Hell Spawn
Gaiman wins. McFarlane loses. I actually remember Angela. I sold her mini-series on ebay a few years ago. I got about 20 bucks for four books. It might have been a bad deal in the long run. Who knows how much those books are worth today? Some of the first Greg Capullo Spawn art. Essentially a bad girl book, with great art and a great writer writing down to his new intended audience.
I also remember when Gaiman wrote those issues of Spawn. McFarlane owes Gaiman even more in my opinion. Spawn was a fanboy’s wet dream before Gaiman and Frank Miller did their guest shots. You had some of the top writers in the industry at the time writing several issues of the top artist driven comic book at the time. Before Gaiman, Spawn was seen as complete bullshit. I actually missed the first couple of issues of Spawn because McFarlane was writing the shit himself. I only checked out the book when those guest shots hit around issue number 8. First Alan Moore, then Neil Gaiman, followed by Dave Sims, Frank Miller, and ending back at the beginning with Alan Moore.
The book was still bullshit, but it had some prestige behind it. The stories were still McFarlane-stamped fucked over, because McFarlane couldn’t pen a decent story if his life hinged on it. Remember Spawn v Batman. Now that was the shit. The story didn’t mean jack, but the Miller/McFarlane collabo was big time news. And I was all up in it. And it was still bullshit.
The drama recently climaxed in a Chicago federal appeals court. A three-judge panel delivered a resounding victory for Gaiman, who had accused McFarlane of costing him millions of dollars in royalties by breaking promises and refusing to acknowledge his co-ownership of characters that became part of the popular Spawn franchise.
The ruling is more than a win for Gaiman. Intellectual property experts predict the appellate decision will have broader influence on joint authorship issues, giving everyone who participates in a creative work a potential copyright claim.
“There are all kinds of people who contribute ideas to creative works in movies, plays, comic books,” said Ronald Staudt, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, who teaches copyright and Internet law. “Courts normally reject the notion of just contributing ideas on the theory that ideas are not copyrightable.
“Up until now, you had to create something that was independently copyrightable,” he said. “The judge says you don’t need that.”
Getting back to the point, or the irony. McFarlane leads several artists from Marvel and joins together to create Image, based on the fact that many of the artists felt exploited from creating characters and not being given true compensation or acknowledgement. Work for Hire is a bitch. You work for someone and everything you create under the 9-to-5 banner is completely owned by the dude paying the paychecks. So, McFarlane did his best Norma Rae impression and got some of the top dudes to jump ship, put up their own money and start Image. Some of the writers, outside of Peter David, respected this and tried their best to help the young entrepreneurs with their new venture.
Gaiman Keeps Share of Spawn Characters
Of course every fanboy knows that McFarlane has no respect for writers in the comic book field. And Gaiman should have known it, too. From McFarlane’s point of view, the character hadn’t been created until he drew it. It didn’t matter that Gaiman came up with the concept. A concept isn’t shit without the concrete vision. Of course we know it’s partially bullshit. Copyright is all about legal idea ownership. Plus, the two dudes had a deal, and McFarlane, after raking in millions on Gaiman’s ideas, decided he owned them outright. The same dude that screamed murder, committing it himself.
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