Gaiman pwns McFarlane once again in court

[Brazoo]

Yeah - from the article the suit just confirms Gaiman as a co-creator of these properties - as far as I understand it.

Again, the main issue is that McFarlane reneged on his contract. It's hard to tell if Gaiman would care otherwise, and it seems that legally McFarlane would have protected himself by paying Gaiman in the first place.

[WannabeMego]

What confuses me is the fact that he filed for bankruptcy to protect himself from the Twist case...yet he can still produce figures and comics??!!?? I don't get that. Where does all the money go from all of that? I always thought that if you were bankrupt that was it...you're bankrupt, and whatever assets you have are divied up between all of the creditors etc.

BTW...reading this was the first I had ever heard of McFarlane going bankrupt. Guess he shouldn't have spent all that money on those worthless baseballs

Chapter 11 is a Re-Organization Bankruptcy, so if the Trustee deems that there are enough assets coming in to fulfill the Bankruptcy Plan (i.e Pay the Creditors), then they can still operate, business as usual, but the monies go to the Trustee to be delegated to each Creditor.

Basically what Marvel went through after Ronald Perelman (i.e. Revlon) ran it into the ground but before Avi Arad (i.e ToyBiz) took it over to make it the juggernaut that it is today now that Disney owns it lock-stock-n-barrell.

[samurainoir]

... Not really .
To Sum-up Real quickly...
Angela is an Angel from Heaven, that Hunts and Kills Hell Spawns.
It was written very eairly on, that She wasn't the Only 1 , Obviously, ... in any Idea of Angels there is More than 1. I believe that this was also written far before he was sued the 1st time.

I don't know anything about what happened later on past Grant Morrison's Anti-Spawn arc and Alan Moore's Freak story, but I am familiar with Gaiman's work on Spawn and Angela.

The concept of other warrior angels was established by Gaiman in the Angela miniseries he wrote. Even if he didn't specifically create Tiffany and Domina, the ruling is that they derive from what was established about Angela/Angels from issue #9 and the mini.

Shouldn't that Idea be owned by Both instead of 1 of them ?.

Yup. Which is why Gaiman is suing for his half of the profits. The ruling is that Gaiman is co-creator and his cut of the pie is the same as he gets for co-creating The Sandman/Morpheus (his co-creators of record are artists Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg).

If I am understanding correctly, why this has once again gone back to court after so many years is because McFarlane's company is finally getting OUT of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, which allows his creditors to once again pursue action against Todd McFarlane Productions (or whatever the company is called).

[Sandman9580]

The ruling is that Gaiman is co-creator and his cut of the pie is the same as he gets for co-creating The Sandman/Morpheus (his co-creators of record are artists Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg).

Aren't those different rights? Sandman was work-for-hire, and DC owns Sandman.

The concept of other warrior angels was established by Gaiman in the Angela miniseries he wrote. Even if he didn't specifically create Tiffany and Domina, the ruling is that they derive from what was established about Angela/Angels from issue #9 and the mini.

Ugh.

The more I read about this case, the more confused I get. If the characters derive from the concepts Gaiman established, there would be no problem, right? Gaiman, in his own testimony, said that this is the whole point; as a writer you want to leave the ground more fertile than when you found it. Then, other writers can come in and build upon what you've established. (Elysium, 333,000 angels, one Spawn every 400 years, etc.) But the judge is saying the characters Domina and Tiffany are derivative of Angela, the character. I can understand this, at first glance - I have the disinct memory of looking at action figures of "Angela" and then seeing the name was actually Tiffany, and going "huh?". (Consumer confusion, real or potential, being one of the symptoms of copyright infringement.)

Okay, but... this is hardly a rare occurrence. EU Star Wars, Green Lantern characters - any number of superheroes - they all look the same to me. For instance, are any number of robe-wearing, lightsaber-wielding Jedis derivative of Obi-wan Kenobi, since he was the first Jedi seen in the first movie? Or are they merely derivative of the idea of a Knighthood of Jedis, of which Obi-wan just happened to be the first example? Yes, this is a moot point since Lucas owns Star Wars in its entirety. But what if someone else had come up with the Obi-wan and Jedi micro-mythos, which fit into the larger macro-mythos that Lucas created, and then said, "Hey, wait a minute. Who are all these new characters you have wearing robes and brandishing lightsabers?" To which Lucas might reply, "It's a concept you created, and that's partly why you were brought in, to create concepts that we can build on. You still have your Obi-wan royalties, which was never an issue. Which is why I killed him off and will no longer be making figurines of him. You're just p*ssed I treated you like a jerk and reneged on giving you the rights to Howard the Duck." (Sorry... impugning motives is part of the fun. )

Dark Ages Spawn seems pretty cut-and-dry to me; a cynical ploy to exploit an established character and "cleverly" reverse a royalty stream he thinks would otherwise flow in the wrong direction. But I'm having trouble with the rest of it. I'm trying to view it as impartially as I can. I consider myself a fan of both of these guys - in each case for very different reasons - and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find this weird clash of very different talents and world-views fascinating. That transcript between Gaiman and McFarlane's lawyer is golden!

And speaking of golden, check out that judge's ideas for other Spawn characters! Imagine the Native American Spawn, and all the Western archetypes you could riff on! All that rich and tragic history, and the mythology, and the spiritual conflicts between Christian and Native beliefs. Hey, you know who'd be perfect for this? Neil... er, uh... Brian Holguin.

[Bruce Banner]

Never really paid much attention to Spawn, in any of the franchise's myriad incarnations.

[samurainoir]

Aren't those different rights? Sandman was work-for-hire, and DC owns Sandman.

Yes, but my understanding is that they are using Gaiman's DC Contracts as the basis for what he's owed given McFarlane's vague verbal contract that he'd treat Gaiman better than DC or Marvel.

For that specific example, I'm simply using Gaiman's citation of how DC pays royalties for "derivative characters".

As for the Green Lanterns... Geoff Johns created all the other coloured lanterns other than the Star Saphires and Sinestro himself. I'm sure he gets a piece of the action for Blue, Orange, Black, White, Indigo, Red Lantern merch, and whichever other corps characters are derivative of those concepts.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

It's a confounding issue 'cos SO MANY characters are derivative. The line between "original" and "homage" and "ripoff" can be razor thin, and based entirely on how far you want to push the issue. Even Spawn himself is reminiscent of Atlas Comics "Demonhunter," who was a derivation of a Marvel character. (And the multi-Spawns kinda reminded me of Mr Monster.... but not enough that I's suspect a ripoff.)

Don C.

[samurainoir]

In the world of Franchised Superheroes, it's best to differentiate ripoff/homage characters from derivative if we are examining these from the legal standpoint.

In the eyes of the Law, Wonder Man and Captain Marvel were ripoffs of Superman. In the case of Siegel and Shuster, they went after Superboy as a derivative character from their creation Superman. The difference is between one company suing the other and the internal accounting of how a company handles it's own property and related spinoffs.

Just my layman's understanding. Any Entertainment/Copyright Lawyers can chime in if I'm misunderstanding the concept of Derivative Character.

So DC Comics homages/ripoffs The Lensmen when creating the Silver Age Green Lantern. Geoff Johns (as work for hire for DC Comics, with a creator participation deal) creates Larfleeze The Orange Lantern, derivative from the Green Lantern concept.