Gaiman Sweep

So, Todd McFarlane (comic artist/writer and creator of Spawn, et cetera) went to court against Neil Gaiman contesting the ‘creative ownership’ of several characters both secondary (Angela & Cogliostro) and primary (the medieval incarnation of Spawn) that Gaiman created and introduced during a medieval-timeline Spawn story arc he wrote back in the mid-90’s.
(For those who didn’t already know this, Gaiman’s “1602” gig with Marvel was worked out by the author solely to pay for the court costs of dealing with McFarlane.)
Rather than simply apologizing, McFarlane threw a lot of money at lawyers and lost the legal case on every count, then threw a lot more money at lawyers to appeal… and just lost it all again.
To say that the judge skewered the arguments of McFarlane’s lead attorney* is… well, unkind, but wholly accurate, as near as I can tell. Good for him.
According to Gaiman, any money successfully extracted from McFarlane and left over from legal bills goes straight to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

(* — ‘Secondary comic characters are public domain until they’ve been around for, let’s say, 50 issues worth of steady appearance in a comic.’ Riiiight. Also: painting McFarlane as a blue-collar working-joe just trying to make a living in this dog-eat-dog world while being taken advantage of by the high-rolling Eurotrash Gaiman is… amusing in a horrible kind of way.)