Honestly, I think Ian probably would have agreed to sign over any rights he had to the characters to keep the book going, no questions asked. And, likely, the contracts they used for Ian were probably more complete than the ones for Penders. Different times, and all that. Plus, Penders was a odd case. They actual had a photocopy of a re-signed version of his contract, but that apparently wasn't admissible in court. Also, Penders didn't really *win* his characters back, he just settled with Archie out of court.
thankskenpenders.tumblr.com/facts
In court it was explained that some of Archie’s contracts were destroyed in 1996 due to incompetence on the part of the Archie warehouse staff. (Considering the incompetence of the Archie
legal staff during the lawsuit, this tracks.) This lead Archie to hastily get several of their creators to sign replacement contracts, which is when Penders signed the oddly incomplete contract that Archie later presented a photocopy of in court. In December 2008, Penders called Archie and asked for copies of his old contracts from the start of his run, at which point Archie told him they didn’t have a contract dating back that far. The next month Penders began filing his copyrights and the legal battle began.
While Penders currently claims that the contract from the start of his run never existed,
in a 1999 fan interview he claimed that characters like Julie-Su and Geoffrey were Sega’s property, and that he knew this going in. (He would later write this off as him being “misinformed.”)
Now, it's possible that Capcom didn't want to work with Archie, anymore, since they bungled all of this SO badly. But, I still feel like money is the more likely issue.
As for Quake Woman, I don't think she was based on anyone. Just totally made up by Ian. Although, yeah, I'd assume that as the book went along we would have seen more Dr. Lalinde created robots. Probably would have teamed up with Roll for a arc, down the line.
Personally, I was kind of looking forward to seeing what Ian had in store for the Star Droids. He was pretty clearly influenced by the Megamix and Gigamix manga, making them the big threat. Still, it seemed like he was building towards something kind of interesting, with Ra Moon and the Star Marshals all seemingly connected to whatever he had planned. Also, wherever he was going with Quint and future Wily. Plus, it would have been REALLY cool to see him bridge the X and Zero timelines with the Elf War, which he kind of hinted at in the last issue. *SIGH*...He took WAY too long getting to the good stuff. 55 issues is a respectable run, really, but it wasn't terribly satisfying in the end.