Menu
Home
>
>
Todd McFarlane Just Sued Spawn

Todd McFarlane Just Sued Spawn

By October 2, 2012 Comics 0 Comment

Thumbnail image for DA_mcfarlane_todd_bg.jpg

When Todd McFarlane created Spawn back in the halcyon days of 1993, he named him Al Simmons after an employee/friend. Since then, the real life Al Simmons has appeared in countless conventions, billing himself as Spawn, happily hanging out at the Image booth for years, and signing Spawn shit, meaning McFarlane was at least reasonably hunky-dory with Simmons cashing in on the character. What changed? Al Simmons’ autobiography, The Art of Being Spawn.

Short version: By McFarlane’s account, the book appears to be equally full of lies and trade secrets, neither of which Simmons should be telling. McFarlane is suing for libel, unfair competition, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, false endorsement, false advertising and trademark and copyright infringement.
I haven’t read the book and I don’t know the truth of the matter, because that would force me to learn things about Todd McFarlane and his company, taking up valuable brain cells I could be killing with liquor. Still, my gut is going with McFarlane on this one. McFarlane’s let Simmons cash in on Spawn for decades; and it’s far too easy to imagine a dude whose sole claim to fame is dwindling to nothing trying to stir up a bit of interest by 1) making some shit up and/or 2) telling shit he shouldn’t. McFaralane’s only suing for $75,000, so he’s not trying to make some grand spectacle or get some easy money, either. But who knows. Maybe McFarlane saw a baseball on ebay or something. Whatever. I just love the idea of McFarlane suing Spawn. (Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Related Posts

About The Author

Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.