MIRACLEMAN RIGHTS...NOT DEAD YET

[MattBrady]

The never-dying Todd McFarlane/Neil Gaiman controversy over Miracleman got a little fuel via an interview with McFarlane at UGO.com, by regular Newsarama contributor Daniel Robert Epstein.

When asked about Mircaleman, here’s what McFarlane said:

UGO: Has the Miracleman film gone back to Neil Gaiman or wherever it is supposed to go?

TODD: With the lawsuit, Gaiman walked away from Miracleman. I have the trademark for Miracleman. No one wants to say it out loud, but that's what happened with the lawsuit. Everyone was like "Hah hah, he killed Todd," but unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on where you are standing -- he had to pick some copyrights to some Spawn characters or pick Miracleman. He didn't pick Miracleman.

UGO: Did he take Angela?

TODD: Yeah, he took some of the Spawn stuff. For whatever reason he walked away from Miracleman, so now Miracleman will be in the Image 10th Anniversary book.

(Newsarama Note: According to other reports, the Image Anniversary book, re-titled simply, Image Comics #1, will see print in mid to fourth quarter 2005. In the interview, McFarlane said he is currently finishing his Spawn story)

McFarlane acquired the films (from which comic books can/could be printed) of the Eclipse editions of the Miracleman comics when he purchased the assets at the Eclipse bankruptcy auction. The sale, reportedly, included none of the publishing rights to the Miracleman character, as they had lapsed.

The films were sent to Gaiman, as part of the payment requested in return for writing Gaiman did for issues of McFarlane’s Spawn series, as well as the Angela miniseries. In October of 1997, McFarlane then applied for the trademark to Mircaleman, and a subsequent indication of his intent to use the character.

As could be expected with this issue, McFarlane’s comments don’t exactly jibe with what Gaiman wrote in his blog on February 25th of last year, after he won the case against McFarlane.

Gaiman wrote:

I used to think that McFarlane actually had some rights in Miracleman. He told me he had, after all -- he'd bought what was left of Eclipse from a bankruptcy court -- and that he very much wanted to swap those rights for my rights in Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn. He never sent me any of the papers, though, after I agreed to the 97 character swap, although he sent me the film for several issues of Miracleman. Then, a month after sending me the film, and having told me that he had transferred his rights in Miracleman to me, he sneakily filed an application for the trademark on Miracleman. Then a year or so later, he abandoned that trademark application. (This was something I didn't know, but that came out in the run-up to the court case.)

During the legal case, the one thing that no-one was confused about was that I, and Mark Buckingham, and Alan Moore, owned the copyright to our work in Miracleman. That was straightforward and obvious. We owned our copyright on our material; the bankruptcy of Eclipse didn't affect our rights.

Actually that's not quite true. Todd said in some interview online before that he owned all rights to Miracleman and if anyone said different, he'd see them in court. Well, he saw me in court...

As part of the court case, we finally got to see the Miracleman paperwork. It turned out the entire paperwork that Todd hadn't sent me consisted of an expired Eclipse Trademark registration for the MM logo. From another source I also got to see the original contract, under which Eclipse had obtained their part share in the Miracleman character, and it was explicit in saying that in case of Eclipse folding, or even substantially changing directors, that Eclipse's share in the rights to Miracleman would revert.

So one thing that the court case did establish was that Todd obviously didn't, as he had been claiming, own all of Miracleman. As far as I can tell, or any of the lawyers working with us on the case could tell, Todd probably doesn't actually own any share of Miracleman. He certainly has no copyright in any of the existing work.

Currently (as of late 2001) Todd has another trademark application in on Miracleman, on the grounds that it was an abandoned trademark, which we've opposed. [It is apparently this trademark that McFarlane referred to in the interview]

There may well need to be a final court case to tie up some of the last loose ends on Miracleman, which may wind up going to some very fun places indeed. At least with 1602, there's the money there to fight it. And there are a lot of places that want to republish the work that's been done on Miracleman, and the new work that Mark and I hope to do.

The shares or the copyrights to Miracleman that Gaiman, Buckingham and Moore own are now owned by Marvels & Miracles, LLC, a company created by Gaiman to clarify the legal standing of the Miracleman rights.

Regardless of the current standing of the rights, both McFarlane and Gaiman have used them in the production of Miracleman merchandise, that is, two statues, one by McFarlane, of an updated design of the character released in 2003, and one in more classic form, produced by Randy Bowen and Neil Gaiman.

A quick check of the US Patent and Trademark Office shows that currently, the only live trademark for Miracleman is the one referred to by Gaiman, filed July 11th, 2001. The filing is for the trademark to apply to comics, toys, and clothing. Opposition to the filing (presumably by Gaiman) was filed February 13th, 2002. The opposition is still pending.

Previously, McFarlane had filed for three seperate trademarks, one for comics, one for toys, and one for clothing, on October 27th, 1997. All three were abandonded by McFarlane in February of 2000.

Developing, obviously…

The interview also touched on Joe Quesada’s standing offer for a Spider-Man/Spawn team up. McFarlane replied: "I know he bugged me for Spidey and Spawn so maybe someday I will do it. I told Joe that the concept was short term stuff. A one hit wonder. So we do Spidey and Spawn, it comes out, it sells a lot of copies and everyone makes some money. But what about next month? Now what? Whatever.

"If I'm going to come back and draw, it would be for two reasons. One because I want to sustain something and two because I just want to draw and I don't care if anyone buys it. I have lots of those options to make money so there has to be a bigger reason than that."

Click the top link for the full interview.

Update: Gaiman updated his blog about the matter, posting:

"Good old Todd. This was the same kind of thing he was doing in the fan press before the legal case. Charitably, I think it's fair to say that he's telling huge and easily disprovable fibs. No, he doesn't (whatever he says in the interview) have a trademark on Miracleman. The shared trademark that Eclipse had was found to have expired in the mid 90s, before Todd bought the remains of Eclipse. (Todd put in a new Miracleman trademark application back in 2001, before the legal case, which we opposed as soon as we found out about it, and which hasn't been granted.)

"Beyond that, he's also distancing himself from the reality-based community in his description of the result of the legal case. (I'm not sure what to say about that, other than it's all been pretty extensively recorded.) If Todd actually owned a share of Miracleman (something that became more and more unlikely as we finally saw the actual documentation he had on it, which consisted only of: a contract that said that Eclipse's rights to the character automatically reverted if someone other than Dean Mullaney owned Eclipse, and an expired Trademark notice for a Trademark shared with me, Mark Buckingham and Eclipse) then, yes, he kept that share at the end of the trial. Meanwhile, Mark Buckingham and my share of Miracleman isn't in any doubt at all. I didn't walk away from what Todd had; Todd simply couldn't demonstrate that he owned anything that I was walking away from.

"We're in the concluding stages of talks to bring the Alan Moore Miracleman stories and the stories I wrote and Mark Buckingham drew back into print. (The stories are copyright Alan and me, the art is copyright by the artists who did it.)

"Currently, I'm also one of the largest creditors of Todd's comic company.

"I used to get hate mail from Image Fans accusing me of delaying the Image 10th anniversary book (which was due out in 2002) because, following the trial, I now co-owned the Cogliostro character, and people from Image were at one point, apparently, telling people that I was stopping the comic coming out, which came as rather a surprise to me, because it was the first I'd heard of it (and was also nonsense). Cynically, I can't help wondering if Todd claiming he's now putting Miracleman into the just-a-little-bit-late comic is just a way to put off actually publishing the comic for a few more years."

[MatthewSmith]

Yep. I read that McFarlane interview and was like, "that's not at all how Gaiman described it going down."

It is going to be quite interesting how this goes down.

But whatever happens, it needs to happen soon because I seriously want to read at least the old Miracleman stuff.

[Phoenix_Tetsu]

McFarlane directing??? jeez... was it animation...

"The sum of its parts are good", "movies with great camerawork", "The Grudge? if there was someone deserving to be branded "trendy" (that not being a compliment BTW...), is McFarlane...

[blankpoint]

McFarlane increasingly sounds like a bitter man.

[Mark Cardwell]

If McFarlane reckons he can publish Miracleman , and intends to do so in the hilariously late Image 10th Anniversary hardcover, he should just get off the potty and do it. I'm sure someone wants to see it. The guy does still have a (vocal) fanbase after all. The thing is, it's became such a cause celebre for creator rights, that it's hard to see another professional touching the assignment, so he'd have to do it himself. And the thing is, he seems to have an ongoing bad case of penciller's block.

Meanwhile Marvel/Icon could reprint and finish the Moore/Gaiman Marvelman , and then we can all see which sells more, and is more artistically valid, and gets more critical acclaim.

[Robot H Brian]

Wow, I hope to one day make enough money that I can feel like I can be a dick to anyone and everyone, and yet choose to not be a dick. That would be a great feeling.

[Jack Burton]

Well looks like the 10 anniversary book will never come out.

[ElijahSnowFan]

...in this industry has long since been eclipsed by his legal battles, the biggest of which have involved Neil Gaiman.

i'm not a lawyer, so i'm not going to even pretend i know who is right or wrong in this battle.

but i will say this: For a guy who bitched constantly about creators' rights and creators keeping control over characters they create, McFarlane sure does put up big fights for characters that he didn't, um, create.

a word he needs to learn: hypocrisy.

[Cliffy]

Not surprising to those who've followed the case. Essentially, Gaiman's theory of the case was that McFarlane paid for Gaiman's rights in Angela and Cogliostro by transferring his (McFarlane's) rights in Miracleman. Then, when McFarlane continued to try to assert ownership of Miracleman, it was clear that he never truly "paid" for Angela and Cogliostro. Therefore the Court gave Gaiman his rights in those characters back, because they'd never been paid for. Comcommitantly, since McFarlane no longer has Gaiman's rights in Angela, etc., he gets to keep what he was going to pay for them with, namely, his rights in Miracleman.

That doesn't necessarily mean McFarlane actually has any rights in Miracleman; it simply means that whatever rights he had at the beginning of the mishegoss, he's still got.

--Cliffy

[OM]

...Todd the Clodd is, without question, the Albert Belle of the comic book industry. His only concerns is how much money he can screw the fans out of, and how often he can spit on them. If any one so-called creator deserved to be banned from comics for life, it's Todd.

Honestly, I live for the day when Newsarama carries a streaming clip where we follow the local Sheriff as they kick down Todd's front door, storm the house, and liberate the Miracleman films from his basement...

[Reaper]

Man, Alan Moore's Miracleman (Marvelman really) arc is one of my all time favorite stories and I would love to see it reprinted in TPB form (the floppies are so friggin' expensive!!). Maybe this'll happen someday... I'm surely not holding my breath though. C'mon you rich bastards, work it out!

-Tim

[Rich Johnston]

I have confirmed that the Eclipse contract, which Todd McFarlane bought, has a clause where rights signed to Eclipse revert after a period of non-publication, which has been exceeded considerably.

So they go back to Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Alan Davis and Dez Skinn (Davis disputes his rights were passed on to Eclipse anyway). Moore has passed his share on to Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham. Davis passed his onto Garry. Leaving Garry with 60%, Neil and Mark with 30% and Dez with 10%.

Which is why Neil did not take Todd's claim to rights in the court case, because they are worthless.

[Rich Johnston]

Originally posted by OM
...Todd the Clodd is, without question, the Albert Belle of the comic book industry. His only concerns is how much money he can screw the fans out of, and how often he can spit on them. If any one so-called creator deserved to be banned from comics for life, it's Todd.

Honestly, I live for the day when Newsarama carries a streaming clip where we follow the local Sheriff as they kick down Todd's front door, storm the house, and liberate the Miracleman films from his basement...

Neil Gaiman has the Miracleman film. Todd sent it to him years ago.

[Robert_Coyner]

Y'know, I don't get on this horse often, but in a case like this, it does crack me up how far McFarlane has come from being a founder at Image so that as an artist he could have greater control over his own work. In a case like this, where is his supposed respect for creator rights?

I understand business is business and money is money, but his grasping at the straws of a character and series he never had any right to other than what little he bought into of it is pretty sad.

[Chris1]

Does anyone other than Joey Q want to see Spider-Man/Spawn?? Is this really what the fans have been waiting for all these years?

[s richter]

Originally posted by Rich Johnston
Neil Gaiman has the Miracleman film. Todd sent it to him years ago.

Did he get the whole thing, a part of it or just the bits he wrote, do you know?

Oh and how's eve (did I get her name right?) doing? Monday mornings are so bland nowadyas...

[fedres]

Messing with Neil Gaiman in a battle of public opinion is a losing proposition-the guy has more goodwill than Siegal and Shuster!

With that said, if McFarlane draws something, I'll be there to buy it. It is that simple. This guy's art was fantastic back in the day-the energy in his work was incredible. Even the Infinity Inc. stuff had merit, and the Hulk and Spidey stuff was top notch.

[Robert_Coyner]

And, I can’t ever believe it when I agree with Joe Quesada, but if Todd McFarlane still can’t see the benefits of doing a Spawn/Spider-Man crossover in this point – with as much as Spawn’s star has crested and fallen – he’s really blinded by something. Perhaps his own ego. Sure, Spider-Man/Spawn would only last a few months, but with good marketing the potential benefits are far greater. And mostly for him – not Marvel. With solid marketing – considering the somewhat rejuvenated audience Spider-Man has found in recent years since the Ultimate series began and the movies came out - the crossover could only provide Spawn a greater exposure than it’s seen in years.

It was only last year many people were wondering if Spawn was cancelled altogether when Image pulled its solicitations for several months so that it could return to a normal shipping schedule. Spawn/Spider-Man, written by Kevin Smith and drawn by Quesada and McFarlane could be a good launching pad for a new marketing campaign centered initially around the event and a new direction, or a greater marketing push for the original series of comics and toys themselves, as well as the possible republication of early collections which seem to be nonexistent at this point…

I’ve never understood Todd McFarlane’s ego. He was the most popular artist in the industry several years ago, and it’s alright that he walked away from that. Several of the Image co-founders have. But, every indication there is now just exudes the sort of ego of a man with no love or respect for the art at all… Only the industry.

[Julio Diaz]

McFarlane's professed preference for "movies with great camerawork" over great stories (as detailed in the interview) pretty much says it all about him, doesn't it? All style, no substance.

[Aaron Fitzwater]

This might be a little off the topic, but I thought I would share all the same. I work at a used bookstore, where we buy and sell used books, store and a few months ago the Miracle Man (or Marvel Man depending on how you feel about the whole situation) trades came in. Someone must not have known what they were worth, because they got priced out at half of the cover price. Needless to say I picked them up right away. They are in near mint condition. It was a nice find that made my day.

[Erik K]

Neil Gaiman has posted on this at http://www.neilgaiman.com. Sounds to me like he's more bemused at Todd's statements, and he seems to feel that nothing has changed from earlier announcements.

I don't know, my gut is to back Gaiman on this. Todd seems a bit of a troll, and Gaiman's postings are so level and clear, it's hard not to see McFarlane's statements as baseless rantings.

Oh, and I should add Todd's claim to a Trademark on Miracleman is blatantly false, as anyone who searches the Trademark database (www.uspto.gov) will see. He's filed for one, but it's not been granted, and is in fact listed as having an opposition filed. So he doesn't own any trademark. Not yet. And following the courts on this, I doubt he'll get it:

Mark (words only): MIRACLEMAN

Standard Character claim: No

Current Status: An opposition is now pending at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

Date of Status: 2002-02-13

Filing Date: 2001-07-11

[Somniator]

I don't understand why McFarlane is so desperate to have any kind of trademark on Miracleman.

Miracleman/Marvelman as a character is inherently not very good, because all he is is a ripoff of Captain Marvel. It's only through the work of Moore, Gaiman and the various artists that he became anything else.

McFarlane has given Gaiman the original Miracleman film, so there is no chance he will ever publish the original '80s stories. And given the personal differences, there is clearly no chance he will ever publish Gaiman and Buckingham's conclusion to their run. So if he were to ever put out a Miracleman comic, unless he got some truly A-list creators working on it, it simply wouldn't be very good. So what does he stand to gain? Why not just create something new?

As for merchandise, no real fan of the comic is ever going to want to buy any statues or anything he puts out. Especially not with that ghastly redesigned costume that he did.

I can't wait for this to be resolved. I don't like downloading comics, but I had to download Miracleman as it was the only way I could read it. I'd love to be able to get my hands on new TPBs of the stories, and I'm desperate to read what Neil and Bucky had in mind for the rest of the Silver Age and the much-touted Dark Age...



EDIT : Incidentally, if the only claim McFarlane has on the character is indeed a trademark on the name "Miracleman" (and that seems to be the case - there can be no doubt now that he does not have the character and material rights he duplicitously claimed to), then why don't Leach, Gaiman and Bucky take the comic somewhere and reprint it under its proper name, a name that Joe Quesada has gone on record as saying that Marvel, in this day and age, would pose no objection to? Presumably McFarlane didn't have the foresight to attempt to register the Marvelman name as well...

[Somniator]

Incidentally, Gaiman has already responded :

Good old Todd. This was the same kind of thing he was doing in the fan press before the legal case. Charitably, I think it's fair to say that he's telling huge and easily disprovable fibs. No, he doesn't (whatever he says in the interview) have a trademark on Miracleman. The shared trademark that Eclipse had was found to have expired in the mid 90s, before Todd bought the remains of Eclipse. (Todd put in a new Miracleman trademark application back in 2001, before the legal case, which we opposed as soon as we found out about it, and which hasn't been granted.)

Beyond that, he's also distancing himself from the reality-based community in his description of the result of the legal case. (I'm not sure what to say about that, other than it's all been pretty extensively recorded.) If Todd actually owned a share of Miracleman (something that became more and more unlikely as we finally saw the actual documentation he had on it, which consisted only of: a contract that said that Eclipse's rights to the character automatically reverted if someone other than Dean Mullaney owned Eclipse, and an expired Trademark notice for a Trademark shared with me, Mark Buckingham and Eclipse) then, yes, he kept that share at the end of the trial. Meanwhile, Mark Buckingham and my share of Miracleman isn't in any doubt at all. I didn't walk away from what Todd had; Todd simply couldn't demonstrate that he owned anything that I was walking away from.

We're in the concluding stages of talks to bring the Alan Moore Miracleman stories and the stories I wrote and Mark Buckingham drew back into print. (The stories are copyright Alan and me, the art is copyright by the artists who did it.)

Currently, I'm also one of the largest creditors of Todd's comic company.

I used to get hate mail from Image Fans accusing me of delaying the Image 10th anniversary book (which was due out in 2002) because, following the trial, I now co-owned the Cogliostro character, and people from Image were at one point, apparently, telling people that I was stopping the comic coming out, which came as rather a surprise to me, because it was the first I'd heard of it (and was also nonsense). Cynically, I can't help wondering if Todd claiming he's now putting Miracleman into the just-a-little-bit-late comic is just a way to put off actually publishing the comic for a few more years.

[Erik K]

Originally posted by Somniator
Incidentally, if the only claim McFarlane has on the character is indeed a trademark on the name "Miracleman" (and that seems to be the case - there can be no doubt now that he does not have the character and material rights he duplicitously claimed to), then why don't Leach, Gaiman and Bucky take the comic somewhere and reprint it under its proper name, a name that Joe Quesada has gone on record as saying that Marvel, in this day and age, would pose no objection to? Presumably McFarlane didn't have the foresight to attempt to register the Marvelman name as well...

Actually, as I stated, he only has an as-yet ungranted and opposed application for a Trademark. Hardly a legal claim at this point. And you're right, there are no trademarks for Marvelman. Let's hope he doesn't read this and get any ideas.

[Reaper]

Originally posted by Somniator
Miracleman/Marvelman as a character is inherently not very good, because all he is is a ripoff of Captain Marvel. It's only through the work of Moore, Gaiman and the various artists that he became anything else.

I gotta hand it to you Sominator, you hit the nail on the head. Miracleman is a great, dark "What If?" story spun from the DC Marvel family. Moore's story was bloody brilliant though!

-Tim