Ken Penders: A commission story and a warning

Some people say that art is created through suffering. This is a straight up lie, and usually said by people who don’t want to pay artists a living wage. However, I can say that in at least one instance, the creation of a piece of art managed to cause me significant suffering. With his commissions and prints now sort-of-open, I’m going to give you a heavy warning about how a commission from Sonic the Hedgehog writer/artist Ken Penders was one of the worst experiences of 2020.

Penders was an artist and creator whose work I really loved growing up. Sonic the Hedgehog was a comic I read with my dad as a kid. He died a few years ago, so the idea of reconnecting with that felt positive and healing.

In 2020 found out Penders not only offered commissions, he had a discounted rate going due to COVID-19 and convention season. I was excited. I’d never met him in person, but I had purchased things from him before through eBay. I own one of his prints, and even got an autograph on a trade paperback from his eBay account. I expected this to be pretty easy from someone who had been in the business for so long, and had been entrenched in this comic in one way or another since at least the early 1990s. I figured that over time, Penders could only have become a better artist and found a better workflow. I would eventually understand my mistake, but far too late.

Expectations

To understand where I’m coming from as a client, here’s how I approached the commission.

After contacting an artist and determining their prices, my job as a client is to agree to those prices within my budget, then make it clear to the artist what I’m looking for. Ambiguity does them no good, so the more clear and detailed I can be, the easier it is for the artist to know what I want.

An artist’s job is ultimately a service, albeit a creative one, and it is in both of our interests to make sure that I’m happy with the finished product. If I like it, I’m happy. And if I’m happy, I’m likely to recommend them to people for commissions so they can make more money, instead of writing a blog post about them warning people to stay away because of abusive behavior.

I based this largely off of my experience in convention sketches by Don Rosa, who, to paraphrase, has said that the person he’s drawing for should get exactly what they want. He refuses to just ‘draw whatever he liked.’ He’s very clear that the person he draws it for will own it forever, but since he’ll never see it again, he has no emotional attachment to it and just wants the person in front of him to be happy.

As such, I wrote out a description of the scene I had in mind. A half-page splash with Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna and Bunnie Rabbot fighting Metal Sonic, who had supercharged himself with a Chaos Emerald in his body. It was a “What If?”, pure fun on my part.

I made sure to indicate the looks that I wanted (specifically the costume/designs for Bunnie and Sonic), wrote out the poses I was looking for, and explained the rough ‘story’ to make sure the tone of it was very clear. It was meant to be very dynamic, action-heavy, like a clash of titans.

I even paid extra for backgrounds and full inks. No time frame was given for the commission, nor were the steps involved in his process defined. This was a mistake.

The Beginning

This is all from my perspective, to be clear. I’m sure he has a different story with me as a difficult client. But what I can say is that he does not take the approach that Don Rosa does – because Penders had a very different idea for the piece than I did, and didn’t seem to be interested in what I wanted at all.

First, he penciled a rough version of the commission (loose, but finished enough that an inker could have worked with it), emailed it to me, and asked what I thought. I was not happy. The layout had completely changed from what I asked for, as were all the characters. It did have Metal Sonic versus the three characters, but that was about it.

Particularly galling was Bunnie, who was changed from a powerful, action heavy pose where she was about to slam her metal fist on to Metal Sonic from the sky to… a flying Superman pose, and not moving in his direction at all. Knuckles’ pose was changed from a dive bomb to something strange that, for the life of me, I can’t identify. Everything was static, lacking the sense of movement that I had worked so hard to convey in my instructions.

At no point was I consulted about these changes, nor was I shown thumbnails before the pencils started. If he had told me that he had ideas or that what I wrote couldn’t work, I would have worked with him to come up with something else. He’s the only one who knows what he can and cannot convey effectively.

I asked why this came out the way it had, and Penders’ response was that he’d unilaterally changed things because he thought it was better that way.

I disagreed, and requested that as much as could be changed be changed back to what I’d originally asked for. My hope was that some version of the scene I had written would come to life, and that the finished work would be more dynamic. The layout was different than what I’d asked for, but it was pretty solid and had the potential to work. Knuckles and Bunnie would require a full redraw to get even close to what I had in mind, but Sonic and Metal Sonic’s issues were easier to fix to get something I could be happy with.

But every issue I had with the piece was an uphill battle to fix, with protests on his part that things I’d wanted had never happened in the comic – including things that happened in comics that he wrote. When I pointed out that this was a commission piece for fun, like a story that never existed, it didn’t seem to help whatever was occurring on his end. Arguments continued about giving Sonic a Power Ring, putting a Chaos Emerald in Metal Sonic’s head, giving Metal Sonic a mouth, and other details that didn’t seem like they would be a big deal. And each time we talked, he drew more and more, regardless of whether we’d agreed on a point or not.

While Sonic and Knuckles were changed a fair bit, and Metal Sonic’s more complex design had his pose changed to better show his elevated power, Bunnie was hardly changed at all. What changes were made didn’t bring back the idea of her rearing for a punch with her metal arm. I had no idea how much of a problem this would be later on, privately and publicly.

It got weird

Communication was slow. Painfully so. There were weeks between emails, and they often arrived past midnight. Penders did, however, post the work-in-progress on social media, bragging that he worked hard for his clients and that this was why his pieces took so long. Privately, he argued that my requests were too drastic. Requests such as, “This character’s face and pose are not what I asked for at all. I would like to use what I originally asked for” or “Please talk to me about how what I’m talking about can be helpful to you as an artist.”

Instead of those two options, he would just draw something different than what I’d asked for, or refuse to make the changes at all. All the while he would deride my thoughts, saying I’d told him something different than what was written in the email. He even started inking before I’d agreed to the final pencils, making this an even more difficult process.

I started to realize that this was somehow making 2020, the worst collective year of everyone’s lives, even worse. I still don’t know how that’s possible.

It didn’t help that his emails started becoming stranger, with sentences and thoughts that didn’t seem to be fully fleshed out or were outright confusing to read. There were numerous typos and misplaced words, and they became uncomfortable to read in their incoherence. He accused me of lying, and seemed almost paranoid. I started asking my girlfriend, a professional editor, to read them with me to understand what he was trying to say, and to see if I communicating clearly with him. She agreed that something was strange, but that it didn’t seem to be on my end.

By the second or third time that we were doing revisions, I offered references to use for inspiration in case my writing was unclear on some of the poses. I even had some of them ready to send.

He declined even the idea of it, seemed offended that I had asked, and continued to draw things that were unrecognizable compared to what I’d asked for. I started to think that I was incapable of communicating effectively, because nothing ever seemed to click. I started getting nervous that a childhood comics hero of mine was being so unpleasant, and that this thing I wanted to do as something healing was becoming an ordeal. I attempted to deal with his ego through flattering compliment sandwiches, as firm, clear instructions seemed to do little. All the while he kept sniping at me, and I kept trying to deal with it.

Once we got to something like the fifth set of revisions, which included reminding him of visual elements that were integral to the characters , he refused to change things outside of some minor fixes. I could have quit working on the commission right there, and simply left him with the deposit I had already paid. But felt like I was in too deep, so I kept going, thinking about how much I loved these comics. More importantly, I just kept thinking about my dad.

Public Mockery

I want to take a quick detour into social media in the article, which means backing up in the timeline. I hadn’t wanted my commission shared there at all, but it was shared throughout the process. Pencils, inks, lettering, the works. To be honest, it never occurred to me that he would show it off without permission. It felt like a violation of privacy, something I had done this for very personal reasons and it was just out there for the world. If he’d asked, I would have almost certainly been okay with it. But this piece being shared without asking me, a piece I had commissioned done in part because of my deceased dad, was incredibly frustrating.

And while Penders praised his own work ethic and desire to make the commissioner happy in public, privately I was fighting to get a service I’d paid for – a drawing of something I wanted.

Ultimately, his sharing things on social media bit him, and by extension, me. It became clear why Bunnie’s pose didn’t change to what I’d asked for – this piece he was so ‘proud’ of had her pose swiped from another Steve Butler in one of her most iconic scenes. I didn’t figure this out myself. No, this was posted on twitter, tumblr, and at least three forums, which I found late in the process. The original drawing was even more of a swipe, but due to its poor posing, I’d asked him to change it even before I found out. The original organic arm, identical to Steve Butler’s posing, was still visible in the pencils.

It was considered a sign that he’d fallen so hard from his time on Sonic that he could no longer come up with ideas himself on how to draw a character. The piece, Penders, and by association the anonymous commissioner (myself), were considered jokes. While my name wasn’t attached to it, I was talked about like I’d been duped and that I was some kind of sucker. The irony of it being discussed as one of his better drawings in years was particularly sad, since many of the things that worked well in the drawing were because I had pushed for them.

I also found out that he’d been accused of swiping in the past, most famously by a drawing of Shadow the Hedgehog at a convention for a young fan. He admitted so himself. The indignity of having to suffer that in silence was infuriating, but confronting him would do me no good – I still wanted the commission.

With that in mind, I asked for minor alterations within the scope of what he was willing to do, including changes that kept Bunnie from looking like a pure swipe. It wasn’t everything I’d hoped for, but it was the guy whose work I’d loved as a kid drawing something I worked on. I was unhappy with the process, but some of the pencils looked interesting, and I knew some of the characters would only really shine once they’d been fully inked.

While I received works in progress by email, some of them were exclusively posted to social media. Promises of deadlines that he failed to meet were common. I felt defeated and tired from this whole endeavor. It’s one thing to miss a deadline by a couple of days, it’s another thing entirely to have it happen over and over with 5-10 days between emails, and seeing updates on twitter rather than my email. I knew that expressing my frustration to him wouldn’t help. If I had, there was a possibility Penders would have done a rush job rather than have a client who didn’t pay, or that the work would suffer or take even longer due to his frustration.

How in the name of God could there possibly be more? (or) Apathy

To my surprise, he did actually finish it. It took three months, but he did it. Despite the sloppy inking at the edges, I was happy with the lower resolution picture he sent as proof-of-life and agreed to send the second half of the fee. I even paid extra for a title design for my “What If?”

But it didn’t end there. He offered to send it USPS. I explained the mail service in my area was terrible, often very careless with packages, and that UPS would be better. He argued. I dug my heels in and paid the shipping fee.

When it got here, my heart plummeted. The package was improperly prepared, leaving a bend in the corner. And to pour salt in the wound, Penders hadn’t even bothered to erase his pencil lines from the rejected drawings of the characters.

I told him I was pretty frustrated by that. He said most people preferred it that way, that it was my fault for not getting USPS with its general insurance, and without prompting explained that I did not own anything in this commission except the physical sheet he’d sent me – something that was not made clear when I originally commissioned him, and is the kind of disclaimer I would have expected at the beginning. It was strange. Cold. Dismissive. And just lacked a basic form of human expression.

He also explained that this piece, which I fought for for months because I missed my dad, was going to be sold as a full-color print at conventions. After all, he said, it was some of his best work.

He didn’t even offer to send me a copy of the print.

In a lot of ways, that’s what frustrates me the most. He didn’t like what I wanted or had asked for throughout any of this. He said so himself. His behavior was erratic, the piece did not turn out the way I’d asked for, he was painfully slow, and I fought to get a recognizable interpretation of my idea on paper. All I’d wanted was something I could have shown my dad if he were still around.

What have we learned today?

Maybe I needed to be firmer about my concerns from the beginning. Maybe there was a fundamental disagreement of how the characters were meant to be portrayed. Maybe he just wasn’t used to getting detailed instructions in a commission. A lot of things could have been the problem, but I won’t be trying it again to see if there’s another way to work together. Because I really and truly think the problem is he’s just a bad person to work with, even before his disgusting views on autistic people that came out in the last year, a personal hot button for me.

I had actually planned to commission him again if things worked well. Mostly splash panels the way I had asked for on this, considering how much fun it was to think of Sonic stories I might have enjoyed as a kid. 

But just in case I was unclear at any point in this article: stay as far away from him as possible. It’s not worth it, no matter how much you loved whatever he wrote or drew back then.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Rik Mack, an inker on IDW’s Sonic, on a character-heavy commission. I tried to apply the lessons I’d learned in working with Penders, did my best to listen to him as an artist, and learned a lot in working with him. It’s a beautiful piece. I’d recommend him to anyone as a sequential artist or for a commission.

But Penders? The experience left an ugly, gnawing feeling in my stomach. I twitched a little when I think about commissions in general, or tried to talk to another artist. It tainted my childhood memories with something bitter, and it took time to separate that out. Ultimately I reconciled it by thinking of Ken Penders as two different people.

The first Ken Penders is the one who made me and my dad happy when I was a kid, a peripheral figure in the memories I had of me, my dad and my brother. The second was a person who was cruel, cold, slow, thoughtless, gaslighting, self-aggrandizing and incapable of talking to other people.

And when I think of the piece like it was done by the first guy, I can look at it again. I can think of how my dad would be happy seeing how much the memory of him meant to me. But it took me six months to get there.

The first guy is gone, and the second is what’s left. This is how he treats people privately, and the casual cruelty thrown towards autistic people is just a taste of how he speaks publicly (I’m not going in to detail on that, his social media is filled with disgusting behavior.)

I wrote this article as a warning, because I don’t want people to end up in the situation I was in. Don’t spend a cent or a second of your time on him. Your self-respect is worth more than any comic on the face of this earth.