At a halloween party over the weekend, Justin Louie (nay, The Amazing J, nice costume, bub!) told me about a lawsuit between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane over rights to characters, royalties, and other stuff.

This whole story starts with Spawn #9 (cover image), which I had at least one copy of, it came out while I was in high school, still collecting comic books and working at Curious Comics. Neil Gaiman created the Angela character, which turned out to be very popular and successful for McFarlane. IIRC, there were 4 issues around that time with guest writers, Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, Alan Moore of Watchmen fame, Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame, and Frank Miller of Dark Knight Returns (et al) fame. Those 4 issues were a big deal in the comic industry... those were THE heavy-weight writers in the industry, and of course Todd (and maybe still is, I'm outta the industry now) THE artist at the top.

Anyway, here's the lead-up story to the lawsuit, there's links at the bottom to the proceedings and conclusion of the lawsuit.

As many of you know I'm a big Todd McFarlane fan. I'm surprised I didn't hear of this sooner. Anyway, I'll reserve judgement, but it's interesting to see things like this from my past come back to focus.