Gary Friedrich, co-creator of the Marvel Comics character Ghost Rider, was ordered to pay the publishing company $17,000 this week in a counter-suit resulting from an intellectual property claim against the publisher.

This is a really messy case, that no matter how you look at it it’s going to be terrible and ugly, but before we get into all of that, here’s a little backstory on the case. Some of this information is cloudy, but it seems like the counter-suit has been won by Marvel, but they’re offering to drop that lawsuit if Friedrich settles to new arrangements made by the publishing company. Not everything is clear, and as of writing this article, I don’t have access to the court documents and all the information needed, but the details are truly irrelevant if you take the rest of the situation into consideration.