canadamus_prime said:
Therumancer said:
canadamus_prime said:
Is it really as incredibly absurd as it sounds?
It's not really that absurd, I did an even more basic summary of it in response to the first half of this. Basically Mcfarlane and Gaiman were partners of a sort, had a falling out, hate each other, and have been slap fighting over the rights. Mcfarlane being a money hungry douche of the highest order.
And that doesn't sound utterly absurd to you?
Nope, sounds like a typical business falling out to be honest. If you wound up in a company with a partner and then parted ways with them... badly, you'd probably wind up fighting over who gets what as well, especially if your dealing with the remnants of profitable collaberative work like we saw with Image.
In this case it seems like a pretty straightforward issue, things tend to seem "absurd" to me when arguements are based entirely on technicalities. In this case there are some very real, defined, IPs being argued about, and a lot of money coming from them.
To me absurd is when someone like Todd Mcfarlane decided to go after Palladium for their "Nightspawn" game because he felt the title and dark fantasy nature of the game made it too similar to "Spawn" even if it wasn't even close.
Another absurdist situation in this arena was one where Todd was actually a victim of sorts, with him being sued because he made a mobster named "Tony Twist" who looked vaguely similar to a well known Hockey Player by that name, it being an intentional homage to one of his heroes. The player successfully sued him for it, in one of the more WTF situations in comics, and pretty much establishing a doctrine by which it's difficult to give anyone a nod, wink, or acknowlegement like that in the media for fear that they might smell blood and come after you for money.
In the overall arena of geekdom legality this isn't absurd. It's also incredibly tame when you just look at the garbage that has followed Todd Mcfarlane around in paticular.
To be honest I largely suspect he bought that infamous baseball to dump his money because of all the people he pissed off. You can't get blood out of a rock to to speak, and the most they could do in the long run would be to basically auction the BB and fight over the proceeds. Of course I imagine he also suspeced the record it was connected to would last longer and be less contreversial, and thus worth more in the long run if he ever decided to cash it in. But this is all speculation on my part. Mcfarlane is pretty much a financial/legal soap opera when you get down to it. His situation is arguably absurd, but this paticular case with Gaiman really isn't, which is why I suspect Gaiman has been winning so often in the disputes (as Bob mentioned), it's actually downright straightforward.
