Bam! Zap! Whammo! It’s a battle royale between two of the toughest heavyweights in the superhero business.
The fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance, but a lot of money probably does.
Science-fiction writer Neil Gaiman and former Spider-Man artist Todd McFarlane’s attorneys have been sparring for years over Gaiman’s claims to a handful of characters created for McFarlane’s classic Spawn series, which features a murdered CIA agent who becomes a demon.
Now Gaiman insists McFarlane owes him for three more characters — a demon named Dark Ages Spawn and two avenging angels in thong bikinis.
A federal judge in Madison scheduled a hearing yesterday to listen to both sides’ arguments.
The long-running case underscores the tension among comic artists as they vie for rights to even minor characters in an industry that has grown more lucrative over the past 20 years through movies, graphic novels and international distribution.
Comic book sales totaled about US$429 million last year, up from US$360 million to US$400 million in 1996, according to estimates by the Comics Chronicles, which compiles comic sales data. The Batman movie sequel The Dark Knight has grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide since it was released in 2008, according to Box Office Mojo.
Spawn isn’t as popular as Batman or Spider-Man, but the series has been fairly successful with action figures, an Emmy-winning HBO series and a 1997 movie that grossed US$87 million worldwide. A sequel is in development, Image Comics’ Web site said.
Gaiman’s lawyers said he plans to donate any money that comes out of the case to charity. The lawsuit for him is more about establishing clear guidelines for other comic book creators about their rights to characters, they said.
“Our view is McFarlane just took some of the characters Neil was a co-creator of and just gave them different names,” said Gaiman’s attorney, Allen Arntsen. “It’s a matter of principle.”
McFarlane’s lead attorney, James Alex Grimsley, didn’t return several messages seeking comment. In court filings, though, McFarlane’s legal team denied Gaiman has any right to the three additional characters, arguing they’re based on ideas from the Spawn universe, not other characters.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS