I was at Ken Penders’ chat today and while we wait for the log to be posted up, I’ll report the interesting things that were mentioned.
Ken and Spaz are working on a Sonic “manga” that will probably be in SSS#17. this must be the “Super Secret Sonic Super Special” that was mentioned several months ago. I wonder why he called it “manga”.
About Spaz, Ken mentions that we don’t know how much longer Spaz might be staying with Sonic. He’s very busy with Gamefan and other fields of work. I guess it’s inevitable… it sounds like Spaz might leave. However, this is not completely confirmed as of now.
Ken mentions a “new cartoon series”. This I was surprised at. It’s only in the discussing stages now, but the logic is that DiC will need something to produce anyway. There’s not much more info on this. He says that it “will be a cross between SatAM and the Archie series. If you had to give it a name: Sonic SatAM Third Season”. Others in the chat brought up the letter than Ben Hurst posted about his meeting, and Ken had this to say: “However, no offense to Ben, but he’s not critical to the process whereas executives at DiC and Sega are.” So I suppose it has more hope than we thought? We’ll just have to wonder for now.
Someone asked about a Sonic Anime adaptation, and this was Ken’s reply: “No anime adaptation at this time. Sega would just as soon we not acknowledge it. However, I did restore Knuckles’ hat for K:20YL. Anime adaptation: For some reason, Sega says we don’t have the legal rights to do so. Go figure.”
SSS#14: We’re going to see the one Guardian that hasn’t been shown yet. “The Knuckles story in SSS#14 dwells on the overall family of characters. Spectre and the rest of the Guardians make an appearance I wanted the emotional reaction to be the most intense I could make it.” Ken expects it to rip our hearts out. We’ll see what’s in store.
Bean & Bark: someone asked if these characters would ever show up in the series. The answer is no. There isn’t any opportunity to write stories with them, as there are many many characters already. “Sonic the Fighters was never released in this country, and as such, Sega would prefer we not acknowledge it. Sega never supplied us with anything on it.”
Sonic #100: “There’s a lot of stuff going on behind-the-scenes affecting the production of the book that I just can’t talk about at this time. What I can say is that we haven’t decided whether SONIC #100 will feature Sonic and Knuckles together, or in separate stories. Part of the problem with that is I’m unsure if I want to use SONIC #100 as the beginning of what I planned for KNUCKLES #50. We’re currently lobbying the publishers to at least let us do a Knuckles mini-series.
As for planning a year in advance, because of all the material we had in the pipeline at the time of the cancellation of Knuckles, the publishers have dictated they want us no further ahead in production than two months, three absolute tops. To plan that far ahead right now when a lot of things could change would be counterproductive at this time.”
Well, that’s all the important stuff for now.
