#I left people on a cliffhanger

[goatswithtoast]

Part 2, Lloyd

Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon was born to Monk Garmadon and Misako in the Southern Air Temple. Morro had been born not long before, and the two grew up together.

Both had grown up hearing stories of Garmadon's father, the Air Nomad Avatar from the last cycle. He had settled the world into peace and order during his lifetime. He had many battles with powerful benders and spirits, but he never quit and always found a way in the end.

Both the boys loved these stories and would ask for their favourites over and over again. They would often play out the battles themselves, Morro (being slightly older) would make Lloyd be whatever villain he, as the Avatar, needed to defeat this time.

Airbenders often get sent to a temple when born and fit into the large family of the temple, (with Lloyd being the exception by being raised by his father) Morro had friends and adults he could trust, but no one who he called a father.

Lloyd's uncle Wu was an immensely spiritual man who had even been to the spirit world a couple of times. He often went on long journeys to the most spiritual places in the world to meditate.

Whenever he returned to the temple, Lloyd and Morro would rush to meet him as he walked up, asking where he had been, if he saw any spirit monsters, did he trim his beard, did he have anything cool for them? Wu would have a small gift for both ready in his bag.

Morro would choose to hang around Wu while Lloyd ran off to find Garmadon and show him what he'd got. Wu would ask the general questions and Morro would answer them somewhat timidly. But by the end of the day Morro will have talked Wu's ear off.

One day when running around the temple, they overheard Garmadon and Wu, who was in between travels, talking about some pressing matter.

"We've been over this Wu, we don't know for sure it's him. The test can be wrong sometimes!"

"Brother, he was born in the right timeframe, I'm certain it's him."

"We don't know the exact timing though, They could've been dead for weeks before They were found!"

"Don't be ridiculous, the body was in too good condition to be dead that long."

"Good condition?! They were crushed under a boulder Wu!"

"Two weeks is the longest it could've been there. I'm telling you, that boy is the Avatar."

That was all Morro needed to hear to believe it.

With the dates that had been mentioned, Morro's birth was set firmly in the window of 'Avatar possibility'. And Morro was already starting to train.

While Lloyd was sent to fill a bucket, Morro looked for any water bending scrolls or examples he could find. Morro would spend days trying to make the water move, but at most he only made ripples from accidentally blowing air on it instead.

After a long day of trying training, and hours of listening to Lloyd "I don't think you're doing it right Morro. They look like they can feel the water" Morro snapped. He threw his hand out and sent a blast towards Lloyd, but at the same time the water in the bucket whipped out in front of Lloyd. Both boys were stunned. They stood in silence for a second before Morro gave a whoop. "Did you see that Lloyd! I bent the water!" Lloyd cheered with him.

Reinvigorated, Morro threw himself back into training. Lloyd got to help by holding the scrolls up. They never got the same results but Morro knew he could, he had done it before.

Then one day, Garmadon and Wu call Lloyd inside. They don't notice Morro copying a scroll by a bucket and Morro doesn't see them looking deathly serious.

Lloyd didn't know what they had called him for. Garmadon and Wu shared a look, took a deep breath each, and told him.

Lloyd was the Avatar. Not Morro.

"But I thought it was Morro?" Was the first thing out of his mouth.

The brothers glanced at each other, in warning almost.

"While both of you were born in the possible time frame, we confirmed it was you through a test, a test that Morro did not pass" Wu informed him.

"Lloyd," continued Garmadon, "we only tell you this now because the world needs the Avatar, and while I would prefer later, it needs him sooner."

Lloyd was told of the Fire Nation's recent movements into the Earth Kingdom that were causing the kingdom to gather forces. By the time Lloyd would've mastered the elements the Fire Nation could very well have conquered half of the Earth Kingdom. He had to be ready to handle this conflict.

Wu sorrowfully insists that Lloyd had to be told now to have time. Garmadon hides his reluctance and reassures Lloyd that he's well able to do this, he already learned Air, what's three more?

So Lloyd gathered his belongings, shared a goodbye with his mother who made him promise to visit when he could, and set off on his dragon, (an odd animal for an Airbender to have, but Lloyd found him in a bush when he was younger and insisted it was "Too cool to leave to die" So the dragon came home and was named Ultra on account of how ultra cool he was.)

And so the Avatar's journey begins.

Part 1 (Nya, Zane (+Kai)) | >Part 2 (Lloyd) | Part 2.5 (Morro) | Part 3 (Meetup) | Part 4 (Cole) |

[ohshitiforgor]

Dain. Where the fuck are you. Where are you Dain.

[relaxtimestwo]

MC sitting alone in the VIP waiting for the next story update (featuring Qingque converting Himeko into another Celestial Jade player).

Photo taken by March.

[ms-no1kpopstan]

ɪ ᴀɪɴ’ᴛ [ᴀᴍ] ᴡᴏʀʀɪᴇᴅ ʙᴏᴜᴛ ɪᴛ

in which you find yourself not wanting to bother riki with the fact that you’re really stressed out about your upcoming finals but he figures out how bad your anxiety is once he finds you on your desk, silently crying with your head in your textbook the day before the first exam…

[Contains Comfort and established relationships, pda as well]

• release date ~ ????? • oneshot

• now playing : I ain’t worried, by OneRepublic

• now, I don’t know when I’ll make the real oneshot, I’ll just post this and send an ask if you wanna be added to the tag listfor when it comes out! reblogs, likes and comments are really appreciated! they make me happy <3333 tags: @mandukkul @copyhanni @nikiswifereal27 @stariikis @ad0rechuu

[eriexplosion]

Still thinking about the finale of course and how little sense it makes for the sacrifice to be final because like... all the things people compare it to were people sacrificing for a good reason.

Kanan died on a mission to get Hera out, they succeeded and they rescued her and he died to protect them. He died to protect the woman he loved, the child she hadn't told him about but he might have sensed, and the squad that had become his family. Narratively his death pushes Ezra to the place he needs to be to accept the loss of his parents and resist Palpatine's attempt to make him give it all up to get his parents back. It sets the stage for Ezra to sacrifice himself less fatally in the endgame of the season.

The Rogue One crew died to get the plans to the Death Star out - their sacrifice is the reason A New Hope can even happen and we have the context to see why it's worth it.

Vader sacrifices himself and kills the Emperor and the reason people hate Somehow Palpatine Has Returned is partially because it negates that. We know the impact of the sacrifice.

But look at Tech's decision to drop. If he dies here then he dies to save his family... on a mission he insisted they go on in the first place, where they did not accomplish their goal to track Hemlock and they did not figure out where Crosshair was being held. And immediately after they literally crash anyway and Omega almost dies. This instantly puts them to Ord Mantell where they get betrayed and Omega is captured.

But what about character arcs? Surely it had some kind of payoff for the character decisions? Well, Hunter wants to go back to Pabu. Understandable. He also wanted to do that anyway because he thought this was too risky a way to try to get Crosshair back (turns out he was right) so Tech's sacrifice didn't change his direction. Wrecker and Echo are still pretty much on the same trajectory. Omega is sad but her actions to get her brothers back are exactly the same as what she would have done prior.

And unlike the other examples, that's the end of the season, if they have a narrative planned to redeem this we aren't going to see it for a while and the fact is still that if he dies here then he dies as a result of his own decision to push to take this risk and find Crosshair, creating a situation where if he hadn't been so eager to save someone he would still be alive, Omega wouldn't be captured, and they would still have the opportunity to save Crosshair another way.

His death moves nothing forward, changes nothing except to make life harder for the heroes, and doesn't motivate any of them in a direction they weren't already heading in. It's also given no narrative time to breathe before we're thrown into the Omega captured and has a sister subplot. It would be pure shock value in a way that these writers are better then. But a fakeout that moves him into place for a third season narrative payoff? Then we're getting somewhere and the lack of time devoted to the Aftermath makes sense.

Like I've written a lot of things about why I think Tech is alive but when it comes down to it, I think it's the better narrative decision and I don't actually think the writers are bad enough at their jobs not to be able to convincingly make a main characters death feel important.

[ellearts]

Maze Runner part two is so eehhh...shit man.

[macbethz]

If tf2 comic 7 actually happens after a decade I will actually explode

[pinkrelish]

Predictions based on Pinterest:

1) Adrie loses her first tooth and Miss Mouse has to make it extra cute & over the top

2) Adrie gets ahold of the scissors and gives herself a haircut (as I did at that age lmaoo)

3) is this marathon occurring on Valentine’s Day because 👀

4) pregnancy (scare???)

5) Adrie gets a hyper-fixation on McDonald’s after one happy meal and an hour in the ball pit. Maybe even their first family outing.

oooo, some interesting predictions in here!

[djsangos]

You can barely fucking think straight.

Horde of Salmonid after horde of Salmonid comes swarming down every alleyway as your splatoon, along with the Grizzco crowd, fights beak and tentacle to protect Splatsville and evacuate civilians to Inkopolis.

“I didn’t even know Grizzco was still operating,” you’d said as the lot of you were gearing up to hold the line at Barnacle & Dime. “Didn’t the rookie and Octavio fucking kill the CEO?”

“Someone else must have taken over,” Eight had mused, strapping on her ink tank. “I guess we’re lucky that we’re not taking this on by oursel—”

“Guys! Captain!” Four came careening in, one boot on his foot and the other in his hand. “They’re in the city proper! Headed to the plaza!”

“Shit!”

It’s a lot easier to get separated from your agents than you thought it’d be, dispersed by the waves of Salmonids and the Grizzco employees fighting for their lives and the city alongside you, and you find yourself back-to-back with one of those strangers now, fending off a group of Salmonids trying to surround the two of you.

A strange, high-pitched noise emanates from the ground beneath you. You both look down, spotting a bobber, and you’re dragging them away by the arm through an opening in the swarm before they can even finish shouting “Maws!” They drop a bomb as you drag them off, and a large Salmonid emerges from the ink, swallows the bomb, and explodes, taking a couple of the smaller Salmonids out with it in the resulting ink splatter and leaving a handful of golden Salmonid eggs in its place.

“Too bad we didn’t have enough time to grab an egg basket,” the Inkling you just dragged out of the Maws’… maws mutters darkly, taking shots at the surviving Salmonids straggling after the two of you as you yourself throw a splat bomb into the swarm, taking a few more out.

“Captain!” comes from behind you, and you can’t risk turning around to look, but you hear the sound of someone emerging from ink, and what you now definitely recognize as the rookie’s voice, tight and without their usual sardonic humor. “That oughta be the last of the evacuees, they’re all on the train headed for Inkopolis.”

“Thank cod,” you say, then add, “stay close. Both of you.”

“Aye aye?” your new companion says, bemused.

The three of you swim in unison, yourself taking the lead, to the nearest swarmed alleyway, shooting from the entrance at the Salmonids trying to spill out into the plaza. Where the hell are they coming from?

“Anyone got Reeflsider?” you ask, using your right crutch for support and shooting with your left, formulating a plan on the fly.

Your companion shakes their head, lobs a bomb at the swarm growing closer. “I got Kraken. One left.”

That can work too. “Get it charged, go in, we’ll follow you.” With enough of them clumped together, you can use a Splashdown to take out almost the whole group at once.

As they get ready to charge in with their Kraken Royale, you just can’t help but wonder for a moment.

Why’re they attacking the city with this much force? What do they want? Is killing them the right call? How can you keep this from ever happening again?

Is this how the Octarians felt when you invaded Octo Valley? Did they ask the same questions?

“Let’s go, Captain!” Rookie calls, pulling you from your thoughts. Focus, asshole. Now’s not the time for a guilty conscience.

Your new companion takes the lead, crushing many of the Salmonids in their path and pushing back those that aren’t immediately killed. You and the rookie dive into the ink they leave in their wake, rushing forward to meet them at the other end of the alley, where their special ends.

The alley opens up onto a wider road running perpendicular to it, and holy shit, there’s a lot of Salmonids here. Definitely more than one Splashdown can take out, but in splatting a couple more Chums, your special is ready to go, and it only takes a quick look shared with the rookie, whose hair is similarly flared with a fully-charged special, for them to know exactly what you’re thinking.

Running into the horde closest to you, spacing yourselves just so to maximize splattage, and the rookie shouts “SPLASHDOWN!”

If you both had Triple Splashdowns, the carnage would be a sight to fucking behold, but as it stands, your makeshift Double Splashdown still goes pretty hard, and the two of you take out practically the whole group that had met you at the alley’s exit, save for the stragglers outside the radius.

You stumble as you right yourself, leaning heavily on your crutches, breathing hard. Cod, your body fucking hurts.

“You good, Cap?” You hadn’t even noticed the rookie approaching you, but you wordlessly nod all the same.

“Just need a second.” You’d like to take a minute at least, but you don’t have that kind of time. This shit’s far from over, and you don’t even need to look to know more Salmonids are already approaching.

When this is all over, you’re gonna need to check in with the rookie about how they feel about all this- they definitely can’t feel good about tearing through their Lil’ Buddy’s own kind, at least.

“Great teamwork, guys,” says your companion, running up to the two of you. A distinct stinging sound rings through the air, and what looks like a Stingray made of horrifically filthy water cuts through the air. “We’ve gotta move! Everyone good?”

You glance at the rookie, who gives a thumbs up, then nod again. “Stinger, right?”

“There’s a Steel Eel headed this way, too,” they say. Steel Eel… You think you remember what those are from your brief skim of the Salmonid Field Guide, smaller Salmonids steering a giant water-spouting machine of death.

“We deal with the Stinger first,” you say. Best to get the immediate threat out of the way. “Don’t get separated.”

“Yeah, okay, boss,” they lightly scoff, but follow your lead anyway, fighting your way through the horde to follow the Stinger ray to its source. Between the three of you, it’s trivial enough to take out, and again it leaves nothing but a splatter of ink and three golden eggs.

“What a waste,” Rookie says, eyeing the eggs with a look and tone you can’t read. “Where’s the Steel Eel?”

“It’s that—” the stranger turns and points, then stops. “—it’s gone.”

The three of you swim in the direction they pointed out, and there’s someone else swimming up to you. Emerging from the ink all at once-- it’s Callie!

“Oh my cod! Captain! Agent Three!” she calls. “You’re okay!”

“Is that fucking Callie Cuttlefish?” your companion exclaims.

“Agent One,” you say, “are you okay?”

“Where’re the others?” adds the rookie.

“I’m okay. They’re-- hang on.” She weaves past the three of you and flicks her roller aggressively at yet more Salmonids coming to break up your reunion. “Let’s clear up the road first!”

The four of you make quick work of the rest of the Salmonids in this section of road, and soon enough the flood turns into a trickle into nothing, for now.

“Whew!” Callie breathes, leaning on her roller and wiping invisible sweat from her forehead. “Anyway, last I saw Agent Eight and Agent Four, they were fighting in the plaza, and Agent Two was on the train helping with the evacuation. She’s probably back in Inkopolis right now, giving a tentacle with first aid. And Gramps is way out of the way, he’ll be okay,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

“They’ll be okay together, right?” says the rookie.

“We should still meet back up with them,” you say between deep, slow breaths. “Strength in numbers.”

The stranger takes a deep breath of their own, then shouts, “Okay, just who the hell are you people!?”

“Huh?” says Callie, seeming to finally, actually realize the presence of a stranger in your midst. She adds to you, “New friend of yours?” You just shrug in response.

“I mean,” they continue, “you guys have weird titles, Callie fucking Cuttlefish is here, and you’re clearly not with Grizzco. So what’s your deal?”

“We’re here to help,” Rookie says. “Splatsville’s my home too, I’m not gonna let it fall. Even if…” they trail off.

“Gahhh,” the stranger groans, bringing a hand up to their head. “This situation is so fucked we have some kind of secret militia stepping in to save the day. My sister’s not gonna believe me when I tell her about this! I must be going crazy!”

“Can we save it?” you say. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Rookie gives you a look. “Poor choice of words, my bad.”

“We get the gist, Captain!” says Callie. “Let’s head back to the plaza while the coast is clear.”

“Gah,” repeats your companion, “Fine.”

When you get back to the plaza proper, your gaze almost immediately locks onto your two missing agents, Four throwing a bomb at a Flyfish and Eight taking on a group of Salmonids trying to stop the two of them from taking out the Flyfish. You motion to the others the direction you’re going, and ink a path to swim over, popping up beside Eight to help in the fending off just as you hear the final bomb in the Flyfish explode and see the other four exit the ink after you.

“There you are!” Eight exclaims. “We were getting worried.”

“We had it under control,” you say. “Glad you guys have it handled here, too.”

Between the now six of you, this group of Salmonids never had a chance.

Eventually, the waves and waves of Salmonids seem to clear, and everyone, Squidbeak and Grizzco, is heading towards the center to regroup and recuperate, when a horn sounds, and shouts start to ring out among the Grizzco groups.

Oh, shit.

“It’s the Triumvirate!” someone shrieks.

“I thought they stopped them at Undertow!” shouts another.

Oh, shit.

[lostintheforestofnine]

If Earth 2 Choi Han exists, if author-nim goes on the trend of the other two holy trinity, "Why it has to be him and not me." thing.

I'm preparing myself not to be shock.

For real I'm already imagining the scene with a despair looking Earth2 Choi Han looking at him saying silently "Why not me, it's unfair."

A scenario: Cale was unconscious during the fight or using his powers or any scenario that will knock him up then for some reason he was alone or he was far away from his comrades. He was then rescued by "someone" and befriend this someone turns our to be E2 Choi Han..

I just realized this is somehow similar to ORV but nah. And there's probably a fanfic out there similar to this.

[dorianslayyy]

Oh my god every last one of my timbers are shivered, next episode is going to be immaculate

[rosetintedgunman]

For further context: the two bios are currently separate (but garbage) and will be kept on two documents (and blog pages). Will's is very long, and it's assumed Wilf will also have a long-ish one.

... I have a lot of ground to cover, and it's not just because I've been writing them foe years.

[stellarstarryyy]

I will own a house before there is a new tsv post at this rate

[redcallisto]

As everyone can tell i watched Across the Spiderverse today and i’m emotional  abt it rn. i need to shout into the void for a moment cuz none of my friends have seen it yet

[goldenart0]

9 lines, 9 people

Tagged by @caliburn-not-calculator, I'm using this as motivation to finally get to finishing the band kid au

-----

If it wasn’t for how nervous he was, this probably would have been a lovely drive. The sky was a lighter blue with some clouds in the distance, but not enough to mean rain anytime soon. They had passed some farms on their way out of the city, Kyana eagerly pointing out every cow or horse she could see, but signs of people were slowly fading, as were conversations in the car. VR-LA found a routine in his driving, stare ahead, check up, then left, then right in the mirrors, trilling his fingers against the steering wheel.

Next to him in the passenger seat Dani seemed to have pulled something out to fiddle with. He nearly looked over on instinct to see what she had picked up this time, but stopped before he could look away from the road, hands clenching. Stay focused.

The sound of rustling a few minutes later shook VR-LA out of his rhythm again. Instinctually, he turned his head to look back at what it was.

[thankskenpenders]

The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings review

The day has finally come. Many, understandably, thought we'd never get here. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten here. We've been through so much. Lawsuits, reboots, redesigns, unreleased NFTs, empty legal threats over the fact that movie Knuckles has a dad, an attempt to license out Scourge the Hedgehog to fans that immediately got canceled (in both meanings of the term), and many, MANY idiotic Twitter controversies. But now, here we are.

Thirteen years after first announcing it in the middle of his legal battles with Archie and Sega that changed the American Sonic comics forever, former writer Ken Penders has released the first part of his new series: The Lara-Su Chronicles.

Yes. I had to buy the book. I had to take one for the team. Look at the fucking URL of this blog, a blog I've been using to talk about the American Sonic comics for nearly a decade while the specter of this book loomed in the distance. The one time I've actually been paid to write an article about anything in any professional capacity, it was an article about the Penders lawsuits. I'm cited on his Wikipedia page. There was no way I was going to skip reviewing this, and there was no guarantee that scans would ever turn up online given the incredibly small audience for this trash. (Only 166 people preordered this, and even that number feels way higher than it should be.) No, I had to preorder it to ensure I could get a copy and cover it for the blog... even if that meant my name would be forever immortalized in the list of "supporters" in the back of the book. These are the sacrifices I must make as a woman who stumbled ass backwards into being an amateur Archie Sonic historian.

So, what exactly is in this book? How much of it is new? How bad is it? How did we even get here in the first place? How can this exist without Sega pursuing legal action? What happens next? And, most importantly... why are there multiple depictions of an Archie Sonic character breastfeeding in this book?

I'm here to answer those questions as best I can, and in agonizing detail.

First, for those just tuning in to this decades-long saga or those who maybe don't know the full story, here's a refresher on the background info.

"What the hell is this?"

The Lara-Su Chronicles is Ken Penders' long-dreaded long-awaited continuation of his 1994-2006 run on Archie Sonic, ignoring everything written after he left by other writers like Ian Flynn. In particular, it picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2003-2004 arc "Mobius: 25 Years Later," which was set in what Ken considers the definitive canonical future of the series. It stars Knuckles' daughter from that future era, Lara-Su, among other new and returning characters. The project was first announced near the start of Ken's legal battle with Archie in 2011, and he's been posting WIP previews online for about a decade. Now, after all this time, a Lara-Su Chronicles book finally exists.

We'll get to the actual contents of that book in a bit.

"He can do that without getting in trouble with Sega?"

Believe it or not, yes, he can.

Thanks to the outcome of Archie Comics' woefully mismanaged lawsuits against Ken (yes, they sued him after he started filing for copyrights, not the other way around), he now has full legal ownership of every story he wrote for Archie Sonic and every character he created for the series. This was explicitly granted to him in the terms of the settlement between him and Archie (acting on behalf of Sega). He can even reprint his old Sonic material as-is to his heart's content. The main catch is just that he can't write new stories featuring Sega characters or trademarks, and his new stories also have to be distinct from Sonic at a glance to avoid confusing readers. As such, reprints can't use Sonic iconography on the cover, a few Sega characters (mainly Knuckles) have been renamed and slightly redesigned in the new stories, and the art style has been changed to less closely resemble Sonic. But otherwise, he can do whatever he wants with his own characters.

All of this is because Archie lost the original copy of Ken's work-for-hire contract that signed over the rights to his work. Without that (or any alternative that was considered permissible in court), his comics and characters are the property of their creator by default. Yes, those old comics are full of Sega stuff, but Sega doesn't automatically own the copyright for every drawing of Sonic in existence. And Sega put their stamp of approval all over those comics and let them get sold at retail for decades, even though (in the eyes of the court) there was no legal paperwork granting them ownership of any of it. It's almost like they were unwittingly distributing a fan comic for years and declaring it a fair use of their property, and now there's no takesies backsies. It's a strange and unique copyright situation. Again, they worked all this out in the settlement. And, yes, fans have long speculated that Ken stole and destroyed his own contract to regain the rights to his work, but frankly Archie was so incompetent throughout the lawsuit (it went so bad that they had to fire and replace their lawyers midway through) that I completely buy the idea of them just losing important legal documents.

Also, in case it needs to be spelled out: while Ken's a weirdo, it's ultimately a good thing for creatives everywhere that Archie lost their lawsuit against Ken. We do not want to live in a world where corporations can claim ownership of peoples' work without the contracts to back it up. That would be an incredibly dangerous legal precedent to set. And more comic creators, and artists in general, should own their own work! Corporations are not your friend! They'll delete your work for a tax write-off in a heartbeat! It's just bewildering that this guy, of all people, was the creator who ended up successfully getting his shit back, and that this is what he's doing with it.

"What about his old collaborators? Are they involved? Is he paying them?"

Ken is mostly doing The Lara-Su Chronicles solo, though he has, in fact, talked about compensating the artists involved in any material he's reprinting. The ones who give enough of a shit to get paid for a small scale reprint of something they did 20 years ago, anyway.

On the subject of his collaborators, it's also worth pointing out that Ken's wasn't the only contract that was lost. Most of the early Archie Sonic writers from before Ian Flynn's time seem to be in the same boat as Ken, with the ownership of their stories and characters defaulting back to them. Again, Archie fucked up big time. But like I said, most of them don't really seem to give a shit. For most of them, Sonic was just a random temporary gig they took to pay the bills while Marvel was busy going bankrupt in the '90s, not the thing that defined their entire careers.

The only other Archie Sonic contributor who's tried to do anything on the level of what Ken is doing was writer and editor Scott Fulop. In 2016 he attempted to sue Archie for the unauthorized use of what are now retroactively considered his copyrighted characters and stories, and he even announced a standalone comic about his most famous Sonic character, the recurring villain Mammoth Mogul (sort of a pastiche of DC's Vandal Savage and Marvel's Kingpin, with wizard powers added for spice). However, Fulop lost his lawsuit because he didn't put together a particularly compelling case. Since then he seems to have wiped all traces of his ill-advised Mammoth Mogul comic and his company, Narrative Ark Entertainment, from the internet. For now, this leaves The Lara-Su Chronicles the only project of its kind.

"What about those other Archie Sonic reprints he just announced?"

At the time of writing, Ken is once again claiming that he's trying to get the band back together to reprint all of Archie Sonic, now under the bad new banner "Floating Island Productions: MOBIAN LINE" that I can't imagine he consulted literally anyone else on.

So, like, look. As we've established, Ken can reprint his own stories. And if he can work something out with the other contributors whose contracts were lost, he can print their work, too. But there is no fucking way he's getting his hands on Ian Flynn's run, which Sega undoubtedly holds the copyright for. Even if they don't, Ian needs to maintain a good working relationship with both Sega and IDW if he's to keep his job, so he'd never go for this. Not to mention that Ian and Ken just... don't get along! Ken's whole plan here seems to be predicated on IDW going out of business (a thing he REALLY wants to happen) and freeing up the Sonic comic license, after which he knocks on Sega's door and goes "hey I've still got dirt on you guys," blackmailing them into giving him the Sonic license back so that he can reprint the later comics. Every step of this plan is ludicrous. It's never gonna happen.

He's been saying he wants to reprint the whole series for a few years now, though. This isn't really anything new. And despite his lofty plans that set Sonic Twitter ablaze, he quickly backpedaled. The only specific things in the works right now are a "two-volume omnibus" of all of his Knuckles stories and a collection of artist Scott Shaw's work on the very early Archie Sonic issues, since they're on good terms with each other. I have no idea how Ken plans on packaging these when he can't put any Sega characters or the Freedom Fighters on the covers, but these projects are small enough in scale that there's a decent chance they'll see the light of day. Scott Shaw only did like five issues. But anything beyond that? I'll believe it when I see it.

Or, y'know, this could've all just been a publicity stunt for his new book. I wouldn't put it past him. Let's just focus on the book that actually exists.

"So he finally did it? He made a whole Lara-Su book? It's out? He finished it??"

Yes and no.

The book that's out now is The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings, a prologue for the series of seven graphic novels Ken somehow plans on making, even though it's taken him 13 years to put out literally anything new. I don't know whether or not this counts as book one of seven, because it only features 30 pages of new comics. 30.5 if I'm being generous.

Most of the book is actually just a reprint of his infamous Archie Sonic storyline "Mobius: 25 Years Later", which ran from issue #131 to #144 in 2003-2004. (Again, yes, he can reprint this, he just can't put Sonic on the cover.) Why's it infamous? Well, Ken had been building anticipation for this future era of the series for basically his entire run. We kept seeing King Sonic and Queen Sally from the future. Knuckles' entire backstory hinges on his dad having a vision of this future. Several years before Silver the Hedgehog was created, it was Lara-Su who was Sonic's equivalent to Future Trunks, the cool-looking child of one of the main characters who traveled back in time to try and prevent a dark future. Believe it or not, yes, there was hype for Lara-Su. And then we finally got M25YL, and none of that cool stuff happened. Instead it really ended up being about how unbearably boring the middle aged Sonic, Knuckles, Sally, and co. are in this peaceful future where Robotnik is dead and they're all married with kids, forced into traditional nuclear family gender roles. Lara-Su is present, but she mostly just does generic teen girl stuff and complains about how Knuckles won't let her do anything even though she REALLY wants to be the new Guardian of Angel Island, like, super bad! Come on, dad!!!

In its original printing, this meandering arc ended on an abrupt time travel cliffhanger that Ken was never able to follow up on before he left Archie in 2006. This new printing slightly changes that ending, using the unresolved timey-wimey shenanigans as a convenient excuse to alter the entire timeline. This creates the slightly different world of The Lara-Su Chronicles, where the few relevant Sega-owned characters have been replaced and everyone is ten times uglier.

After this, we finally get two short new stories picking up where M25YL left off: "The Storm," starring Acorn Kingdom super-spy and known creep Geoffrey St. John, and an early release of the first chapter of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, the first full TLSC graphic novel.

And now that we're all on the same page about what we're looking at, let's actually talk about the book!

The cover

Let's start by beating a dead horse. The cover art: it's still bad! But why is it bad?

The cover is, of course, based on Patrick Spaziante's cover from Archie Sonic #131, the start of the "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc. (Ken did the layout for that cover, though, so in the eyes of the law he's the original creator who owns that cover.) That cover was, itself, a tribute to the iconic cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, the issue that introduced the version of the team with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc.

Ken seems to have forgotten that the point of both these covers was to hype up the arrival of a new cast of characters. The new guys are supposed to make a dramatic entrance front and center. That's the focal point. Meanwhile, the cover for Beginnings has the old timeline versions of the cast from Archie Sonic dramatically bursting out of a shattered crystal ball, while their new counterparts look on in mild bemusement - if they're even bothering to look at all, since most of the characters here are just copied and pasted from their profile pages. That's just not how you do this particular homage! The point is supposed to be "out with the old, in with the new." And why are they using a crystal ball to view the past? Hell, why are they even using a crystal ball at all? The original arc was presented as a magical vision of the future courtesy of Tails' uncle Merlin (don't ask), but the new story leans all the way into being futuristic sci-fi.

Of course, there is no real artistic intent at play here. The old versions of the characters are placed front and center in the crystal ball simply because Ken traced over Spaziante's original art of Lara-Su and Julie-Su (the only two characters on the Sonic cover he owns) and threw out the rest, ruining the composition in the process. Look at the awkward empty space where Sonic, Sally, and Rotor once were, and the new drawing of The Character Formerly Known As Knuckles who's no longer properly centered between his wife and daughter. Even if Ken can claim ownership of the cover because he did the original layout, this all just feels scummy and lame.

And, yeah, if it needs to be said, the new characters and Ken's new rendering style look like absolute fucking dogshit. Putting new Lara-Su directly next to old Lara-Su does her no favors. The shattered glass effect looks absolutely atrocious. I could go on, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about the art style when we see how bad the stories inside look.

Changes to "Mobius: 25 Years Later"

Overall, 99% of M25YL is presented identically to its original printing. Sonic, Sally, Knuckles, et al. are still present with no changes to their names and no tweaks to the art. Even the original cover for issue #131 is included only a few pages into this book with its Archie, Sonic, and Sega logos still intact and everything. Again, because of the weird copyright situation described above, these preexisting comics can be released without any changes.

There is exactly one bizarre change to the art, though, where a hand drawn shot of Angel Island is replaced with an unfitting photo background and the ugly Floating Island photobash that Ken has been using as his personal logo for decades. I think he only did this as part of a test for his motion comic app that nobody asked for. I don't know why this had to make it into the print version. It's like the book is firing a warning shot for what's to come if you keep reading.

The new content begins on the final page of M25YL. In the original wet fart of a cliffhanger ending, Sonic and co. accidentally alter the timeline with an old time machine of Robotnik's and Lara-Su begins to fade away. Then, after everything goes white, we just cut to the present day heroes going "gee, you ever think about the future?" In this new printing, that last bit has been cut, and the rest of the page has been awkwardly shrunk down so that Ken can fit in a new panel. We now see the hands of an off-screen villain, seemingly named "Override," proclaiming that "the Praetorian" (Knuckles) has messed up the timeline again and that they'll finally get their revenge.

Who is this Override? I have no fucking clue. The new stories in this book make no mention of them. You have to buy the next book to find out.

My confusion over the identity of this villain overlaps with another big problem: name changes. So many names and nouns have been arbitrarily changed in The Lara-Su Chronicles, even ones Ken didn't have to change for copyright reasons, and I only know what half of them are replacing because Ken's been tweeting about this shit for years.

The echidnas are now a totally original alien race called "the Echyd'nya." Even in flashbacks to events from M25YL attempting to mimic the old art style, if it's on a new comic page, they're gonna call themselves "Echyd'nya." Evil echidna faction the Dark Legion is now the "Cyberdark Dominion," hailing from the "Cyberdark Colony." The Brotherhood of Guardians is still the Brotherhood of Guardians, but now the main guardian is called "The Praetorian." Angel Island is still called "The Floating Island," like it was in the older Archie comics, but it's ALSO sometimes called "Avion"? When I read this I wasn't sure if he had randomly renamed Albion, the other echidna city from the Archie comics. But no. Now we have an Albion AND an Avion. Sally is mentioned simply as "Princess Acorn," while Sonic is referenced once as an unnamed "blue-spined Erinaceinae," using the scientific name for hedgehog to make it sound more sci-fi. In an incredibly ballsy move, Ken even mentions Robotnik as "the Insurrectionist Kintobor," retaining his original surname from the Archie comics that's just "Robotnik" backwards. Guess Sega never trademarked that one.

Aside from every name change being a downgrade, this leads to confusion when you're not sure if something is supposed to be new, or if it's just an Archie thing you're supposed to recognize despite having a new name and design. Is "Override" someone I'm supposed to know already? Am I just supposed to have read a fucking tweet from Ken where he said he changed the name of some existing villain to "Override"? The answer is no, but I had to term search his Twitter just to verify this.

Moving on!

New story #1: "The Storm"

If you've been following the WIPs, this is that story about Geoffrey St. John that Ken's been posting previews of for almost a decade. The title page copyright dates it to 2015, and that absurdly long gestation is probably why the art is so inconsistent here. Even the style of speech bubbles and the font change between pages two and three.

This is a problem when there's supposed to be a deliberate and noticeable change in art style here signaling the moment where the time travel stuff alters the timeline, replacing the Archie Sonic world with the Lara-Su Chronicles world. If you don't already know that's what's going on, the idea isn't conveyed clearly at all. It just goes from one hideous art style to a slightly different one with no explanation.

The main problem here is that Ken has hitched his wagon to a franchise about anthropomorphic animals when he can't draw furries to save his life. (Though a bit later in the book we'll also begin to wonder if he can even still draw humans.) He's shifted away from the cartooniness of the original designs and given them more human proportions and facial features, but this just ends up making them look incredibly uncanny and lumpy and gross. With some designs he's trying to lean into more of a Star Trek alien vibe, but then he still insists upon retaining the giant Sonic eyes on most characters even though he has no idea how to make them emote.

The rendering of these godawful designs doesn't do them any favors, either. Ken's going for more of a painterly look now, but it almost seems as though he's shading everything with Photoshop's burn and dodge tools that are designed to darken and lighten select areas of a photo. The result is a muddy, smudgy look that makes it feel like the color layer has been smeared in vaseline. And it only looks worse after coming off of 14 chapters of M25YL that have way more palatable art.

The backgrounds, too, are a complete mess, a jumble of low res jpeg photo elements (sometimes with extremely noticeable pixelation), stock textures, and smooth digital gradients. There's no real sense of place here, and it gives everything a surreal, dreamlike quality when you can't really tell where anything is supposed to take place. This first story is seemingly set in a high-tech stronghold below Castle Acorn called "the Bunker," but it could just as easily be confused for the bridge of a spaceship. This whole story features characters speaking to each other over floating video displays and hologram projectors from three different locations, but without a hologram effect and without a clear sense of where the characters are it often feels like they're just in the same room as each other. Characters will be in one location on one photo background, and then the camera angle changes and they're in a completely different place, because Ken just uses mismatched photos off of the internet. It's been like 25 years since he first tried using photo backgrounds in the Archie comics and he hasn't gotten any better at it.

When I had my boyfriend read the book to see if it made literally any sense to him (it didn't), Anthony said this: "This is the kind of shit I'd see linked on a Second Life world that hasn't been touched since 2004." I think he really hit the nail on the head. Now, there's actually a contrarian part of me that thinks that might theoretically almost be kind of cool, in sort of a messy counterculture way. I love weird indie shit. I was a Homestuck reader! But this isn't a scrappy mixed media zine, or experimental outsider art from someone just messing around with Photoshop, or a loving throwback to weird old internet art, or even something intentionally bizarre and offputting like Xavier: Renegade Angel or a PilotRedSun video or whatever where the fact that it's weird and ugly is part of the humor. This is supposed to be a sincere sci-fi epic drawing on Star Trek and Jack Kirby comics, made by a guy who's been drawing comics professionally since the '80s. This is supposed to look good. This is supposed to compete with mainstream comics that are on sale right now. He thinks any day now IDW's gonna go out of business and Sega will come crawling back to him so that he can stamp the Sonic logo on shit like this. It just doesn't work.

But, okay. It's ugly. We knew it would be ugly. But that ugliness would be much easier to accept if it was in service of an otherwise genuinely good story. So what about the writing? After all this time, how does Ken choose to kick off this new saga? Well, credit where credit's due. "The Storm" feels like a proper continuation of Ken's writing style from M25YL.

Because it's eleven pages of characters standing around and talking while nothing fucking happens.

Here's the synopsis: A dog woman named Brownie, an ensign in the Royal Secret Service fresh out of training and the only character who's almost cute, walks up to Geoffrey to deliver a report. He's immediately suspicious of her, asking who let her in and if she's a spy for Elias (Sally's brother, if you're new here) or Alicia (Sally's mom). The art style suddenly shifts when the timeline is altered, but the scene continues uninterrupted. Geoffrey points a gun at Brownie when she won't say whose spy she is. Geoffrey is distracted by a call and proceeds to have a conversation via a mix of holograms and video screens with Remington (head of Echidnaopolis security), Spectre (Knuckles' great great great great great grandpa, the one with the helmet who always looks evil), and a new scientist character named Dr. Zephyr/Zephur. (The spelling of this character's name changes multiple times throughout the 11-page story, because I guess nine years wasn't enough time to spellcheck this shit.) They say a bunch of made up technobabble nonsense about how it looks like the timeline was just altered and Knuckles and co. seem to be involved. It's complete drivel that I'm not even going to try to make sense of. Everyone decides to investigate further, and the conversation ends. Brownie tells Geoffrey she's his spy, then walks out and implies she's actually Alicia's spy in her inner monologue.

To be continued!!!

Yes, that's it. It's really just a bunch of technobabble where some characters talk about how it seems like the timeline has been fucked with. That's it. The whole time Geoffrey doesn't even get up out of his damn chair, which he's of course sitting in backwards to show how cool he is. It's just 11 pages of Geoffrey sitting in a chair and talking to people and looking uglier than he's ever looked. Nothing happens. Nine years for this.

I'm also struck by how meaningless all of this is to anyone who hasn't read Archie Sonic. The added context from M25YL may help a little, but "The Storm" focuses on characters who weren't in that arc, and the story does very little to introduce who any of them are. Brownie could've been super useful as an inexperienced point of view character who's only meeting the others for the first time here, but instead she's really just a passive observer who's here as part of some kind of 4D chess game between Geoffrey and Alicia, an off-screen character whose motivations in this era of the story are completely unknown to even returning readers. Who are the good guys and bad guys here? What are the conflicts and the stakes of the story moving forward? What do these characters want? Basic questions like this aren't really answered. I can't imagine a new reader being able to make heads or tails of this. Hell, I can't really imagine a returning reader who hasn't been following the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets about this story making heads or tails of it, either.

...Maybe more will happen in the next story?

New story #2: Shattered Tomorrows preview chapter

After another message from Ken, the story of The Lara-Su Chronicles proper begins with the redesigned Lara-Su walking along a jpeg photograph beach at sunset and crying while thinking about how Knuckles - sorry, his name is K'Nox now - is dead.

Yep! Straight into the dad stuff!

Look, I'm the last person to complain about writers getting super personal and drawing from their own baggage in their writing, but Ken's just no fucking good at it. There's no nuance, nothing interesting to say. He just keeps writing mediocre-to-horrible dads whose misdeeds are always justified by their "good intentions," and then sometimes they die and their kids are like "we may have fought but actually you were the bestest dad ever and I'll miss you forever, I'll never be able to fill your shoes!"

This is the only part of the new material here that feels like it has any heart behind it, because I know how much his complex relationship with his late deadbeat father means to Ken (there's an author's note in this outright saying as much). But the guy died 42 years ago, and it doesn't feel like Ken has had any new thoughts about this part of his life in those four decades. He's just not an introspective or self-aware enough artist to actually mine his personal baggage for anything beyond "father knows best."

Anyway, so then it jumps forward in time(?) and now we're following this human guy who looks like this.

Previously, Ken got a lot of shit for literally just using the likeness of Anthony Mackie for this guy, based on his IMDB profile photo. Ken has thus redesigned the character... and by that I mean I think he looks more like Ernie Hudson now? Ken's clearly just working off of photo references (if not straight up tracing), given his face is the most detailed and realistic-looking thing on any page where he's present.

But you may be wondering: who is this, and why is he here? Well, for one, he's here to run around in front of some low res space photos while making trite references to things like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. Haha, he makes a joke about red shirts! Original!! But beyond that, Commander Mykhal Taelor (yes, that's really how he chose to spell it) is a human... from Earth! Archie Sonic readers are probably confused, because in those comics Mobius is Earth in the distant post-apocalyptic future. Well, despite being a Planet of the Apes fan, Ken always hated that particular worldbuilding decision from Karl Bollers, always preferring to think of Mobius as a separate alien planet. And now he gets to make that canon in his own stories and throw out Karl's ideas. So Mobius is basically just, like, a Star Trek planet now, with its own alien creatures that sometimes just so happen to look like anthropomorphic Earth animals.

Also, at one point Taelor wonders if the inhabitants of the dead Mobius might have been human, and the alien ally he's talking to over the radio says it's unlikely. "I don't understand why your kind has a problem understanding you're a minority within a minority." Perhaps poor wording for a line said to the only Black character in the story.

Anyway, Commander Taelor here seems to have discovered the uninhabited husk of Mobius after the vague time-space cataclysm everyone was worried about in M25YL has come to pass, and he finds an audio log from Lara-Su that I presume will explain what happened. I guess those are the titular Lara-Su Chronicles. In theory this flash forward establishes some sense of pressing danger, but when the threat to the planet is so unclear and technobabble-y it just kind of lands with a thud.

It doesn't take long before we get back to Lara-Su being sad about her dad. A good little chunk of the chapter is spent with this new timeline's Lara-Su recalling moments in her life, including echoes of the original Lara-Su's memories from M25YL, which feels redundant coming hot off the heels of a straight reprint of that entire arc. And boy, for anyone who read the later Archie Sonic comics, the protagonist having vague memories of the old version of the series from before a lawsuit-related timeline reboot sure does sound familiar, huh?

The art inconsistency somehow becomes even worse in this story, with Ken flip-flopping on whether or not he wants to use outlines, with the no-outline art managing to look even worse by relying entirely on Ken's awful rendering. By this point in the book, readers are also likely to start noticing how often Ken reuses art from previous panels. This is a shortcut that tons of comic artists use, of course. Invincible famously did a joke about this. It's often understandable. But, again... it sure does stand out in a book that took 13 years to make with only 30 pages of new art. Amusingly, Ken even manages to combine his inconsistency and recycling problems by reusing the same art with and without outlines. And, of course, any time Ken tries to draw the Archie era designs it's just... the worst.

And, yes, it's in this dreamlike montage sequence of Lara-Su's life that we get...

The uncomfortable family nudity scene, followed by the dual timeline Julie-Su breastfeeding scene.

Yeah, you might have heard about this one already. If this incredibly eerie presentation of Lara-Su's hazy memories of the two different timelines make it hard to tell what's going on, don't worry. There's another, clearer version later in the book as part of Julie-Su's character profile, because I guess Ken was just so proud of it.

(I censored these myself because I'm not playing Russian roulette with Tumblr's inconsistent nudity rules and risking getting banned lmao)

Like, okay. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really that shocking of a thing to see in a story? No, not at all. But, like... when it's two characters who you previously created for an officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic for 7-year-olds... and some of those officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comics for 7-year-olds are reprinted in the same book... and when it's drawn like this... yeah, it's kind of a shocker.

It just looks so unnatural. Julie-Su is posed very deliberately so that you'll see both of her breasts, and in the new timeline version she's barely even holding Lara-Su so you can really get a good look at her supermodel body, showing zero physical signs that she just gave birth. Most people will immediately jump to this being Ken putting his fetishes in his work (a type of criticism that I'm incredibly tired of - it's 2024, all the cool artists are blatantly putting their fetishes in their work now). And my immediate response is that, no, this is probably just Ken trying to come off as really mature on a surface level, a thing he's been obsessed with since the Archie days. Free from the shackles of writing a licensed children's comic, of course he's going to jump immediately into depicting some nonsexual, artistic nudity to try and prove he's A Real Mature Artist For Grown-Ups who just thinks the human body is beautiful and breastfeeding shouldn't be a taboo etc. etc.

But then, like. You look at some of the other character designs. Like Espio's daughter Salma, who's now this horrifying alien lizard person who's always nude, and her scale pattern puts scales exactly where her nipples should be. Or you look at his comments about the Echyd'nya age of consent. Or you look at how he keeps drawing Lara-Su in this. Like, does the shuttle really need this, like... reverse chaise lounge thing in the cockpit? So that we can keep getting these shots of the 16-year-old Lara-Su lying on her stomach and posing with one of her legs kicked up, her naked ass in plain view?

The vibe isn't great, is what I'm saying!

I'm not going to try to ascribe authorial intent here. I don't know. I'm not a psychic. Given his very blatant reliance on photo references elsewhere in the book, it's entirely possible he just referenced some figure drawing photos that were maybe just a little too sexy. And also, he's an American comic book artist, and a boomer one at that. Those guys tend to draw women a certain way, even when it's not supposed to be sexual. I don't fucking know. It just sucks. I'm not gonna make some hyperbolic statement about how this makes him a literal pedophile who should be in jail, but it is deeply offputting and objectifying.

But if you already knew about the nursing scenes and were hoping there was some other really shocking stuff in there for me to talk about in this review, sorry to disappoint, but nope. That's the only shockingly weird new thing in here. Once again, not a lot happens in this story, and what does happen is pretty boring.

Once we get past the recap stuff and the human guy, the plot developments boil down to this: The timeline was altered at the end of M25YL... but not as much as you might think. In the new timeline, Knuckles ("K'Nox"), Cobar (now looking significantly younger), and Rotor (now a rhino just called "The Emissary") still traveled via shuttle to go find a time machine in the Badlands and fix the time-space continuum, like in the climax of the original arc. This time, though, Sonic wasn't there, and Lara-Su came along without having to stow away. Lara-Su watches the ship while the grown ups go deal with the time machine, and then after a couple panels Not Rotor comes back with Cobar and is like "Hey, Cobar got hurt, we gotta leave. Dunno what happened to your dad." And then they just, like. Presume that Knuckles must have died. Even though we have no idea what happened to him. And then they just fly away. And then Lara-Su is sad that her dad died.

And that's pretty much it!

This is supposed to be a really emotional sequence - it's literally the scene where Lara-Su learns that Knuckles is dead - but instead it comes off as unintentionally funny because of how poorly it's portrayed. Not showing Knuckles' actual disappearance is a huge misstep, for one, making his uncertain fate more confusing and anticlimactic than dramatic. But also, Ken keeps just using the same two drawings of Rotor for two pages, so he doesn't really seem to be emoting at all, and he's in this spacey hazmat suit that honestly just makes him look like fucking Moltar from Space Ghost. So the whole time I'm just reading his dialogue in Moltar's deadpan voice as he's like "I dunno. We did what we could. Anyway, let's leave."

After this, we get a two-page spread previewing the rest of the story from Shattered Tomorrows. It's basically like a trailer in comic form. It has one of the most mystifying layouts I've ever seen in a comic book. I have no idea what order I'm supposed to read this in.

Yeah, I kinda have a feeling this is the full extent of what Ken has drawn for the rest of that book. I'd love to be wrong, but I fear that I'm right.

Bonus material: Data files

These are mostly very dull, recapping a lot of events shared between Ken's Archie run and the new Lara-Su Chronicles timeline. It seems like almost his entire run is still considered canon to the backstory of the new timeline, just with some names changed, and things only really diverge at the climax of M25YL. But I'll share the interesting stuff here.

Lara-Su

The main thing you'll notice in Lara-Su's profile is the massive, unreadable wall of text where Ken felt the need to list the entire Knuckles family tree, split across both pages.

This is literally so long that Lara-Su's personal history has to awkwardly cut off mid-sentence and be continued on the final page of the book, after the rest of the data files.

Also, please note that this list gives Julie-Su's mom's full name as Mari-Su of the House of Atrades. Incredible on all levels.

There's also a reference to the dark timeline Lara-Su was originally supposed to come from. You know, the one where Julie-Su is the leader of a rebel movement fighting against a Knuckles who had gone mad with power? The timeline that would have been way more interesting than the one in M25YL? Here it seems to have been written off as the result of another "timeline disruption." Lara-Su allegedly has vague memories of this timeline, in the same way that she has vague memories of the M25YL timeline.

Geoffrey

Geoffrey's bio mostly recaps events from the Archie comics, which means the Sonic/Sally/Geoffrey love triangle has to be alluded to. His rivalry with Sonic is described like this:

"He would later resurface when Kintobor was transporting his latest hi-tech weapon, the Dynamac-3000. It was during that mission he discovered a rival for the Princess' affections. Whereas the Princess would be one of a line of conquests where St. John was concerned, the blue-spined Erinaceinae who protested doth a bit too much regarding his affections for the Princess for St. John's taste would prove to be a source of great sport and amusement."

Yes. It's gross. Saying that Geoffrey saw Sally as "one of a line of conquests" is gross. Ken writing this and then still treating Geoffrey as the coolest badass ever is gross. The "Princess Acorn" is also first on the list of Geoffrey's "female relationships" elsewhere in his bio, though I suppose how much of a "relationship" they had is left vague. Honestly, at this point the fact that Ken didn't explicitly confirm that Geoffrey took the underage Sally's virginity in the book comes off as a display of restraint. The bar couldn't be any lower, I know.

Remington

His bio is, frankly, shockingly long for such a minor character, though I guess he does get a large portion of the word salad dialogue in "The Storm." There's a lot of stuff here about how the identities of his biological parents are shrouded in mystery, a plot point that fans have long speculated Ken just straight up forgot about in his time at Archie. (Ian confirmed that Kragok from the Dark Legion was Remington's dad, though, so this isn't really much of a mystery.)

Lien-Da

She gets a bio even though she's not present in the two new stories, just so we get to look at her awful new design and compare it to how Steven Butler drew her earlier in the book:

Commander Taelor

We get to see two drawings of him with the same exact Ernie Hudson face side by side! That's fun.

Julie-Su

She gets a list of "known friends," but the only character listed is Knuckles' mom. Poor Julie-Su.

Also, Ken feels the need to reiterate that Knuckles and Julie-Su are still distant cousins. He made a whole new timeline where he can change whatever details he wants, but THAT had to remain canon. Thanks, Ken.

And then after the data files we get the special thanks page, listing everyone who preordered the book and/or bought TLSC merch from Ken.

With my name on the list. Because I had to buy a copy to cover it for the blog.

My name is on the very next page right after the breastfeeding panel in Julie-Su's data file.

Yep. He got me.

Is it at least a well put together book? Like, in terms of manufacturing quality?

Its physical quality is... fine. It's a nice, sturdy hardcover. The print quality seems fine, though mine does have a bit of smudging from some sort of printing error on one page. The pages don't seem like they'll fall out on me. The image quality is crisp. The colors are vibrant. This is a low bar, but this is one of the few places where I'm able to give this book anything resembling praise.

The formatting and graphic design work, on the other hand...

(I didn't crumple those page corners, it came like that.)

For one, the placement and sizes of the M25YL pages is inconsistent, largely due to the fact that the book doesn't actually match the proportions of a comic. A lot of pages aren't properly centered vertically. Some pages go all the way up to the top edge of the paper, while others leave a visible gap of about half a centimeter. Every page has a 1cm gap to its left and right, which is sometimes filled in with a solid color or gradient that doesn't quite match the page it's surrounding. I have to assume Ken didn't have any sort of source files or original artwork to work off of, as those ideally would've had more generous bleed to account for slight shifts in printing. It kind of seems like he just got the highest resolution versions he could find of the digital releases online and printed those. The colors are a dead ringer for the digital versions, which have always looked slightly more saturated and pastel than they did in print.

I can't say this bodes well for his further plans for Archie Sonic reprints - sorry, Mobian Line reprints. If they ever come out, please, for the love of god, do not buy those. I don't care how much you love Archie Sonic, they aren't going to be good reprints. For comparison, IDW's similarly priced hardcover Sonic collections have none of these formatting problems, because they're made by people who know what they're doing with access to the actual source files.

The book also has its fair share of text-focused pages, split between the data files and messages directly from Ken about the history of his career and this project, and these are formatted in the most amateurish way possible. Just massive walls of Arial text over either plain white backgrounds, simple gradients, or faded photos. I've seen school yearbooks with better graphic design. Even ignoring my subjective feelings about the art and stories within, this book does not feel like it's worth $36 USD.

It's frankly shocking how shabby he let this thing look considering it's supposed to be his baby. And doesn't that really sum it all up?

Closing thoughts

Obviously, I did not expect this to be any good. But I'm still left kind of dumbfounded by it.

I think what really strikes me about it is that Ken had a blank check to do whatever he wanted here. He got an opportunity many writers would kill for when he gained complete ownership of his most famous work. He's free from the limitations of a monthly licensed comic book for children, free to make whatever creative decisions he wants without editors or other writers or Sega to worry about, free to completely reinvent the series to his heart's content and finally tell the story of his dreams. And with that opportunity and 13 years of his time, he made... this. A direct continuation of "Mobius: 25 Years Later" that barely changes anything about the characters or world beyond their awful new designs, even though much of the word count is spent rambling about how the timeline has changed. A story that makes zero concessions for new readers, or even returning readers who don't already have the last decade's worth of Ken's tweets explaining his creative decisions burned into their memory. 30 pages where nothing really happens and the story barely moves forward an inch despite the decades-long wait - but maybe something will happen if you buy the next book!

Who is this for? Maybe this really is a project for no one but Ken. Maybe he just really, really wants to finish the story he started, a story that's personal to him due to the family history it evokes, and the number of people who enjoy it or buy it beyond that is irrelevant. I think that many of the best artists are incredibly self-indulgent ones working with that exact mindset, artists whose enthusiasm for their own work jumps off the page or screen. So, if that's the case, then why the fuck isn't he telling the damn story? What's stopping him? Why is he still spinning his wheels? Where is that passion for his own work? Because it sure as hell isn't there on the page. There's a huge part of me that really wishes I could say "Man, what a weirdo, but you do you, Ken. You tell your weird little story." But there's barely any story here. It's like he loves styling himself as a storyteller, but he's terrified of finally having to actually tell a story after all this time. He's still stuck in the exact same mode of writing he was in almost 30 years ago when he was doing 6-page backup stories about Knuckles, just killing time and stringing readers along until he's eventually able to truly realize his vision. If not now, then when, Ken?

Even the back cover blurb is mostly just a dry recap of the history of this thing. It was a Sonic comic, the original arc was published in these issues, it went unfinished, Ken left Archie, the lawsuits happened, now he's continuing the story. There's nothing about why anyone should give a shit about this as its own story, even though Ken has spent years trying in vain to convince people TLSC is its own beast that shouldn't be judged as a Sonic story. I think deep down he knows that there's no pitch for this beyond the novelty of it originating from Sonic. And that's why, despite declaring that he'd leave the site, he's still on Twitter riling up Sonic fans. It's the only attention he gets at this point.

Maybe this is too harsh when those 30 pages of new comics are just intended as a preview for the "real" book. But the elephant in the room is that we have no idea if that "real" book will ever actually come out, let alone the entire series of seven graphic novels that will supposedly complete this saga.

Ken is undeniably a complete jackass and all around unpleasant, vindictive person who's rightly become an industry pariah. He's a self-proclaimed paragon of progressive values who'll send Comicsgaters after his successors for the crime of not worshiping the ground he walks on, and then turn around and announce he's going to reprint their work without even consulting them. He's a sore winner who already won his copyright battle on a level most comic writers would never dare to dream of, and yet still won't truly be satisfied until he sees an entire major comic publisher go out of business, putting god knows how many people out of work, because he thinks this would get him back the license to a video game franchise he doesn't even like.

But I still have to pity him.

As an artist, the trajectory of his life is my nightmare. I think all of us fear dying before we can tell all the stories we want to tell. There's simply never enough time to do everything. And here's Ken in his 60s, talking about how he's still planning on making his magnum opus all by himself out of stubbornness and pride, despite demonstrably proving he can't handle the workload, and also talking about how if he dies before the project can be finished he'll have to pass the torch on to his kids and get them to finish it for him. It's so grim. Even just typing that sends a shiver down my spine. It took nine years of his limited time on Earth to finish and release an 11-page comic about Geoffrey St. John sitting backwards in a chair.

This is a purgatory of his own creation. And yet... I'm not sure he's ever been prouder. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I guess if I want people to take anything away from this review, it's this:

Lesson one: If you're an artist or writer of some kind, or an aspiring creator, don't wait around. No one else is going to tell your story for you. Start writing that novel. Start drawing that webcomic. Start making that game. If Penders can put out this damn book that no one asked for after 13 years of work, then proudly proclaim that he's still going to make six or seven more books and also reprint hundreds of comics he doesn't have all of the rights to, then show up to cons with that foul Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows banner and sit in front of it beaming with pride, fully aware of his critics but saying "fuck 'em, I know I'm hot shit," then you can do fucking anything. Tell the weird, sincere, cringe story of your dreams. If Ken Penders doesn't have imposter syndrome, then nobody should.

And lesson two: Don't buy Ken's books.