Who Gave Spawn A Fox Kids Makeover?

This week at CBR, I'm revisiting the amusingly odd all-ages Spawn comic, created to promote the Spawn-X toyline.

Todd McFarlane's Spawn - The Endgame...?!

This week at CBR, I examine the first season finale of Todd McFarlane's Spawn. Bonus -- we get to also relive the gruesomeness of the infamous Spawn #5!

How a Spider-Man/Ghost Rider Team-Up Influenced HBO's Spawn

Spikes and chains and disturbing acts... how did two issues of Spider-Man influence HBO's brutal cult classic cartoon? Find out this week at CBR.

When Angela Debuted on HBO's Spawn (For... No Real Reason)

This week at CBR, I look back at Angela's debut on the animated Spawn...which, I'm assuming, led to nothing thanks to Neil Gaiman's hobby of suing Todd McFarlane.

Stan Lee's Odd Connection to One of Spawn's Nastiest Foes

I continue my deep dive into the HBO adaptation of Todd McFarlane's Spawn. This time, we're revisiting the (sorta) Stan Lee co-creation Overt-Kill.

Psst...HBO 'Remixed' Spawn Years Before Watchmen

I'm looking back on the second episode of HBO's Spawn adaptation this week at CBR. Hide your kids from that ice cream truck.

How Spawn Transitioned From Comics to (Very R-Rated) TV

I'm going back to the pilot for Todd McFarlane's Spawn this week on CBR. It's very possible I'll cover the entire six-episode season, if there's interest.

Remembering the Show Banned by Parents Nationwise

My other CBR post of the week, an examination of the HBO animated series, TODD McFARLANE'S SPAWN.    I tried to cover the development and all three seasons in one post, while also discussing the possibility of the long-teased, still-missing, new SPAWN series.

Back to Hell

My latest CBR piece is on the evolution of Spawn over the years, and Todd McFarlane's efforts to revamp the title in recent months.  It's possible that there might be more of these in the future, but nothing's promised.

I Still Want that Maxx Figure

This is identified as 1994, but I'm pretty sure this was the 1995 line of Spawn toys.  

And you can see many of the early Spawn ads in this video (along with Avi Arad promoting Marvel's X-Men line of toys.  How many multi-millionaire Hollywood producers could you find working the booth at a toy convention? )

SPAWN Ex Post Facto - Part Five

I have a theory. This is total conjecture, but I think this explains a few things. When Todd McFarlane sat down to watch the big screen adaptation of Spawn, as he witnessed Spawn’s origin story spelled out in chronological order for the first time, with all of the shadow and mystery removed…I think, maybe, he was a little embarrassed. When Spawn debuts as an anonymous figure in the alleys, occasionally flashing back to the life of a government assassin, awakening with the vague sense that he’s been screwed somehow -- this is a character with potential. When his life is spelled out in sequential order, when all of the major players are conveniently introduced for an audience that Hollywood appears to view as simpletons, he’s just a guy who made an idiotic deal with the devil. A horribly CGI-rendered devil. The entire Spawn mythos starts to look a little dumb.

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but as the Spawn movie made its way into theatres, McFarlane was in the process of firmly moving the comic into the urban horror genre. Spawn always had horror elements, but they were usually expressed with gross-out violence and gore. Spawn himself wasn’t a spooky character. Within a few issues, we knew of his true identity as Al Simmons and his desire to be reunited with his wife. We knew of their failed attempts to have a child; a dream that could only be realized for Wanda with Al’s best friend, Terry. We even knew the name of Al and Wanda’s dog. While Spawn never felt compelled to seek out people to save, he would help someone in trouble if their paths crossed. He might not have fit the strictest definition of “superhero,” but it’s not as if Wizard put him on their list of “Top 10 Urban Horror Characters in Comics” either. I don’t think anyone viewed Spawn as a true horror comic, which meant McFarlane had his work cut out for him if he was serious about changing direction.

As it turns out, McFarlane was deadly serious about downplaying the superheroic elements and recasting Spawn as more Dracula than Batman. By 1998, McFarlane even declared that he would be directing the next Spawn movie -- an R-rated horror piece that would have limited special effects and only feature Spawn as a ghostly participant on the edges of the story. Now, if you’ve loyally followed the Spawn series for years, if you have some understanding of Al Simmons as a character, if at one point you cared whether or not he was reunited with his wife…does this interest you?

A letter writer called McFarlane out on the change in direction. McFarlane justified his move, saying that his goal all along was for the audience to “grow” with Spawn. A twelve year old who purchased Spawn #1 was now in his late teens. McFarlane reasoned that this former kid was now an adult, with adult interests, concerns, and tastes. Perhaps this lapsed X-Men fan was now reading Vertigo. If he’s growing up with comics, why shouldn’t Spawn grow up with him? It’s a logic that Marvel and DC would soon follow in the new millennium. And both companies experienced the same outcome that awaited McFarlane -- their lowest sales ever.

It’s hard to believe that McFarlane once thought Vertigo and Spawn could share much of an audience. By this point, the critical reputation of the book was fairly abysmal, and many of Vertigo’s most vocal fans didn’t seem interested in any “mainstream” comic not written by Grant Morrison anyway. McFarlane soldiered on, though, hiring people well suited for urban crime/horror: Paul Jenkins, Ashley Wood, Brian Michael Bendis, David Hine, Steve Niles, and more. These are all creators that older readers have embraced, but I wonder how many stayed away based solely on Spawn’s reputation. McFarlane’s disputes with at least one of the creators probably didn’t help matters, either.

Having gone back and read the early issues of Brian Holguin’s stint as sole writer (the final issues I own), I have to admit that the series experienced a noticeable upturn in quality. The excessive horror elements still feel a little awkward, but the stories actually have direction and Spawn is finally given an active motivation to explore. Following his experience in the Greenworld, Spawn now feels a connection to the Earth, one that allows him to sense evil. Rather than revel in it, Spawn is compelled to stop the evil that surrounds him, leading him to finally forge that bond with detectives Sam and Twitch. A few issues later (apparently as a result of a storyline in Paul Jenkins’ Spawn: The Undead series), Spawn’s even traveling the world, seeking out evil in need of punishment. Ironically, Spawn’s acting more like Batman than ever at this point. The trappings of a superhero comic are gone (a supporting cast, home base, secret identity…really anything that humanizes Spawn), but the character is more active than ever.

The audience was already abandoning the book at this point, however. I imagine this is a combination of a few factors. One, horror comics just don’t sell that well. There is the occasional Walking Dead that breaks out, but that’s rare. Horror books tend to sell to a particular subculture, one that perhaps wasn’t inclined to buy Spawn. Two, Spawn’s visuals never changed during this period, so any attempt at launching a new direction was hindered by the old look (which I personally associate with a lot of bad writing, and I know I’m not alone). Finally, the number of adults that truly “grow up” with a book is pretty small. An ongoing series needs a constant stream of new blood; pandering to what you think the audience wants as it enters its 20s and 30s is madness. Spawn sold millions of copies to teenagers in the ‘90s. An eighth grade boy would probably still be attracted to Spawn today…if, through some miracle, he actually came across a comic. Even for a reader not inclined towards horror, the visuals of Spawn are genuinely striking. The mask, the cape, the neon green energy signature, the chains and spikes…the “kewlness” wears off as adolescence ends, but this is powerful eye candy for kids bored with the Power Rangers.

I don’t know if Spawn will disappear like Wildstorm or Wizard. Maybe the Spawn reprint collections still sell well in bookstores, enabling McFarlane to keep the title in print indefinitely. There might be a new generation of teen readers discovering the book outside of the insular world of comic shops for all I know. Regardless of how frustrated I became with the book, I can’t deny I received many hours of entertainment from Spawn during my early teenage years. I might even check out the new Spawn animated series, assuming the project is ever completed. I doubt I could ever become invested in the world again, but I’ll always carry some nostalgia for it.

I wonder if "Overkill" and "Overt-Kill" are two separate copyrights.

SPAWN Ex Post Facto - Part Four

Obviously, Spawn wouldn’t have been a sales juggernaut if ‘90s comics fans weren’t in love with Todd McFarlane’s artwork. Originally an amalgam of Art Adams and Michael Golden, McFarlane earned a reputation as a “cartoony” artist who could turn in an inordinate number of pages a month. To say that his style was polarizing would be an understatement (Larry Hama, or perhaps his editor, was so displeased with McFarlane’s work on G. I. Joe, it was redrawn twice -- McFarlane redid his first issue, and Marshall Rogers was brought in after his second issue was totally scrapped), but the guy was fast and quickly building a name for himself. Editor Jim Salicrup has said in interviews that he was inspired to hire McFarlane for Amazing Spider-Man after seeing his inking, which I believe is the true source of much of his popularity.

With few exceptions, readers didn’t tend to pay attention to inkers. (Now that inkers are mostly treated as “tracers” again, I would say it’s returned to a pretty low-profile job.) The role of the inker was mostly viewed as strictly utilitarian -- the artwork had to be gone over in ink in order to be dark enough to be reproduced. I don’t think many inkers had the belief that they were supposed to be making the work better in the early days. That attitude began to change long before McFarlane entered comics, but even by the late ‘80s, most inkers not named Terry Austin and Klaus Janson were ignored by the fans.

While I’m sure McFarlane learned a lot from assisting Klaus Janson, the inking style he developed on Amazing Spider-Man seemed to owe most of its inspiration to George Perez. Perez’s penciling obviously overshadows his reputation as an inker, but anyone who’s seen Perez ink over someone else can easily recognize his style (look up his work over Dan Jurgens and Ron Frenz if you’ve never seen it). Aside from the fact that the lines just look darker, there’s also an added level of texture and attention to detail that’s rarely conveyed in inks. It’s hard for me to look at a page like this and not see a strong Perez influence:

While McFarlane was amassing his fanbase, Greg Capullo broke into comics with a standard mainstream superhero look, fitting in comfortably as a replacement for Paul Ryan on Quasar. Within a few years, Capullo’s work began to resemble a cross between John Byrne and Jim Lee. I don’t think anyone who followed his run on X-Force would describe it as “cartoony,” but it was striking and clearly energetic. When McFarlane announced Capullo as Spawn’s first fill-in artist, he didn't seem like too much of a stretch for the book. When Capullo returned as co-artist a few months later, the rubbery nature of McFarlane’s anatomy began to fade away, creating a style that merged the strengths of both artists.

As the months progressed, however, Capullo began to move further and further into expressionism. From around issue #30 on, it’s hard to describe the Capullo/McFarlane collaboration. Here’s a McFarlane solo drawing of a pretty redhead (and, yes, I know the scan isn't in English):

Here’s a Capullo pretty girl, shortly after his X-Force days:

Here they are together, depicting a redhead specifically designed to be a knockout:

It’s not very convincing, is it? As the issues go on, McFarlane’s inks become less about texture, and more about the sheer volume of scratchy lines that can fit on a page. Danny Miki, another scratchy line aficionado, replaced McFarlane as inker following the seventy-fifth issue. Compare now the unnamed female newscaster, as penciled and inked by McFarlane:

Here she is again, now penciled by Capullo and inked by McFarlane:

And finally, unnamed female newscaster, as envisioned by Greg Capullo and Danny Miki:

Admittedly, she isn’t drawn in close-up in that final scan, but the difference is still striking. The humans just look less human. Not that McFarlane was ever going for photorealism, but the characters still seem believable within the context of McFarlane’s world. Unfortunately, the look developed by the end of the Capullo/McFarlane collaboration becomes the house style of Spawn, resulting in an endless series of identical looking comics. Check out a cover gallery of Spawn following the fiftieth issue and just look at the screen full of sameness staring back at you. Even though McFarlane gained prominence from his off-model rendition of Spider-Man, apparently no one penciling Spawn was encouraged to experiment with the character (Ashley Wood was allowed to go nuts with spin-offs, but not the main book). That’s a shame, because a new injection of artistic blood helps to keep a series going. Bob Harras could’ve hired an endless series of Jim Lee clones to draw Uncanny X-Men, but instead he allowed Joe Madureira and Chris Bachalo to visually reinvent the franchise. While Marvel and DC were giving artists like Adam Kubert, Joe Cassaday, Carlos Pacheco, and Ed McGuinness high-profile assignments, Spawn kept on looking like Spawn.

One of the few variations on Spawn’s look came a few years ago in the Adventures of Spawn series. I’m not entirely sure what this comic is, but apparently it began life as a tie-in to a more kid-friendly incarnation of the Spawn toy line. This would explain why it resembles the CBS Saturday Morning Spawn cartoon that never existed. The art is a fairly standard, post-Bruce Timm “Adventures” look, but it’s clean, attractive, and the exact opposite of what McFarlane has trained the audience to expect over the years. Maybe McFarlane has become less dogmatic in recent years, as evidenced by his choice of new Spawn artist Symon Kurdanski. I thought his Streets of Gotham back-ups were too dark and muddy, but the guy clearly has talent. More realistic anatomy, fewer detail lines, Gene Colan-style washes…that could certainly work on Spawn. Unfortunately, the audience had to wait over a hundred issues to get this new look, and I wonder if it’s too late at this point to attract their attention.

Watch Out For the Corners!

Spawn: The Eternal. The scariest Spawn-related entertainment you're ever going to see.

SPAWN Ex Post Facto - Part Three

It’s a standard rule of writing that protagonists need motivation. Even the earliest superhero comics, written by teenagers, had a rudimentary understanding of this. Superman cared about the little guy and wanted to fight the bullies, often by behaving like a bully himself. A few years later, readers discovered that Batman hunted criminals in the night to avenge the death of his parents. A series lead needs something to do, and he needs a compelling reason to do it. So, what does Spawn do? He pines for his wife, and occasionally kills people if they invade his turf. Over the course of seventy-five issues and numerous miniseries, it’s hard to discern any motives deeper than this.

In fairness, Spawn’s lack of motivation is an intentional plot point in the early issues. He’s sent from Hell to Earth with no memory of his past, and only a psychotic clown as his guide. The first year of the series gets some mileage out of Spawn’s random flashbacks, which emphasize his love for his wife and disdain for the government agency that betrayed him. After Spawn torments his killer (the original one) in issue #13, the character’s left with barely anything to do. Over the ensuing issues, Spawn defends himself against an angelic attack, is manipulated by Harry Houdini into stopping a rogue atomic scientist, and is forced to protect his former best friend, who’s been framed for Spawn’s theft of CIA files and weapons. These are legitimate premises, but all of them involve outside forces that compel Spawn into action. Eventually, the hero has to do more than just respond (you could argue the X-Men were rarely proactive during their highest sales period in the ‘90s, but the writers kept the audience’s attention with numerous mysteries and various character-driven subplots).

With no motivation, Spawn is left without a direction, which becomes increasingly obvious as the series passes the twenty-fifth issue. Now, it certainly seems as if some things were supposed to happen, but apparently Todd McFarlane had last minute thoughts about the series’ momentum and decided to slow things down. The original solicitation for issue #24 had Spawn teaming up with detective duo Sam and Twitch for the first time. The characters have been around since the first issue, always on the periphery of Spawn’s life, so finally uniting them at the end of the title’s second year seems reasonable. Around this time, Terry Fitzgerald has his first inkling that Spawn is his deceased friend Al, which also seems appropriate for the next phase of the title. But what happens next? The content of issue #24 doesn’t match the solicitations, and instead devotes an extra issue to the conclusion to “The Hunt” storyline, which ends with Spawn intimidating his enemies into leaving Wanda and Terry alone (something he’s still doing by the seventy-fifth issue).

Terry occasionally wonders if Spawn is Al, but the idea is dropped until thirty issues or so later when Spawn confirms the truth. By this point, Wanda’s already learned Spawn’s identity, from Spawn himself. She chooses to ignore this information, even when her saintly grandmother repeatedly tells her that Al is alive. As for Sam and Twitch, they only learn of their destiny to become Spawn’s “knights” in issue sixty-five, which doesn’t stop them from trying to arrest him (even though they’re no longer cops) for the next ten issues. They don’t actually join forces with Spawn until issue seventy-eight. That’s over fifty issues later than the original plan! And it’s not as if these characters were given a compelling storyline in the meantime; their story has always been about getting them in place to become aides for Spawn on Earth. The story just doesn’t happen until several years later, as the writing transitions from McFarlane to Brian Holguin.

Surprisingly enough, the pace starts to pick up during McFarlane’s final days as scripter. After a two-year period that mainly seemed to consist of Spawn feeding off of worms in-between hopeless subplots scenes, events actually start to happen. Events that might seem familiar to readers with an HBO subscription. The kidnapping of Cyan, the floor-by-floor takedown of Jason Wynn, Twitch getting shot, a “dead zone” in the alleys, a mysterious library in a church-turned-museum that Cogliostro and Spawn use to investigate the occult…all ideas introduced in the animated series that also show up between issues #60 and #80 of the comic. If only that series had been green-lighted a few years earlier. It’s also worth noting that while the first season borrowed heavily from the first twenty-four issues of the comic, virtually nothing past issue #25 made its way into the later episodes. I’m not saying that the producers (which included McFarlane) specifically declared this era off-limits, but surely someone had to realize that the book is almost completely out of ideas by the end of its second year.

Why would a creator hold back on his ideas, especially in a book that he owns? Yes, the major milestones of a title should be spaced out appropriately, but most of the ideas McFarlane holds out on don’t seem that significant. It’s obvious that Spawn will have some relationship with Sam and Twitch, so why wait several years before establishing their partnership? Considering that Spawn’s a character with no real motivation, events need to keep happening, or else the series becomes totally aimless. And while the series continued to languish, every few months a new line of sick, bizarre, and twisted Spawn action figures hit the shelves. As Spawn hung around alleys and played with worms, dozens of potential allies and foes were molded into plastic and shipped to toy stores across the world. Could it be that McFarlane was unleashing his creative energies on his toy line, leaving none left for the comic that inspired the franchise?

SPAWN Ex Post Facto - Part Two

Oh, shut up...

If you look at almost any Image comic from the early days, you’re going to see a plethora of characters competing for your attention on every page. I can think of two immediate reasons why: 1) The X-Men franchise was selling insanely well at the time, so team books were hot, and 2) The more characters in a comic, the more potential action figures and movie pitches in the creator’s pocket. Spawn took a different route, slowly introducing the hero, main villain, and a handful of supporting cast members over the opening four issues. Unfortunately, McFarlane will take slow burn storytelling well past the point of self-parody in future issues, but the deliberate pace of the early issues is a welcome break from the convoluted, cluttered, and hyperactive comics associated with the early ‘90s.

And, just imagine, an early Image comic that took the time to introduce a supporting cast of normal humans. Not a support staff for a government-sponsored superhero team, or a billionaire financier or bimbo girlfriend, but instead a suburban family and two ordinary detectives stuck investigating the chaos that surrounds the hero. A few issues later, Spawn will be adopted by the city’s homeless -- people who have lost perhaps even more than the series’ protagonist. And, for the first twenty-five issues or so, this scenario works quite well.

While McFarlane realized that the supernatural elements of the series needed to be contrasted with ordinary human drama, he apparently didn’t grasp how quickly these characters can stagnate. Terry is introduced as a government pencil pusher; a decent guy who loves his wife and daughter and misses his friend, Al. Wanda is…allegedly a businesswoman based on a narrative caption in the early issues, although we never see her go to work, or even leave the house, outside of her visits to her grandmother. Later on, McFarlane has her talk about fundraisers quite often. So much so, I assumed she was a philanthropist, or simply someone working for a non-profit. The HBO series made her a lawyer. Regardless, she’s a nice enough lady living in suburbia with her husband and daughter. And that’s fine as a starting point. But when the book lumbers past the five-year mark and the readers still know virtually nothing else about these characters, something’s wrong.

Yes, a few years into the series they decide to investigate Terry’s corrupt boss, but look at how this turned out. Aside from the fact that the storyline failed to expand their characterizations in any discernable way, it dragged on six weeks past forever. “Investigating” in Spawn unfortunately means looking through file folders and repeating the exact same information in every appearance. I can’t even say “every month,” because the subplots in this series appear and reappear at random, sometimes going six months or longer without any acknowledgment.

Even worse investigators are Sam and Twitch, the buddy cop duo that began examining a conspiracy in issue #25, and by #75, still couldn’t uncover their anus with a flashlight. They also, on two separate occasions, prepared themselves to meet an informant that had all of the dirt; a meeting that never occurred and was conveniently forgotten after the setup was used the second time. (Of course, their “informant” was actually a plant by Jason Wynn and Violator, the two major villains of the series who also forgot they were forging a partnership with one another, or that Sam and Twitch had to be punished for getting too close to Wynn). When Sam and Twitch finally return to the series, they forget about the conspiracy and go back to chasing Spawn…a plot that goes back to issue #5. While Sam and Twitch can be fun characters, the inept plotting of their adventures just leaves them spinning in circles; never learning, changing, or showing any depth. Plus, they look like the biggest idiots on Earth.

What about friends? Whom does Spawn have to turn to? Who is his sounding board? Bums. Literally, bums. Now, the idea that Spawn can only find companionship in the people shunted by society is a sound one. While everyone else views Spawn as a demon or a monster, they can see the true hero that might lie within, perhaps because they have no one else to rely on. Spawn literally doesn’t have a home to return to, so it even makes logical sense for him to end up on the streets. Leaving him in the alleys certainly adds more flavor to the series than setting him up in an abandoned warehouse or church would. However, the supporting cast can’t just be populated by faceless winos; they need personalities.

Only one member of the supporting cast is treated as more than a cipher, Bobby (originally spelled “Bobbie,” until perhaps McFarlane realized that is the feminine spelling). He tells the story of his wife’s death and the pressures that lead him to alcoholism in #21. Around fifty issues later, he opens up about his daughter and how she dealt with the situation. Bobby still makes appearances throughout those issues, he’s even killed by Chapel at one point, but he’s not developed as a character at all during those years, and he’s the closest thing to a confidant Spawn has.

The rest of the cast is a group of interchangeable drunks. You could perhaps argue that Boots is more than a face in the crowd, but aside from the quickie characterization from his creator Frank Miller that the guy’s obsessed with a pair of boots, nothing’s done with him until the abrupt revelation that he’s an angel in disguise. They’re all male, fiftyish, and hopelessly devoted to Spawn. And he’s totally undeserving of their support. Beginning in issue #26, when he declares that if he could create money, he wouldn’t be living with these people, Spawn treats the cast like something he wiped off his gigantic red boot. Their response is to view Spawn as their king, and to even build a throne for his majesty. Now, Spawn’s cruel dismissal of his “friends” is occasionally (if not intentionally) funny, but the sheer inanity of this scenario is the real joke. If McFarlane decided a few months into the book not to develop the homeless cast, why not move on to some other idea? Why do only men live in these alleys? Why couldn’t a young runaway look up to Spawn? Anything’s better than King Spawn and his dense subjects.

Of course, not every lead requires a healthy supporting cast to stay alive. Wolverine's solo series has previously gone several years with virtually no supporting cast. The only cast member normally associated with the Punisher is Microchip, and even he was introduced a few years after Punisher’s debut, and has disappeared for long stretches in the books (I know he showed up in the MAX series, and I assume he’s still dead in the mainstream continuity). Even if the bit players couldn’t sustain McFarlane’s interest, the star himself still had lots of exciting adventures, right? Umm….

SPAWN Ex Post Facto - Part One

Spawn #75 seems like a suitable place to end my series of reviews. By this point, it’s the late ‘90s, the Spawn movie and TV show have been released, and Todd McFarlane is wrapping up his stint on the book. Anyone who cares enough to form an opinion on the property has already done so. Personally, I’m burned out on the book at this time, and wondering why I stuck with it for so long. Now, I’d like to spend a few days reflecting on that ‘90s fever dream known as Spawnmania.

First of all, Todd McFarlane is not the worst writer on Earth. He’s not even the worst writer to work in mainstream comics in the past five years. The overwhelming evidence certainly points to him being a bad writer, but that doesn’t mean he’s one hundred percent bad one hundred percent of the time. Let’s face it, McFarlane took such a beating with his Spider-Man work, it’s hard to imagine any of his writing on Spawn getting a fair shake from the critics. To this day, people are still mocking “Rise above it all!” and “Advantageous!” -- references that are over twenty years old at this point. What other comics published in 1990, good or bad, are still having specific lines quoted like this?

Occasionally, McFarlane has flashes of…certainly not brilliance, but competence at least. Spider-Man #8 is a not-very-appropriate-for-Spider-Man story involving dead kids, but McFarlane really does treat the issue with sensitivity and decorum. He even manages to make the reporter responsible for the ensuing media circus a sympathetic figure, and he creates one of the few memorable throwaway Daily Bugle reporters. Most, if not all, of the editor-turned-writers doing ‘90s Spidey stories couldn’t claim to have accomplished that much, even with several years on the books.

The first issue of Spawn opens with the character cryptically hinting at his origins, while wandering the rooftops of New York and striking dramatic poses. Someone started a rumor that the issue consists of random pages McFarlane strung together arbitrarily into a story, but I refuse to believe it. Actually, I don’t see how anyone who’s actually read the comic could believe it, as most of the pages have elaborate transitions into each other. Regardless of what followed, Spawn #1 actually is a compelling introduction for the anti-hero. McFarlane loses focus over the next few issues while introducing the arch-nemesis and fleshing out the premise, but he recovers with #5, the first standalone issue. He’s back to child killers again, but the story’s a nicely constructed piece that connects Spawn’s past to his new life, while also giving the nascent supporting cast something to do. HBO apparently liked the issue enough to dedicate almost the entirety of the animated series’ first season to an elaborate adaptation of the story.

A few months into Spawn, McFarlane decided the greatest stunt Image could pull would be to hire honest-to-God professional writers. The “Creator’s Choice” series in issues #8-#11 saw the return of Alan Moore to mainstream comics, and the introduction of Angela, a character that eventually sparked a legal battle with Neil Gaiman that contributed to the bankruptcy of McFarlane’s company. McFarlane hoped that hiring high-profile writers would force the quality of his own writing to improve, and for a few issues, that actually seemed to work. Spawn #12 and #13 help to humanize the book’s cast, and even differentiate Spawn from Chapel, the archetypal ‘90s blood-crazed government assassin.

I doubt he did this to make a statement, but contrasting the aspiring family man Spawn with the inhuman, amoral Chapel shows that McFarlane had a better understanding of the fundamentals than most of his Image compatriots ever exhibited. Even if you thought Chapel was cool, no one knew or cared anything about his domestic life. There’s no dead family in Central Park driving most of these ‘90s lunatics; they’re there to look cool and kill people with giant guns. Eventually, people got sick of this. While Rob Liefeld was having trouble keeping his publishing company afloat by the late ‘90s, Spawn still outsold most of the comics in stores. You might’ve felt like a sucker afterwards, but if you were the right age, I bet you really did care about Spawn’s relationship with Wanda at some point during the book’s run.

After a guest arc by Grant Morrison, McFarlane returned to Spawn with issue #21, the opening of “The Hunt,” a four-part story that effectively draws on the book’s established continuity and forces Spawn’s supporting cast into the main action. The book still has flaws, but at this point, it appears that McFarlane has some insight into what it takes to produce a monthly series. The supporting cast is starting to develop a personality, actions from previous issues logically lead into new stories, and the hero has a clearly defined motive (getting his old life back), but has no idea how to do it, or if he even should. The book could go anywhere at this point. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are even writing miniseries, expanding the mythology and creating even more directions for McFarlane to explore. So…what happened?

"I Think He Should Donate His Brain to Science"

Todd McFarlane, his family, his friends, and fans, from an old TechTV show. Part Four is interesting, as it features Tom DeFalco and Jim Salicrup discussing Marvel's reaction to the "adult" nature of McFarlane's Spider-Man series.



Coming soon, the post mortem...

SPAWN #75 - August 1998

Sacred Ground

Credits: Todd McFarlane & Brian Holguin (story), Greg Capullo (pencils), Danny Miki w/Scott Kobayashi (inks), Tom Orzechowski (copy editor & letters), Brian Haberlin, Dan Kemp, & Tyson Wengler (colors)

Summary: Spawn finds himself powerless in the Greenworld. He’s restrained by thorny vines and confronted by the Keeper, the Emerald Parliament’s representative. The Keeper explains that the Earth is the third force in the battle between Heaven and Hell, a war that will destroy the planet, unless someone forges peace. Spawn sees a vision of himself with angel wings, flying in-between God and Malebolgia. In Rat City, Boots channels energy through Spawn’s sigil, which brings him back home. An army of angels arrives and arrests Boots for interfering with human affairs and aiding a Hellspawn.

Spawntinuity: As the angels take Boots away, he asks Spawn: “The deal you made with Malebolgia -- how do you know you really made it?” He then says that a child will come, which Spawn must “look to.” Meanwhile, Cyan snaps out of her seizure when Spawn returns to Earth.

Production Note: The book is back to twenty-two pages, and even includes a five-page preview of the Harry Houdini limited series, Great Escapes.

Review: It’s an anniversary issue, and although the book isn’t double-sized (a stunt McFarlane rarely likes to pull), the creators still seem aware that it should be significant in some way. They accomplish this by, of course, vaguely hinting about future events and making cryptic revelations about the “real” story behind Spawn’s origin. Essentially, it’s the past twenty issues of this book, compressed into a one-issue story.

I’m sure McFarlane and/or Holguin thought the revelation that the Earth itself doesn’t want a war between Heaven and Hell was clever, and I suppose it is a justifiable take on the standard End Times theology. But, just as the previous issue intimated that God can’t create souls, I suppose we’re also supposed to believe that God couldn’t create another Earth after the war. Obviously, McFarlane isn’t bound to a strict Judeo-Christian interpretation of the afterlife when creating his comic, but he’s very casually recasting the role of God without dealing with any of the consequences. Is this God the universe’s ultimate moral authority? Does the God of the Spawnverse answer prayer? Is He or She responsible for the creation of existence? If not, who or what is? I’m not saying that all of these questions should’ve been answered by this point, but the subjects should’ve been broached. Mark Gruenwald wouldn’t have pussyfooted around like this.

Now, as for Spawn himself, we’re given the shocking revelation that he’s the one destined to bring peace between Heaven and Hell. Oddly enough, his death is also supposed to trigger their war during Armageddon. He’s so special! Certainly, he won’t be replaced with a different character within the next hundred issues. (How exactly his death is supposed to start the war isn’t clear, by the way. Does this mean that with Spawn dead on Earth, his soul returns to Hell, where he’ll fight alongside Malebolgia’s army? Or does his mere existence prevent the two sides from ever fighting the final battle?) Since Spawn is the lead, it’s understandable that the creators want him to fulfill some grand destiny and be “special” in a way the previous Hellspawns weren’t. Fine, but why does he have two separate prophesies attached to him? It’s overkill.

Finally, as Boots is hauled way in chains (a plot thread that actually did have something of a resolution), it’s revealed that maybe Spawn never made the famous deal from his origin, and that a mystery child is the key to everything. Obviously. We’ve already discovered that Spawn’s memories are fake, and that Wanda was Hell’s target all along, so why not undermine the rest of the character’s well-established origin story? And, gee, could that exceptional child be Cyan? Actually, I have no idea how this played out. Did anyone read Spawn long enough to know if any of these cryptic references were paid off? Looking through Wikipedia, I know that Cogliostro replaced Malebolgia in Hell, Angela died, and Al Simmons has become the villainous Omega Spawn…but what about the revelations from the end of McFarlane’s original stint as writer? Did we learn more about Hell’s interest in Wanda? Was the magic child revealed? Did the Earth make another attempt at stopping Armageddon? I’m genuinely curious…do Spawn fans have a strict stance on continuity, and has the series lived up to it in the years following McFarlane’s departure?

SPAWN #74 - July 1998

The Void

Credits: Todd McFarlane & Brian Holguin (story), Greg Capullo (pencils), Danny Miki (inks), Tom Orzechowski (copy editor & letters), Brian Haberlin & Dan Kemp (colors)

Summary: After discovering Spawn’s secret identity, Sam and Twitch are determined to learn his connection to Jason Wynn. Meanwhile, Spawn fights the Heap, but is soon consumed within his body. Boots discovers a Spawn sigil left behind in the alleys. Within Heap, Spawn speaks to Eddie Beckett, who now serves as a conduit for the “Emerald Parliament.” Spawn floats out of the black void into a tunnel, where he sees another Spawn sigil.

Spawntinuity: Cyan instinctively knows when Spawn has disappeared inside Heap. According to Boots, he can’t allow Spawn to die because this will trigger Armageddon. He claims that Malebolgia has harvested too many souls and that Heaven isn’t ready to fight. Apparently, God’s unable to create souls in the Spawn theology.

The Big Names: The real life Terry Fitzgerald has photos from the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert, and the first US date of Pearl Jam’s ’98 tour. He hints at a future collaboration with the band, which will turn out to be their “Do the Evolution” video.

Production Note: What has two staples and only twenty pages of story? Any issue of Spawn from this era.

Review: You know the issue isn’t off to a promising start when it opens with more of Sam and Twitch’s bumbling detective work. They do at least know that Spawn is Al Simmons now, but the four-page sequence is marred with the grim “we’re bringing him in” cliffhanger. This is, what, the fifth time Sam’s rushed into action, pledging to bring Spawn in? Where do any of these investigations go? Also, he’s not a cop anymore, so where is he bringing him? The story does acknowledge that the detectives lost their jobs while investigating Chief Banks, but that bit of info is essentially ignored just a page later to make room for the dramatic closing line. This goes in the Sloppy Spawn Continuity Hall of Fame.

After the shoddy opening, the issue redeems itself a bit. Spawn has his first real fight scene in months against the Heap, and while it doesn’t last long, Capullo brings a lot of energy to the action. The all-black void within the Heap, contrasted against Spawn’s elaborate costume and the assorted garbage he’s dragged along with him, is another strong visual. I’m sure Boots’ vague talk about Armageddon is going to be more cryptic horse manure that doesn’t amount to anything, but the script is fairly successful in selling the idea. I’m even more convinced that the division of labor at this point is McFarlane plotting and Holguin scripting, since this doesn’t read like a terrible comic; the aimlessness and repetitiveness are only obvious if you know the book’s track record.