What is Ken Penders up to?

I've been a big fan of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series, but recently this link caught my eye.

http://www.kenpenders.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=133

Now my thoughts are - WTF? Is he serious?

Don't get me wrong, I loved what he did with the series and as the owner of a number of characters it is easy to get attached to them, but I am wondering what is the point of this venture? I was under the assumption that when you work for a company and are working with such an icon of a rather strict owner (Sega is well know for their over-protection of their characters at times) that anything you produced and published was owned by them since you needed their permission to print anything. Apparently, the U.S Copyright Office see's it differently.

What worries me is the future for both the characters and the comic itself. Though I admit I'm not too happy with the comics current story n character progress, the possibility of a massive overhaul or even cancellation has me cringing and confused. What's going through Pender's mind? What does he hope to achieve by doing this? And is this a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I don't know. From what I've gathered, Archie comic's lawyers have said it won't cause problems and given Sega's history, they won't take it lightly.

I wonder how this will effect other artist's and companies in the future, as I'm sure this isn't the first (nor the last) time this has happened.