In the end, though, Gaiman created a derivative work for the Spawn world and should be happy that others built on his works to do more. Work-for-hire deals certainly have their own trouble, but when you give out separate copyrights to lots of different people involved in a project, you also end up with a bit of a thicket, which appears to be the problem McFarlane faced. Though, it’s a situation created by today’s ridiculous level of copyright protection. Honestly, the whole thing seems a bit silly, really. It sounds like there’s some personal issues between Gaiman and McFarlane underlining all of this as well. Potentially in an attempt to get around having to pay Gaiman royalties (this is the part that’s very much in dispute) a later issue of Spawn introduced some new characters, which have some similarities to Gaiman’s characters.

But, of course, those characters come out of the Spawn world, and thus, you could make the case, are clearly derivative of McFarlane’s own characters. Gaiman’s Spawn introduced some new characters, which he claimed the copyright over.

Having been upset about how Marvel set up deals as “work-for-hire” (such that Marvel kept the copyright on any works done by artists/writers), Image was designed to be more creator-friendly, allowing them to retain their own copyrights.Īll that sounds good, right? Except… what happens when you’re talking about multiple artists all dipping into the same world? That’s what caused the mess we’re in now. McFarlane (and two others) had left Marvel to start their own comic company, Image Comics, which published Spawn. McFarlane created Spawn, and later brought on guest writers. Frankly, the whole thing seems a little silly. The CityPages blog actually has a version of the story with a lot more details. Wed, Jun 16th 2010 10:59am - Mike MasnickĬhurchHatesTucker sends in the Associated Press report about the ongoing legal fight between writers/comic artists Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman, over who owns what rights to what characters.

Neil gaiman todd mcfarlane