Wait, was the whole Knuckles becomes Enejak thing done after Flynn took over? I thought that was still Penders. Though that story line went a lot better than the one where Knuckles turned green and, then, uh, I wouldn't say he did nothing, because he went back in time to change history, but then he realized that plan had lots of issues, so he stopped doing that, and then after that he didn't really use his new powers for anything.
Edited by WillKeaton on Jan 19th 2023 at 5:57:55 AM
There was also Dr. Zachary from Sonic the Comic, though the first original echidna created for Archie was Athair, by Mike Gallagher. He also appeared in Sonic Underground!
The first original Sonic echidna ever was Princess Alucion from Sonic Adventures.
(Finitevus was retconned to be a random echdina in ish 94 who was transformed/changed by the Chaos Siphon.)
Edited by lalalei2001 on Jan 19th 2023 at 8:04:52 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.Finitevus was, humorously enough, introduced by another writer while Penders was off the book during the Return to Angel Island arc. Its the one where the art style shifted drastically for a little while to a more chibi/anime-esque aesthetic. One of the best pre-Flynn arcs, honestly.
Penders' claim came from that retcon that only exists because Flynn likes to tie things back as much as possible.
Edited by Zeromaeus on Jan 19th 2023 at 11:33:37 AM
Oh, that retcon. Okay, for those who aren't ardent followers of Archie comics lore: Dr. Fintivus first appearance was during the "Knuckles is Enerjak" arc. But, back during the Knuckles turns green arc, a little bit before and after issue 100, Knuckles also got a lot of chaos power. The leader of Albion decided to use a Chaos Syphon to suck away the chaos energy. I think that was the plan anyway. At any rate, the thing backfired, there was an explosion, and afterwards Knuckles had so much chaos energy he was green. What does this have to do with Fintivus? Well according to a retcon, Fintivus was the guy operating the Chaos Syphon and the explosion left him with white fur. If you go back and look at the actual scene, the guy who is supposed to be Fintivus appears in like two panels and has no lines. So, I guess Penders wound up with the rights to Fintivus, even though the concept of Fintivus didn't come around until after he left, because of this retcon to try and tie Fintivus' origins to an earlier event.
Edited by WillKeaton on Jan 20th 2023 at 10:40:48 AM
Actually, Finitevus' first appearance in the comics was during "Return to Angel Island"(#138-141) written by Karl Bollers.
Next time Finitevus was used from there was during Ian Flynn's first two issues(in #161, to be more precise), where he rescued Scourge and Rouge from Shadow.
Edited by jouXIII on Jan 20th 2023 at 8:33:33 PM
I assure you, I'm perfectly trustable personI think for Chronicles it was more that the Nocturnus Clan had storyline and visual similarities with the Dark Legion, both being a high-tech race of echidnas banished to an alternate dimension and having a Sixth Ranger Traitor love interest with Knuckles.
The reason he won the case, though, was mainly because Archie didn't keep track of the paperwork from what I understand.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Jan 20th 2023 at 6:29:57 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.It should probably be remembered that Penders didn't technically "win" the actual case, Archie just settled with him out of court. We don't actually have have any public info about what exactly Penders got out of the settlement, and there was even some court documents dug up a year ago that suggest he's been lying about getting more character rights than he actually did (I don't have time to dig up the details on that at the moment).
On the topic of the Master Emerald, Frontiers seems to suggest it's native to Earth, but the Ancients had all the chaos emeralds when they still lived in space, before they arrived on Earth. So, do they have anything to do with each other? They must, but now it looks like they're not from the same place? This new lore hurts my brain.
I found the thing I was thinking of in regards to the Penders case.
I was misremembering as it doesn't directly contradict the idea that Penders owns those characters, but the records show that Penders basically had no case and it was pretty much a slam dunk in Archie's favor, meaning the narrative Penders has given over the years that he won the rights because Archie lost the papers he signed when hired is a complete lie. The court established that Archie had copies of such papers and those copies were proof enough that he signed them and any away rights to any characters he made while working for Archie.
If he did get anything out of the case, it's seems like it's purely because Sega twisted Archie's arm to end the case immediately instead of continuing the trial. Anything more is speculation, but considering things, it's possible that Penders possibly doesn't own full rights to those characters but just that Sega had no interest in ever using them again and possibly starting more trouble with him.
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All SEGA had to do was show up in court and explain that they were the sole proprietor to the Sonic franchise; this would've secured Archie's win and kicked Penders to the curb. Probably could've taken 30 minutes out of their day sending some low level intern and a written summary.
But because Sega of Japan decided to be completely hands off, no judgement was made.
Certified, self-appointed Sonic VisionaryWatching Comic Drake's video on Penders, I think the darkly funniest thing about him is that he only got into Sonic because his son happened to be a fan of the games at the time
This comment sums up how bizarre that is

I remember in the Archie Comics Flynn also had Sonic use the Master Emerald to go super to fight a brainwashed Knuckles.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"