User blog comment:Ironman444/Angela joining marvel/@comment-61022-20130505224149

Clearing things up for those of you who don't know: Angel was a character co-created by Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman for Todd's title Spawn back in 1992 for Image Comics. There was a dispute on royalty rights on the characters. Neil wanted money for the reprint sales and continued use of the characters. Todd said now, and a huge legal battle happened (not the first time McFarlane got in legal troubles either, look up Tony Twist) ultimately, Gaiman won his legal battle in 2012, getting sole ownership rights to the Angela character, while the other creations he made for Todd were co-owned.

I think the entire deal with it is ironic, because the whole point Todd started Image Comics with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld was because they didn't think that they were getting proper compensation for creating new characters or getting paid well enough for all the work they had done for Spider-Man and the various X-Men titles of the time. So it strikes me as hypocritical that Todd would have went through a huge legal battle with Neil over the ownership rights to the Angela character. Because Todd was basically doing what Marvel did to him and Lee and Liefeld before they left.

In the end, really, the fact that most people don't know or care who Angela is, is just a sign that the character was made irrelevant after all the years of legal battling that went on over the character.

I figure that when all is said and done, when Angela is introduced into the Marvel Universe she probably won't have any of her Spawn history as part of her origins, I can see the character being entirely revamped so that it's sans-Spawn continuity.

It wouldn't make any sense to do that, because they'd have to get Todd's permission and it's not like anyone but REALLY long time readers know who she is. Any old Spawn stories that involved Angela went out of print in 2005, so the only way you're going to know is getting an old graphic novel or hunting up the original issues. It wouldn't be in their best interest.