and Tracy Yardley. (Contrary to popular belief, no, Ian is not solely responsible for Scourge's creation.) Plus, fans continue to blame Penders for Scourge's removal from the comics, although this is an oversimplification of what happened there. Ken did want Archie to license the characters back from him - they just didn't. But fans still blame him regardless. And, of course, many question the entire premise of giving Scourge his own series that has nothing to do with Sonic

Fans also look into the creative team behind Scourge the Speed Demon (which does not include Penders, who was merely giving them the license), and a number of red flags come up. For one, folks find out about a skeevy sexual harassment scene in Rush!, the team's previous comic for which their company is named, where the hero strips a pair of female villains nude in public because he thinks they're hot. More concerningly, it's discovered that the lead artist on the project is following a number of extreme right wing accounts like Breitbart, PragerU, Steven Crowder, the Trumps, and more, and she had liked some pretty heinous posts from them. (In particular, an Islamophobic tweet from alt right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson is singled out, but there are some general MAGA tweets as well.) "The artist is a white supremacist" quickly becomes pretty much the only thing people are talking about regarding the comic aside from "fuck Penders." When Ken is asked about it, he says this:

November 16th: The Scourge the Speed Demon team releases the following statement in an attempt to clarify several points of controversy:

This statement does not help

November 17th: In the middle of all this, IDW's Sonic: Imposter Syndrome #1 comes out. The fandom continues to love Surge and Kit. A common refrain among fans is that nobody needs to license Scourge from Ken now that Surge exists. I wish the only Sonic thing I had to talk about this week was how cool Surge and Kit are

November 17th - 18th: At some point, people notice that the replies listing who was working on the comic under the announcement tweet have been deleted. Some assume that this is an attempt to hide their affiliation with the controversial artist, but I would guess it was due to how much hate the project was getting in general

The lead artist would also eventually unfollow the far right accounts that had gotten her called out. Maybe she really had changed and had just forgotten to unfollow those accounts since she's so inactive on Twitter. Maybe not. (A later comment from the writer described the exclusively far right political accounts the artist was following as "mainstream political commentators," and he also added "I'm Aussie I don't know nor give a fuck about American politics." This does not inspire confidence.) The artist has yet to say anything about any of this, and she probably never will because of what happened next

November 19th: After three days of radio silence, the Scourge the Speed Demon Twitter vanishes, the Patreon (which had accrued $29 in pledges) is taken down, and all mentions of the series are scrubbed from the Rush! Comics website. The writer releases this statement explaining that the project has been canceled a mere four days after its announcement due to the backlash:

I'll state clearly that I absolutely do not support targeted harassment (which is one reason why I'm not naming or linking members of the creative team on this post), especially as an artist who's been on the receiving end of it myself, and I tried very hard to set aside my opinions on Penders and just wish the Scourge team the best from the start. But it's unclear how much of this "abuse" was genuine harassment, and how much was people criticizing the core concept of a non-Sonic Scourge comic, the sexual harassment scene in Rush!, and the political views of the lead artist. It should also not be surprising to anyone that a new Sonic-adjacent project with Ken's name attached was received poorly by Sonic fans. Even if he was never going to have any creative input, I genuinely do not know what they thought would happen when they uttered the phrase "in association with Ken Penders" in the year of our lord 2021

But let's look at it another way: maybe the team dodged a bullet! The getting yelled at by the entire Sonic fandom part, not so much, but the project being canceled means they can't possibly get in trouble with Sega for copyright infringement. I have no idea what would've happened (again - not a lawyer), but while Ken does own Scourge, he's explicitly forbidden from making his new stuff look too much like Sonic to avoid brand confusion, which is why The Lara-Su Chronicles looks like that. But that Scourge design still looks A LOT like Sonic. The updates just make him look like Movie Sonic. Who knows how Sega would have responded had this thing actually made it to market

At the time of posting this over a full day after the cancelation, Penders has yet to make any sort of comment. He's just continued his Sisyphean task of arguing with people on Twitter about how he can claim ownership of Scourge