Talk:Man of Miracles (comics)

Man of Miracles and Cogliostro

There are a few errors in your revision, mainly dealing with the Gaiman v. McFarlane lawsuit. Gaiman's lawsuit went to the 7th District of Appeals and the judge threw out the Miracleman portion of the suit and ruled on McFarlane's counterclaims and Gaiman's claims pertaining to the copyrightability and issue of ownership of the character Angela, Medieval Spawn and Cogliostro. The final ruling was that Gaiman and McFarlane, having each created 50% of the character (Gaiman - author, McFarlane - illustrator), were entitled to half ownership of the characters. Thus, by law, each can use the characters for whatever purposes they desire provided they give a full accounting to the other owner. That means that either can freely use the characters, they just have to pay the other. If you are a subscriber of LexisNexis you can search for the actual court documents and see the ruling rather than relying on incorrect information that has been dissemenated by both parties regarding the ruling. The rights to Cogliostro and the other characters never actually reverted to Gaiman. As co-creator and co-owner he was always entitled to his share of the profits resulting from the use of his creation. Thus, Cog can be used by name and appear in the book.

The Miracleman issue has not yet been resolved, nor does it appear that it will in the near future.

I submit the following as a collaborative revision, using yours as the framework. Please let me know if you find this an acceptable NPOV revision.

MoM = Cog?

Since late 2005, two years after the famous owner/creator's rights lawsuit between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane, there has been much speculation as to whether the Man of Miracles is a retcon of the disputed character, Cogliostro. According to the Spawn creative team, Man of Miracles was a planned addition to the comic cast prior to Cog's "departure," but was originally supposed to be Miracleman.

Additional legal issues regarding the ownership of the Miracleman character required a change of plans. McFarlane and Gaiman believed that Todd had purchased rights to Miracleman during his buyout of most of the assets of bankrupt Eclipse Comics. This led to a proposed trade of McFarlane's interest in Miracleman for Gaiman's interests in the characters Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn. This deal fell through and Todd resumed his plans to use Miracleman, creating a cold-cast statue, a 4" action figure and plans to resurrect the character in Hellspawn Issue 13 and in the infamously delayed Image Tenth Anniversary.

It was revealed that McFarlane owned the rights for two trademarks on Miracleman logos, but no rights to the character himself as he and most others believed. The artwork for the Image Tenth book, released in late 2005 as the Image Hardcover, was already finalized before this revelation. Hellspawn Issue 13, however, had not been finalized and McFarlane chose to change his plans for that issue in a move that helped lead to the cancelation of the book only a few issues later. Since the Image Hardcover story ties in directly with the events of Spawn Issue 150 and beyond and Miracleman could not be used, he was replaced by the enigmatic Man of Miracles. This is explained by the fact that the perception of Man of Miracles differs from person to person. They see him as they want to see him and thus Spawn saw him as Miracleman. Subsequent appearances have been more varied to further distinguish the character and avoid dispute.

Since Cogliostro and his actions remain in continuity and available for use and Man of Miracles is a fully seperate and distinct character Man of Miracles cannot be a retcon of Cog."

.--Avatar_of_chaos

Not sure if the MoM article is the place to discuss the legal issues surrounding MiracleMan. Might want to trim/summarize that part. It strikes me that other articles have done the Gaiman/McFarlane feud better and more thoroughly, so perhaps best to focus on the specific issues relating to the appearance in the 10th Anniversary hardback.

Tracking the ownership of the Miracleman trademarks and copyrights is a tremendous can of worms, and probably beyond the scope of the article we're writing.--Rosicrucian 00:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

RE:MM/Cog

I think it's the perfect place, and needs to be on both the Man of Miracles and Miracleman articles. Redundant? Perhaps, however it covers both bases since most people believe what is on the wikipedia articles and this information is often presented incorrectly. The info should also be on the Cog, Angela and the Gaiman v. McFarlane section of the Spawn article if not it's own outright article. After reviewing the court documents the issue of Miracleman's ownership, which I barely touched in my revision, was thrown out as being outside of the scope of the appeal and counter-suit. Since Man of Miracles is a retcon of that character it is valid information that is necessary to explain why the retcon was necessary in the first place. Having the the correct information on the page is a service, not a disservice to the wikipedia readers.

I don't think we should sacrifice accuracy. The more informative we can be the easier it will be to dispell the factual errors that have been presented here and that people reference as fact.

These are the reasons I feel the info must be included:

• 1) a fundamental error has been made, and spread over many articles leading to people citing the wikipedia articles incorrectly because it states facts contrary to the court documents
• 2) the ownership issue ties into the trademarks on the MM logos which have been used for the Man of Miracles action figure and the appearance of Man of Miracles (under the guise of Miracleman) in the Hardcover.
• 3) the ownership issue of Cog, Angela and Medieval Spawn is background for why the rumors began

If you disagree, please let me know why. --Avi

I think it's the redundancy that bothers me. I see the change from Miracleman to Man of Miracles to be relevant to the article, and perhaps some of the issues regarding the new action figure (though that belongs in a different subsection rather than the Cog retcon rumor) but the bulk of the legal battle and trademark/copyright issues are better served in the Miracleman article.

Though perhaps if we want to establish a broader consensus we could take this off our user talk pages and onto the talk page for the article itself.--Rosicrucian 18:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

They way I look at it, it's necessary. It's not redunancy for the sake of redundancy, it's specificly designed to address the damage that's already been caused by the errors presented. As I said before, it could even be its own article because that's how big it can get. But when discussing whether one character is a retcon of another character I don't see the problem with including these specific issues that I've presented here here when it is direct background for how the rumor began and continues to perpetuate itself as well as a means of highlighting the correct information. --Avi

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BetacommandBot (talk) 21:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)