anderswolleck

Todd McFarlane is one of the most popular and controversial comic book creators ever. He established his popularity in the late 80s drawing Marvel superhero books as The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. Then in the early 1990s, in a uproarious and unprecedented move McFarlane and a few of the hottest Marvel creators stopped doing Marvel books and formed their own company, Image Comics. Riding a new wave of popularity for comic books Image rolled out book after book which broke records including McFarlanes Spawn which for a time was the best selling independent comic book selling 1.2 million copies of the first issue. The popularity of Spawn created a whole industry for McFarlane with comic books, a movie, a hit cartoon and a line of extremely popular toys. Now you can relive your more pimply days with the Spawn Collection Volume 1 which reprints issues #1-8, 11, & 12.

Buy Spawn Collection Volume 1

Daniel Robert Epstein: How are you doing?

Todd McFarlane: I'm good, hanging around. Just trying to stay off the streets, like you.

DRE: I'm glad you're able to do this. Some big creators don't want to do talk to someone from SuicideGirls.

TM: That's not me, so fuck them!

DRE: [laughs] Are you a fan of the site?

TM: Yeah, I've looked at it. Given that I have to share my computer with my three children, it's not usually a site that I get to spend that much time on. I'm usually on the Nickelodeon site, coloring with my little five year old or something.

DRE: You were one of the first people to bring good looking women into comics. What was your inspiration for that?

TM: That was easy. I was doing Spider-Man and in the storyline, Peter Parker was married to Mary Jane, who was a New York model. I've seen pictures of models and they're quite sexy. They were drawing Mary Jane with straight hair and she was wearing clothes from K-Mart. This isn't a lady from Alabama that's working in the factory. This is a New York model and she didn't even own a curling iron. My wife is pretty and she actually puts on makeup, curls her hair and puts on nice clothes. I'm sure if she were a model, she'd still do that. They hadn't updated Mary Jane since 1965 when John Romita drew her. I just thought it was time for somebody to do a new paintjob so I just decked her out.

DRE: Was there any resistance against it?

TM: Nah, it was one of those ones where they just went, "By God, now that you mention it Todd, you're right." I go, "You're out of your mind. You guys haven't seen this for the last 20 years? She's wearing the same clothes she's been wearing for 20 years, even though she's got a better lifestyle? Wow." With these moments somebody just might be looking out for Todd because if they had been updating Spider-Man every three or four years, the changes that I made to the book wouldn't have looked nearly as impressive. But the book was in status quo and everyone was too afraid to move so they just kept emulating what they did in the 60s and the 70s. But again, at that point we were pushing the 90s and even Peter Parker was wearing the same clothes he wore in issue 27. I've been fortunate to come on places where the question isn't why did I do it? The question to me is always, why didn't anybody else do it before me? Those are the ones that I scratch my head about.

DRE: With the new Spawn trade paperback, how was it to go through the issues and look at them again?

TM: Every artist is going to torture himself, whether you're in music or in Hollywood or whatever else and comic book artists aren't that much different. To me, my best art is always in front of me so sometimes I look at the stuff and go, "Eh, I could have done better on this." You start looking at it too much and you want to redraw, rewrite it and you want to do the whole thing over again. Youve got to let it go and say it was the best I could do at that time and place in my life. You hope that the thing you're doing next is a little bit better. Here is a fear for me, I never wanted to be one of those guys that was defined by a body of work 20 years old. In 1987 I used to go to conventions and people used to say Bernie "Swamp Thing" Wrightson. He did Swamp Thing in the 70s! Let it go guys. John "X-Men" Byrne. Obviously, both were brilliant when they were doing it, but I just go, "Oh my God. I don't want kids standing in line going, "What you did nine years ago was the best stuff you ever drew. The last eight years have been mediocre to below mediocre." That was my fear, which is why when I was took over a book, I was always trying to tweak it a little bit so that it looked like I was trying to add something instead of keeping the status quo.

DRE: I understand why you didnt reprint the Neil Gaiman written issue of Spawn [#9] but how come the Dave Sim issue didnt get in there?

TM: For a couple of reasons. Dave and I had a bit of a handshake deal about when it would and would not come out. Also the statement we were trying to make in that issue made a lot more sense at the time we did it. Now the industry has evolved and gone in different directions, so somebody picking up the book for the first time wouldnt understand the message. So it loses some of its meaning. Whereas at the time we were right in the middle of the firestorm when we were doing it, so we didn't have to do any explanation. So we just dropped that out of the continuity and kept moving along with standard superhero stuff.

DRE: Alan Moores issue is reprinted but hes not credited.

TM: Oh really? I'll take that to Brian Haberlin, he's the guy who does the credit pages. I'll mention it to him. When they reprint it again, I'll make sure they clean that up.

DRE: Did looking at these books remind you of when you were that brash, young guy who said, "Screw you Marvel, goodbye!

TM: Yeah, that crazy guy. But again, I put in my time with Marvel and DC so there was that period of my life of trying to learn how to draw and tell stories in a proper fashion. That became a big time in comic books because it's when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers. A lot was happening, plus there were an enormous number of people in the industry that were going to conventions, so it was a pretty fun time. Also there was a lot of controversy and I was at the forefront of some of that. So if you're going to write a book about the history of comic books, the early 90s would be a couple of interesting chapters.

DRE: It'd be the E! True Hollywood story that nobody would watch.

TM: [laughs] Yeah, thats it. It's funny that we're now 10, 12, 15 years from that time and every now and then I'll come across somebody or read something in a blog or a website that doesn't know the wars are over. The same thing isn't happening now, but there's someone out there still carrying the torch of whoever their favorite guy is. It's like they're little clones of Peter David.

DRE: [laughs] What's pretty amazing is that now Image puts out some of the best books on the market.

TM: I think people would actually be surprised by what we put out. Unfortunately the shadow that the original founders cast was that they were just artists that can't write books so people swept the whole of Image with that paintbrush. But now if you look at the checklist of books that Image has put out, you're going to see a huge variety of topics and subject matter

DRE: I think it'd be difficult to find a better monthly book on the racks than The Walking Dead.

TM: Yeah, it's cool. I know this is hard for people to understand but there are two different Todds at this point. There's Todd who's running his own empire, who's actually doing stuff to an agenda that's conducive to him. Also theres Todd who's a co-founder of Image but is just one of four voices now. There was a time when there was a little bit of a dispute between [Brian Michael] Bendis and I when we were putting out Torso and Powers. So just because Todd doesn't want to do something with somebody it doesn't prevent that person from doing it with Image. If somebody wants to work for me or hates me, at no point did I ever say, "And they can't work for Image." Absolutely not. Image has to be its own fortress, in spite of the owners. People can't separate that or they don't comprehend that you can turn that on and off for each one of the different entities.

DRE: If you hadn't worked with Bendis years ago, his career could have turned out quite differently. Possibly similar because he's a great writer, but what do you think of the change from the Marvel Universe to the Bendis-verse?

TM: [laughs] When I came across him because he was doing Torso for us and it was just brilliant stuff. He was doing work that I was envious of. This is where we were crossing our paths because he was doing independent comic books that had some cool, mature themes but he never cut his teeth on superhero stuff. He was going in that direction. Where I had cut my teeth on superhero stuff and I was going, "Wouldn't it be cool to do some mature theme stuff." Bendis actually wanted to go and do Spider-Man, which is where I just came from. He brought a nice voice to Marvel and comes at it from a different angle, which is like what Alan Moore and the British invasion had done.

DRE: From what I read in Peter David's column But I Digress back in the early 90s there was a time when hot Marvel artists would be poached to do something for Image. I think Dale Keown is a good example of that. Right now it's the time of the writer, do you guys actively seek out certain writers?

TM: Did we do that? Yeah, we did. You have to understand the dynamic of Image back then, that there were six partners with Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee included. There were some pretty good rivalries going on there. Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri and Rob Liefeld had studios. Within the confines of that, we were very competitive and not only were they looking for people to work for them, but they would sometimes actually try to approach the same guy. Two guys go, "I want him to work for me." "No. I want him to work for me." To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on. We brought some guys over, some stayed, some didn't, some lasted a little longer than others, but there was always that competitive edge of trying to do it. It can't really happen today the way it did back then and part of that is because I think there's a bit of a competitive scare over at Marvel and DC so they lock guys up with exclusive contracts. We didnt have any contracts with anyone except I had one with Bendis, but that was because he wanted one. People started poaching my guys like Ashley Wood, Bendis, Steve Niles and a handful of other guys. But Im not going to begrudge anybody for taking a job that they may deem to be better.

DRE: The Spawn Manga book was just reprinted, how did that come about originally?

TM: Obviously Spawn was at the top of the charts at that point so you get a lot of opportunities. Years ago, people in foreign countries would go, "Hey Todd, can we do this, this, or this?" And I would say, "Yeah, yeah. That's cool." The deal is that you can do it, you don't really owe me anything, but at the end of it, I own the film. Then I can actually go out and reprint or not reprint if it I want. The Manga stuff came out in black and white chapters in one of their magazines over and then I just sat on them. Brian Haberlin and I were looking through the drawers and he goes, "What the hell is this?" I go, "It's some Manga stuff." He goes, "You've got hundreds of pages of this stuff. Lets put it out."

DRE: How's the TV series Twisted Tales going?

TM: Not so good. We were going pretty good and then FOX lost interest in it. It's ebbing a little bit, but is it on any kind of track to go any place now? No.

DRE: What's the problem?

TM: [laughs] That's for them to answer and not me. Anthology shows as a whole scare people. The networks can't quite get their heads around it. If I was in charge of this damn world, I'd know how to market it and get it out there.

DRE: Showtime just did their own anthology series with Masters of Horror.

TM: There are places to bring it and we're going to attempt to take it to a couple other people. But for the most part it's not going to be the networks.

DRE: That sucks.

TM: I know, but it's Hollywood. You try 19 things and make one.

DRE: How about the new Spawn cartoon?

TM: We're knee-deep in that one. Everything that we need to send overseas is done like the storyboards, the coloring and the voice recording. Now it's just getting the manual labor done. This week Im supposed to get a couple tests in from a couple of studios and hopefully we'll pick one soon.

DRE: Is that going for DVD release?

TM: We're hoping not. The attempt is that we want to get a couple of minutes under our belt, depending on how good the tests are and take that into Hollywood. The fallback is we're going to DVD anyways. We've got that covered. So the question is, does anybody want to air it before it goes on DVD and get in on the race? We've got interest from a couple smaller cable networks. Hopefully, we'll get it on the air someplace. The one we're working on is 80 minutes which is an hour and a half once you cut commercials into it.

DRE: Are you directing the show?

TM: I'm producing it. There are different titles in animation so we got a good crew of guys. The guy directing it, Chuck Patton is doing a good job. I wrote it with Brian Holguin a guy who wrote a bunch of Spawn comic books. We wrote a bunch of dark urban stories where Spawn's the only thing out of the ordinary in it. In my mind that's where Spawn is. There are no devils, superheroes, clowns or violators. It works in the comic book, but as the audiences have gotten older and more sophisticated, I think the stories need to grow up with them. This is a story about a couple of rival gangs and what goes wrong in a couple of days.

DRE: Besides the Image 10th Anniversary book, when are you going to draw something on paper that we can see?

TM: Wow, that's a good one. I still do some inking here and there and Ive actually got a book that Im going to ink entirely. Drawing? I don't know. If I ever do anything, it actually might be some fantasy elf thing or even some cute, funny thing. Just to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. I've done my superhero gig. A lot of the drawings that I do are just little noodle drawings that are not superhero stuff, but just to keep my hand moving. At some point I would like to put them in a book and let people go, "Todd did all that?" Some artists will take their artwork and modify it from time to time like Keith Giffen and Frank Miller. They both didn't rest on their laurels, they both advanced or digressed, depending on what your opinion is, but they moved their artwork ahead instead of doing the same style for 25 years.

DRE: What'd you think of the Sin City movie?

TM: It's cool. But as a fan of the comic book I go "They were so faithful, there weren't too many surprises for me." I even knew some of the dialogue but it was definitely cool to look at. We always argue that the movies should be loyal but in this case I could argue that it might have been too loyal.

DRE: Would you like to do something like that?

TM: The plans this year are for me to finish the script that I'm working on and to finance and direct the live action Spawn movie myself. Is it going to be as ambitious as Sin City? No, because I don't have that budget. I just want to tell a dark, creepy story that people who may not have ever read Spawn can go, "Wow, that was cool, that was trippy" and walk out of there and get on with their life. They wont have to understand the last 15 years of continuity.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck