I came into this topic a bit late, but--Penders a nice guy? I have it on good authority that he's not that nice; among other things, he's said that fan artists somehow aren't "real artists" even though they produce artwork like any other artist (he has a similarly low opinion of fanfic writers), and that his fans don't know what they want (but he does). It also seems that he was rather uncooperative with fellow writers during his time at Archie (basically ignoring their plans, forcing them to write around his own, I think).
The lawsuit itself has been dragging on forever and I hope it ends in a way that can benefit everyone, or at least allow off-limits characters to be used again.