Neil Gaiman's $450,000+ Payout From Todd McFarlane

If, like me, you’re one of the many who is now wondering, what the resolution of the Neil Gaiman vs Todd McFarlane lawsuit really means in financial terms, here’s your first clue.  Not only did Gaiman win 50% of the copyright for Spawn issues #9 and #26, along with the Angela mini-series and the introduced characters within all (Angela, Medieval Spawn etc etc), but he’s also scored a very decent cash payout, not that he’s likely to see a lot of it.  

You'd be smiling too

In 2008, as part of his bankruptcy case, McFarlane was ordered to play $382,000 into Escrow to offset any possible losses that might arise in the Gaiman suit.  Now that McFarlane has lost, the entire amount, with interest, has been released.  The upside of this is that, based on a reasonable average interest of 5% after four years and a bit, Gaiman can expect to see about  $464,000, give or take a few thousand (hey - I'm no good at maths, so if you can do better by all means do so) - and that'd be the start.  There's still an accounting of Angela and Co to happen yet.  The flip-side to this is that both sides have to pay their own attorney fees and costs, and when you realise that this case has been going on since February 2002, you can imagine what those costs would be.  You can only hope that the settlement between the pair included an extra sum to cover those very sizable fees.  It probably won't hurt to give McFarlane's store a bit of a plug - he might need the extra cash.

Hello cash, goodbye cash!