Ken Penders

Ken Penders was a writer/artist for the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series published by Archie Comics. He first worked on Sonic the hedgehog #11 and continued working on the book until Sonic the Hedgehog #160, where upon he was succeeded as the primary writer for the series by Ian Flynn.

Archie Comics lawsuit
Archie Comics filed a lawsuit against Penders in the fall of 2010 in an attempt to retain their copyright holdings of his characters and concepts after Penders announced ownership. Since the comic is a licensed book, everything created, including characters, belong to SEGA. Archie originally claimed Penders had signed a "Work for Hire" contract which would mean everything Penders created would belong to SEGA. However, when Archie failed to produce the contract from Penders time of work at the company the lawsuit lead to a settlement and ended on June 26, 2013. As a result of the settlement, Penders has taken several Archie characters that he created, such as Lien-Da, Julie-Su, Lara-Su and Dimitri, for his new series, The Lara-Su Chronicles. The lawsuit led to massive storyline changes, a large number of characters being removed, and a soft reboot of the comic, much to the dismay of many fans.

SEGA/EA lawsuit
In 2011 Penders filed a lawsuit against Sega and EA Games for alleged copyright infringement in the game  Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood   . The lawsuit ended in stalemate when the case was dismissed for the second time and upheld in court in October 2013. Due to the Statute of Limitations, Penders will not be able to file again unless characters and concepts from Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood are used in the future.

Drawing career
Penders is the creator of many of the comic exclusive characters that once populated the series before his lawsuit with Archie Comics. He also designed the cover art to the Sonic the Hedgehog full series DVD box set.