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Gaiman v. McFarlane Decision Handed Down
aronc writes "In a case of speedy justice a jury today ruled that Neil Gaiman was in the right on all 9 counts in the case he brought against Todd McFarlane. More details at ComiCon Pulse and ICv2. This case revolved around ownership stakes for Medieval Spawn, Angela, Cagliostro, and further contracts involving the rights to Miracle Man."
Some of the best news I've heard in a long time. This legal wrangling has kept Miracleman out of print for far too long, and it's about time we saw reprints of the earlier trade paperbacks and the continuation of the story.
This is possible, but not certain. Late yesterday and today will be the penalty phase wherein Gaiman and the courts will decide what xactly happens now that they say he was right. In all probability he will simply enforce the 1997 agreement the two of them had, which gives Todd control over the Spawn characters and Neil MiracleMan. Given that McF defaulted on that contract, however, Gaiman could chose to persue a different set of terms. We shall see later today or tomorrow.
jello.
aka aron.
I think after this, being married to a Penthouse Pet, and his buying of that McGwire homerun ball for a few million dollars more than it was worth Todd McFarlane has officially qualified for an E! True Hollywood story.
...I think Journey's Steve Perry still owns the rights to Todd McFarlane's haircut.
True - I'm also told that there may be other issues affecting reprints of the earlier (Alan Moore) works. Still, any result that gives Gaiman the right to continue the Miracleman story is good for me, whether it's an enforcement of the '97 contract or something more punitive.
Yes, there are still some other legal hassels involved. It seems there is some question as to whether the person who sold the MM rights to Eclipse back in the day actually had them to sell. If he didn't that would of course void all the Elipse owndership and all the subsequent transfers from there on.
jello.
aka aron.
From http://www.enteract.com/~katew/faqs/miscfaq7.htm
r ch-mark.ht ml), are still pending.
The rights to MIRACLEMAN are a tangled mess.
The story begins with CAPTAIN MARVEL. In 1953, DC managed to finally stop
Fawcett from publishing CAPTAIN MARVEL. After a drawn-out legal battle, the
courts held CAPTAIN MARVEL to violate DC's SUPERMAN copyright. At this
point, Fawcett decided that continuing the appeals process was not
worthwhile and settled with DC (see section 5-25).
British publisher L. Miller & Sons had been publishing black and white
reprints of CAPTAIN MARVEL. With Fawcett out of the CAPTAIN MARVEL
business, L. Miller & Sons was left without anything to reprint. So they
decided to make their own hero, and approached artist Mick Anglo to create
one. What Anglo came up with was MARVELMAN. Anglo's CAPTAIN MARVEL "clone"
was quite successful; MARVELMAN ran until 1963.
When MARVELMAN was revived and revamped in the 1982 (by Alan Moore and Gary
Leach), as a feature in Dez Skinn's WARRIOR, the rights to the character
apparently came to be held jointly by Skinn, Moore, and Leach (each holding
a third). When Alan Davis took over from Gary Leach, Leach's share of the
rights was apparently transferred to Davis.
However, there is a complication. Depending upon who is telling the story,
Dez Skinn either:
(a) believed that MARVELMAN was in public domain when WARRIOR revived the
character,
(b) bought the rights to MARVELMAN from Mick Anglo (and shared them with
Moore and Leach), or
(c) promised to buy the rights from Anglo, but never paid him for them.
If (a) or (b) is correct-and MARVELMAN was in the public domain when it was
revived for WARRIOR-then the rights were shared equally by Skinn, Moore,
and Davis. However, if (c) is correct, then Anglo may have a claim on
some-if not all-of the MARVELMAN/MIRACLEMAN rights. catherine yronwode
(former editor-in-chief of Eclipse) has said that Dez Skinn represented (b)
being true when Eclipse was negotiating the purchase of Skinn's portion of
the rights.
Assuming that MARVELMAN/MIRCALEMAN rights really were held jointly by
Moore, Davis, and Skinn (which most of the principles involved apparently
believed), then here's what happened:
Moore's MARVELMAN story was never completed in WARRIOR. In 1985, Eclipse
and Alan Moore, revived the WARRIOR revival as MIRACLEMAN. The change from
MARVELMAN to MIRACLEMAN was made in deference to Marvel Comics, because
both publishers involved felt that a superhero named "MARVELMAN" might
infringe on Marvel's US trademark.
Marvel had first objected to the use of "MARVELMAN" as a comic book title
back when Skinn had published "MARVELMAN SPECIAL" in 1983.
Eclipse Comics bought Dez Skinn's 1/3 share of the MARVELMAN rights. Then,
some time later, Eclipse bought Alan Davis' 1/3 share (at the time, Davis
and Moore were embroiled in a dispute over whether to allow Marvel to
reprint Moore and Davis' run on CAPTAIN BRITAN, and Davis wanted as little
to do with Moore as possible). This left Eclipse with 2/3 of the rights,
and Moore with 1/3.
When Moore finished his MIRACLEMAN story (at issue 16), and chose Neil
Gaiman to replace him, he transferred his part ownership of the characters
to Gaiman (or to Gaiman and his collaborator, Mark Buckingham). When
Eclipse went bankrupt in 1994, the series ended in mid-story with issue 24.
However, issue 25 of MIRACLEMAN existed in nearly complete form. As Eclipse
was going under, yronwode mailed the finished art for MIRACLEMAN #25 to
Gaiman. Presumably, he still has it.
According to catherine yronwode, Gaiman had approved a spin-off series
called MIRACLEMAN TRIUMPHANT that took place in the time period between the
end of Gaiman's first storyline and the beginning of his second. MIRACLEMAN
TRIUMPHANT was written by Fred Burke and illustrated by Mike Deodato Jr.
(who shared the rights to this project with Eclipse and Gaiman). Two issues
were scripted, and one issue was finished, but never released. The artwork
is still in possession of yronwode, and she has stated that she intends to
mail it to Fred Burke whenever someone finally untangles the MIRACLEMAN
copyright problems, and agrees to publish MIRACLEMAN TRIUMPHANT.
At the time of the Eclipse bankruptcy, Eclipse held with two-thirds of the
rights to MIRACLEMAN, and Gaiman held one-third of the rights (either on
his own, or jointly with Buckingham). Then in 1996, Todd McFarlane
Productions purchased all of Eclipse's assets at a bankruptcy auction for
$40,000. These assets included whatever share of MIRACLEMAN that Eclipse
owned, along with other Eclipse-owned characters like as Airboy, the Heap,
Valkyrie, Sky Wolf, etc.
Rumor has it that McFarlane thought he was getting all rights to MIRACLEMAN
(other than those rights held by Gaiman--or Gaiman and Buckingham).
However, since then, Dez Skinn has reportedly claimed that some or all of
the MIRACLEMAN rights have reverted to him. To further complicate matters,
Anglo has claimed that he owns ALL rights to MARVELMAN/MIRACLEMAN. Finally,
McFarlane and Gaiman are involved in a dispute over Gaiman's rights to
Angela (which he co-created in SPAWN #9 on a handshake deal), and are not
currently on very friendly terms.
Although there have been numerous second-hand reports that McFarlane has
offered to trade whatever rights he holds to MARVELMAN/MIRACLEMAN to Gaiman
in return for Gaiman dropping any claims on Angela, the rights to the two
characters are in no way linked.
Interestingly enough, in October 1997, Todd McFarlane Productions filed for
a US registered trademark on "MIRACLEMAN" under classes 016 (printed
matter, namely, comic books and posters), 025 (clothing, namely, shirts,
athletic shirts, T-shirts, caps and jackets), and 028 (toys, namely, action
figures and accessories therefore). The proposed trademarks were published
for opposition on 06/02/1998, and according to the US PTO's online database
(http://trademarks.uspto.gov/access/sea
So who owns MIRACLEMAN? Nobody knows...
My Journal
I could care less who wins this...just a two huge egos fighting over something any two normal people would have fixed with a 20 min conversation...anyway I own issue #9 of spawn...the issue that caused all this...is it worth anything?..I got laid off from my dotcom job like 2 years ago and in desperate need of cash.
If you would actually read the links you would understand why this happened. One reasonable man (Gaiman) and one huge ego (McFarlane) did work this out in a meeting in 1997. Then last year McFarlane decided he didn't like that deal anymore and started acting as if it never happened. Thus, he got taken to court.
jello.
aka aron.
(From Comicon Pulse Article)
they found that McFarlane and Gaiman had entered into agreements in 1992 and 1997 and that McFarlane had breeched both agreements
It's a rough world when you can't put pants on an agreement.
Spellcheckers. Gotta love 'em, gotta hate 'em.
Thats nothing... I know several people in the Comic/Anime/Etc community here in Mexico and when a local Comic Convention wanted to have McFarlane come here to sign autographs and do a conference, the guy demanded (aside from his pay) that he and his family be "awarded" a one week vacation in Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, with all expenses paid.
The Convention guys agreed, bought them the air tickets, booked the hotel... everything. So McFarlane comes to the opening of the Convention, signs 2 hours of autographs, and then leaves the friggin place!
Turns out that once he had the tickets, he called the airline and the hotel and changed the dates on his reservation! The guy just ignored his contract (Which required him to stay 3 days at the convention and do a conference) and took the vacation and the money! The Convention organizers tried to sue, but of course, this involves international law and treaties and it would have been far too expensive... So they decided to just drop matters...
Of course, the year after that, they invited Will Eisner, and he was absolutely great... He spent more than 3 hours talking about his work and answering questions... he even showcased work by local aspiring artists and gave them some good natured advice, and pointed out to the audience what he liked and disliked about the pieces.
No sig for the moment.
Over my career I've worked with a number of people I'll unhelpfully lump together as artists. Graphic artists, web designers, would-be comic book artists, 3-D modellers and animators, 2-d artists. Great people, generally very sane. Of these artists, a significant number have owned and decorated their offices with McFarlane's Spawn figurines. And never just plain old Spawn. Spawn the Bloodaxe, Alien Spawn, Pirate Spawn, Raven Spawn, She Spawn, Wings of Redemption Spawn, Spawn VII, Dark Ages Spawn - Samurai Wars, Techno Spawn, or Spawn the Bloodaxe and Thunderhoof. Each and every one more EXTREME than the last. There have been 22 different series of figurines. By my back of the envelope calculation, there are approximately seventy billion distinct Spawn variants.
What's the point? The character is alien and pointless. A friend at one point suggested that the Spawn comic books were for teenagers who found Batman not gritty enough and too realistic. Grade school kids who need something more EXTREME to try and shock their parents. The figurines may be very distinct, but they certainly are all EXTREME. Multiple layers of billowing clothing, draped in chains, with random pipes and hoses stuck in various unlikely places. Sure, they're detailed, but they're just random. The effect isn't cool, just busy. They certainly never approach the real creepiness of a master like H.R. Giger. They're not shocking, just childish. What exactly is the appeal of Spawn?
McFarlane really bothers me, his work (assuming the things coming out with his name all over them are his work) is disassociated with reality. Spawn is inane. McFarlane can even taint unrelated works. http://trigunner.giborama.com/trigunner/merchandis e/mcvash.html">McFarlane's interpretation of Vash from Trigun was needlessly
draped in chains, just like Vash never was in the series, turning Vash into some bizarre bondage version of himself.
So what exactly is the draw of McFarlane and his work, especially Spawn? I certainly don't see it.
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Here we go-- this is as I understand it, and trimmed down considerably.
The background:
-Todd McFarlane is a comic writer and artist. He and six others left Marvel Comics in 1992 and cofounded a company called Image Comics, based on creative rights and ownership and whatnot. (He's the creator of "Spawn," if you're familiar with the comic, movie, or cartoon.)
-Neil Gaiman is a writer. He's worked mostly for DC Comics, and created the wildly popular "Sandman" series. He's since left comics, mostly, and these days writes novels that win lots of awards.
-Miracleman is an old character published by some of the big companies. In the 80s two writers took a swing at him-- Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman-- and created some very, very good work out of it, stories whose reputations have only grown in time. It was work for hire, though, and so reprint rights remained with DC Comics. Reprint rights since then have been shuffled about here and there for whatever reasons, and eventually landed in Todd McFarlane's lap.
The History:
-In 1992 Gaiman wrote an issue of "Spawn" for McFarlane. In doing this, he created several characters for the series that grew very popular. The characters continued to appear in "Spawn" and were even given their own series. McFarlane promised Gaiman a cut of the profits, but never wrote the check.
-In 1995 McFarlane and Gaiman reached an agreement (the "Oakland agreement"). Gaiman would give up most of his interests in the "Spawn" characters he created (except for a small percentage of profit), and in exchange, McFarlane would hand over his rights to Miracleman (which Gaiman wanted so that he could allow somebody to reprint the old stories). Again, McFarlane never bothered to cut a check, and apparently denies the agreement was made altogether.
-And so Gaiman filed suit. And he won yesterday. Apparently the punishment will be handed down next. From the sound of things, he's going to be basically asking that the terms of the Oakland agreement are held up. What Gaiman has wanted from the beginning has been reprint rights to some of his old stories.
So there you have it, basically. You can follow the links in the original story for updates. If you're interested, Gaiman keeps a very pleasant online journal.
If I may throw in my two cents-- McFarlane here has been greedy and hypocritical. He co-founded Image Comics as a creator's haven, and then proceeded to do to exactly what he'd always complained about during his time at Marvel. At least Marvel is up-front about their contracts.
It's not like McFarlane doesn't have the money. He dropped something like two million bucks for Mark McGwire's historic home run ball way back when. He runs a little publishing mini-empire, fueled by "Spawn's" success.
To the poster that called Gaiman the "little guy," that's a little distorted. Gaiman is about as big a name is comics as they come-- but he's also a reasonable fellow, and wished it wouldn't have come to this.
So that's that. Most of the comics industry these days thinks of McFarlane as a bloated, success-spoiled asshole, because of things like this. Yesterday, he got what's coming to him.