Thread by @Exalted_Speed

Welcome to part 2 of Miracleman, the Blue Banana with so many legal troubles it makes my head hurt, today we get to the main meat of one of the most important legal battles in comics, where we see the ruler of 13 years old boys vs the ruler of all Goth girls.

Enter Todd Mcfarlane.
*Who founded Image?
TODD!
*Who made the adult collectors market for toys?
TODD!
*Who only survives by breathing and Perfect body control?
TODD!....wait what(this was a thing he was doing for a while)

Okay lets get to the auction, now this actually starts way back in the early 90's, Todd left Marvel to form Image comics and it was big hit but....Todd was a terrible writer. A lot of creators at the time actually made fun of him including the people making MIGHTY MOUSE!

Now Todd was self aware enough, that he decided early on to get writers on his series and make the market be well good writing he got 4 writers for it. He was able to get Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Dave Sim....and Neil Gaiman.

Neil for his part was part of a different world, Neil catered to a different marker of fantasy fans and women who like to dress up like death, while Todd was 13 year old boys, but this would cause headlines.

Neil THE CREATOR OF SANDMAN WORKING ON SPAWN? OH GOD Neil for his part was payed 100,000 dollars for this job. It was a huge gig and with it he would create 3 character for Todd, Medieval Spawn, Angela, Cogliostro.

Anyway the gig was done, Todd made certain promises to Neil, mostly that he would treat him better then Marvel and DC, lets note one thing about Neil right now, Neil has honestly one of the most blessed comic book careers of all time.

Neil GOT ROYALTIES FROM DC for his Sandman character, like the only one of the endless he doesn't own is Destiny and that's because he felt he didn't change him enough, and so Neil was treated kind of well, he had his moments but compared to others it's almost drama free.

but here's the thing you all have to realize that caused this drama to reach a BOILING point.....the 90's comic bubble burst. You see in the 90's comic started to sell to speculators and that would eventually burst causing LOW sales across the board.

Todd should be noted on a couple things, one he did have good business sense, guy made MONEY, but, Todd early on was VERY LAX on a lot of shit this includes CONTRACTS with most of his early ones being verbal leading to issues he would deal with later on.

and with Neil a lot stuff he did was VERBAL and very fly by night, he did give Neil checks but he didn't put down say a formula he would get for this or that for using shit. and the characters he DID create for Spawn ended up being major.

and one day the checks stopped....and Todd was trying to wheel and deal....so one thing Todd did....was buy all the Eclipse assets. Including THE BLUE BANANA HIMSELF.

and well remember that contract? Well here's what happened when Todd purchased it there was clause in the Miraclman rights that said "if Eclipse event went bankrupt all rights revert back to the owners or they would have first go..." and When Todd bought it...

It's often been theorized Todd didn't want Miraclman, and there is some proof of this, Todd wanted A BARGAINING CHIP, something Neil would trade for in order to gain control of those 3 characters, see Todd didn't want Micky he wanted the Angel, the Spawn on a horse, and old man.

Neil Gaiman would go to court and this court battle would take years of time, the battle started in 2001 and honestly were are some still feeling the effects of this court even now, MORE problems popping up when we thought it was settled. Let's go over some highlights.

One book came out during this period that shed light on the legal issues and had interviews with most of the major parties, and looking at it some people PROBABLY lied, one good example is the editor of Eclipse who tried to dodge a lot of issues.

It shed some light but it also in hindsight seems like a smoking gun for later
*Mick Never had the rights and didn't care at all
*Dez reveled he lied about the Marvel legal stuff
*Alan Davis basically goes to explain that Alan Moore went behind his back

You see Alan Moore always made a big deal ABOUT ONLY DOING THE BOOK IS DAVIS gave permission and he never asked Davis directly, at all, he didn't ask a MUTUAL friend they had, so Alan Moore worked on a book where he just ignored Davis rights or didn't do due diligence for him.

When I said there were no good guys or bad guy I did mean that, these are people with egos, problems, and a whole lot of shortsightedness. Everyone is to blame here, some more then others, choose the villain if you want but it's easier to say what the fuck is this mess.

Todd would try to enforce his rights by making some toys and statues, I actually own the second one, he released that one under man of miracles, and this would cause him problems. Many problems....but one person decided to step in and help this legal quagmire.

It's Marvel baby. Marvel on teamed up with Neil to help him with his case, or I should say Joe Quesda, Joe was playing it smart here because it means one Neil owes him, and they would have a major GN to put out.

Marvel would help form a company WITH a lawyer to help settle matters and this would the trademark for Miracleman products, this would also allow many of the creators to maybe keep their rights.....but...it got worse.

Now let's talk about Emotiv, Emotiv is a company who said THEY GOT MICK ANGLO'S right and that they own Miracleman.....this was said in many news sites that Mick actually own them and they even went to Moore to say they did. Which is why Moore took his name off of later reprints

Todd during this found out that he didn't own shit, what Todd owned from Eclipse was an expired trademark, and while he would fight for years he would mellow out later in the end and actually work some stuff out, recently for example Angela showed up in new Reprints.

Angela was put int he Marvel universe and the rights seem a bit more murky then we thought since both Medieval spawn showed back up, and other things. I rather not dwell on this aspect too much here.

During the trial Todd ended up getting reamed for a lot his shenanigans which include
*Making another not Medieval spawn
*Trying to make Miracleman stuff
*being kind of an ass in correspondence
*A judge having to read 100 issues of spawn to figure out who owned what.....

There is kind of a big mystery, Mick says he never owned Marvelman before this, WE HAVE INTERVIEWS of it, and this company seems to be parading a 90's year old man saying they have the rights in order to make new material for it.....

No joke they had a doc planned, and a Movie trilogy planned, they were even going to reprinted the comic and even maybe give him a new name Master man, Marvelman belonged to mick or not? Well in this case who knows but here's what I got.

Now Marvel there part manged to get most of the published material out and work something out with Mick but Emotiv was in the background and after they published all the material or reprinted it, they stopped for a number of years, Neil would reveal in facebook the legal hangups

Alan Moore would become the original Writer on all reprints making it hard to market this book to newbies since you can't Use Alan moore's name, and this would also happen to ANOTHER book INpictopia published by Fantagraphics.

and this brings us to today, and recently he showed up at the end of Timless people are calling this the new Doomsday clock but....there is some doubt and I'm going to tell you why because there is more info about what is going on.

Neil retweeted it and to tell you the truth, this is most likely him giving a kind of hint that what next for Miracleman is him finally finishing up his work for the character in the Silver age. Which honestly most have been waiting decades for.

The BIG PIECE of news, is that Marvel is now releasing a Miracleman omnibus, the channel Near mint condition was given the go ahead to break the news so this also might have just been to say Marvel is finally putting the entire run into one book which...has never happened.

and that's it for the legal battle, this could all be outdated by tomorrow, there is always something new, but honestly after all of this, I'm glad I'm able to read about blue banana in one volume at least. Because this lost classic took a long road to get here.

We lost a lot of chances with this character including a planned crossover with Supreme that Alan Moore would have wrote, but alas this cursed chalice history is just, full of missed opportunities.