I grew up reading comic books. Specifically Marvel and Image. Marvel had my standard favorites, Spider-Man, The X-Men, Wolverine, Daredevil, and Deadpool. Image was a small company created in 1992 by 8 creators who were tired of doing the work and “The Man” (Marvel, DC) owning the copyrights to their creations. So Image was founded as a creator-owned company where these artists/writers would solely retain the rights to these creator-owned properties. Seven illustrators (Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, and Jim Valentino) and one writer (Chris Claremont) created Image to work on things that they wanted to work on with complete control. Now 5 of these guys came from X-books (X-men, X-Force, Wolverine), Valentino came from Guardians of the Galaxy, while Larsen and McFarlane came from Spider-Man. Talk about a fuckin upheaval of the normal. Image as a company was founded as purely a licensing company, owning only the logo and its name. The property was formed under two principals, the first being that the creator is sole owner of their own work; the second is no company partner can interfere either financially or creatively with another partners work. To guarantee this, 6 of the creators made their own studios that would own the rights, but then still publish under Image. These studios were Extreme Studios (Liefeld), ShadowLine (Valentino), Todd McFarlane Productions (McFarlane), Wildstorm (Lee), Highbrow Entertainment (Erik Larsen), and Top Cow Productions (Silvestri). The first books released were Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.s, and Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon. These successful books, along with a few less successful endeavors, were sub-published under Malibu Comics. Image took off like a ROCKET. In less than a year, Image was publishing their own books and owning more of the market than DC with less than half of the number of titles. Next thing you know these industry leading creators that were fighting the good fight were leasing out work to freelancers. They were obtaining the rights to all of the works, but they also allowed the publishing of some other non-partner created and owned licenses, such as Bone, The Maxx, and Astro City. I stuck with them on a couple of their books. Spawn and Youngblood were great, I also loved Cyberforce and Shadowhawk. The point here is that the little guys were doing it. They were winning the good fight. They were doing what they wanted and were doing it successfully. Then they got too big. They had too much going on and all of a sudden there were delays in monthly books. Then there was in-fighting, claims of stealing talent, and eventual departure. Silvestri left Image, taking Top Cow with him because of the shady, underhanded tactics. Lee even sold Wildstorm to DC!!! How are you going to sell your “creator-owned property” to one of the most creative stifling companies out there. Valentino became the publisher and manager of Image and started a new practice of publishing creator-owned books but charging a fixed fee upon publication. Erik Larsen took over the publisher title and saw the #3 spot that Image held fall to number 5. Larsen was replaced by Eric Stephenson and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead / Invincible).
So why this trip down Image Blvd? Well I am a huge fan of Neil Gaiman, as both a comic writer and as a novel writer. My first introduction to Gaiman was my friend Dustin’s big brothers collection of Sandman comics. Sandman was a DC character and it stands to this day as one of the few DC/Vertigo titles that I adore. His books Good Omens, American Gods, and Anansi Boys are phenomenal. He was already an established name in the comics game back in 1993 when he was asked by Todd McFarlane to write an issue of Spawn. The issue (#9, and one of the highest valued of the first run) introduced Angela, a Hellspawn hunting, angel. Basically the opposite of Spawn. Medieval Spawn, the dark ages version of a the Hellspawn that shows that not all Hellspawn are “evil”, whom is destroyed by Angela, and Cogliostro, a mentor to Hellspawn, who turns out to be a former Hellspawn, and the original murderer Cain. These characters were agreed upon as 50/50 co-owned properties between the two men (the founding principle of Image, remember?), until McFarlane continued to use the characters as main players in the series, spin-offs, toys, movies, clothing, etc. The problem? Well now McFarlane says that these are solely his owned property as he hired Neil to do the work as a work-for-hire freelancer and therefore McFarlane owned everything that Gaiman had created for him. Todd McFarlane proved at that time, in my opinion, that he is a back-stabbing, money-grubbing, two-faced, asshole. The entire purpose of why he left Marvel was because they wouldn’t release rights to him for characters he created. SUPPORTING CHARACTERS (remember that), as he didn’t create Spider-Man, only drew one of the most memorable supporting characters ever, Eddie Brock / Venom. Now this is an entirely different debate as to the creator(s) of Venom, as the suit was just an adaption from Spider-Man’s symbiote suit. There are people going back 10 years before the creation of Venom that claim they have some part in the character. This contention was one of the main reasons McFarlane left Marvel, because even though Eddie Brock/Venom was wrote by David Michelinie and drawn by Todd McFarlane, the character was created as a work-for-hire project and is solely owned by Marvel (sound familiar?). So ultimately Gaiman had to sue McFarlane and Image to be paid for re-issues and revenue generated from the 3 created characters of the Spawn universe. Gaiman had to return to court over the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina, and Tiffany which were OBVIOUSLY rip-offs of the Medieval Spawn and Angela characters, an attempt to utilize the characters and still not pay the due monies to Neil. The characters are slightly re-drawn and include small cue changes like hair cut/color, etc.
So now this is to where we currently are. Erik Larsen, is utilizing a social network (Twitter) to spout off bullshit about how “Neil Gaiman could not have created Angela elsewhere. Her existence is dependent on Spawn and Todd McFarlane.” (via Twitter @ErikJLarsen) but the same can be said about Venom. With no Spider-Man, there would be no Venom. No Venom, no controversy. No controversy, no “Forging a new path” with Image’s principles. Ultimately Marvel made Todd McFarlane a recognizable name, he used that fame and the controversy revolving around the creation of these characters to headline Image (100% true statement, as Spawn outsold all of the other books combined) and then tried to screw Gaiman out of the rightly deserved claims. It’s not as if Gaiman attempted to use the created characters outside of the works they were shown in, but he still deserves to be paid. McFarlane has now went so far as to not include the #9 issue of Spawn, as well as the #10 issue containing the copyrighted character Cerebus, from the 1-12 reprint collection. McFarlane was also sued by hockey player Tony Twist after he used his likeness and name for a mob-based character. Seems McFarlane wants to make his own rules, but not play by anyone else’s.
The long-winded point I am making here is this. I looked up to Todd McFarlane, I used to doodle my spider webs just like he drew in the Spider-Man comics, I have 1-100 of Spawn including many off-shoots, I have many of the Spawn toys, I went and saw the Spawn movie TWICE, even though it sucked horribly, I bought the fuckin SOUNDTRACK and a T-Shirt, I snuck out to watch the cartoon on HBO, and I even picked up the return issue of McFarlane coming back to Spawn. Unfortunately, heroes that you think are diamonds can turn out to be made of glass. I looked up to this man, I didn’t even question him paying that ungodly amount of money for the purchases of (from Wikipedia) “Sosa’s 33rd, 61st and 66th home run balls, and McGwire’s first, 63rd, 67th, 68th, 69th and 70th. (McGwire’s 61st was the ball which tied Roger Maris‘ then-record, while McGwire’s 70th, bought by McFarlane at auction for US $3 million, set a new record at the time — broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds.) He later purchased Bonds’ record breaking 73rd home run ball for $450,000. ” He owns half of the Edmonton Oilers, he bought Green Monster Games with Kurt Schilling and changing it to 38 Studios, they are currently working on MMORPG games. All of this money flying around and he tries to SCREW another artist out of due payment for rights. It’s a fuckin shame.
I know this is kinda off topic for me, but I couldn’t help it, some of the shit being said on Twitter by some of the less savory characters involved (or believing themselves to be involved) in this ordeal really pisses me off. I am glad that the judicial system stood up for the very rights that McFarlane himself was so adamant about protecting.
If you have some money to donate to a worthwhile organization, please visit http://cbldf.org/ and help protect people who deserve to not have their art stolen, to be paid for work created, or not cited for obscenity by selling comics when anyone can purchase “Maxim” or the “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition” and see real people in more obscene positions and states of undress.
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