It's never fun when a friendship goes awry, but it's doubly worse when there's quite a lot of money involved: Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman has been sued by former collaborator and childhood friend Tony Moore, who drew the first six issues of the comic book, as well as dozens of covers after leaving the title. Moore claims that he was tricked into giving up his commercial rights to the series, which has, of course, gone on to wild fame as cable's highest rated TV show. "Each of these works was prepared by [Moore] and Kirkman with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or independent parts of a unitary whole," the lawsuit reads. "[Moore] and Kirkman were thus joint authors and co-owners of the copyrights in these works."
The Hollywood Reporter has all of the nitty gritty allegations: Moore says that back in 2005, he signed the majority of his copyright interests over to Kirkman thinking that a proposed TV deal would fall apart if he didn't, the idea being that Kirman would pay him his share of royalties. Instead, Moore says he hasn't received any money, using pointed words like "swindle" to describe how the deal went down. In counterpoint, Kirkman's attorney said "Mr. Moore is owed no money at all. And Mr. Moore's contract has an attorneys' fees clause in it so we will be going after him to collect attorneys' fees. We are taking this matter very seriously." This sounds like a bloodbath, one that won't end pleasantly.
For what it's worth: I used to be a slave to the Walking Dead comic, and Moore's hyper-detailed art was definitely a huge factor in shaping its tone. Of course, the good intentions of creative collaboration don't automatically translate to legal right, so it's difficult to say what recourse he has. It's hard to poke into the details of any fallen-apart friendship, but it's sad that they have to resort to litigation to work out what started as such a small, noble endeavor (about bloodthirsty zombies and the perils of struggling in a mad, Godless world, but still).
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