After Tony Twist's lawsuit against Todd McFarlane yielded a ludicrously huge award, the erstwhile inkslinger has
filed for bankruptcy. You remember this case, right? It went like this:
In his hugely successful creator-owned comic book
Spawn, McFarlane named a mobster villain
Antonio Twistelli, or "Tony Twist" for short. In 2000, the real-life NHL enforcer
Tony Twist sued, and a jury in St. Louis (where Twist has always been loved out of proportion to his on-ice contributions) awarded him a guhjillion dollars. Never mind the First Amendment. Never mind that Twist was only supposed to be able to collect "real damages."
This was a timely windfall for Twist, a purebred enforcer out of work in the post-enforcer NHL. (Blues fans may recall he'd just been in a scary motorcycle accident, too, but his playing days were over before he got hurt.)
A sensible judge overruled this ridiculous verdict and the appeals court agreed, but last year the Missouri Supreme Court ordered a new trial, where Twist was awarded
fifteen million dollars.
For anyone who saw the real-life Tony Twist's creepy hot tub ads on St. Louis local TV stations (ca. 1999), it's impossible to square this gigantic number with the former pugilist's "real earnings" potential. If anything, this suit has
raised Twist's profile, making him more recognizable in endorsements now than he was in 2000. That is to say: not very.
Here's all you need to know about this case: it is the natural order of things for jocks to subjugate nerds. McFarlane can buy all the NHL franchises and million-dollar baseballs he wants — a rich and powerful comic-book nerd is still a comic-book nerd, and Twist is still a popular jock. I still say McFarlane's career-making run on
The Amazing Spider-Man was a low point for the book, but the comic-book guy is on the right side of this dispute.