Imagine selling your soul to come back from the dead, spending decades fighting bad guys, generating millions of dollars in revenue, starring in a hit cartoon, selling out hundreds of issues of <a href="https://comicvibe.com/brooklyn-nine-nine-at-new-york-comic-con-recap-crime/” title=”‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ at New York Comic Con Recap: Crime”>comic books, and becoming a pop culture phenomenon that changed the landscape of what’s possible… and after ALL of that, you STILL can’t get a decent movie made about you.
Spawn has been a flagship character in comics for over 30 years and no matter how much money this undead hunk of 90s heroism makes in print, it seems like the 1997 Spawn movie is the closest thing we’ll ever see to live action spawn. But why is that? Is it because the movie was a massive financial and critical disappointment? Is it that making superhero films that aren’t Marvel or DC is too risky for studios? Could it be because the creator and owner of the character has standards that are unreachable for studios? From the pages of Todd McFarlane’s sketchbook to the silver screen and back, today we’re talking all about Spawn. We’ll cover the characters history, then talk all about the movie, and exactly why after all these years we STILL haven’t gotten a spawn remake in live action, and everything in between. Let’s get into it.
Todd McFarlane and the Birth of Spawn
Okay, so Todd McFarlane is a legend in the comics industry. Love him or hate him, this guy has changed comics forever more than one time and despite struggling (at times) he has kept Image Comics and the Spawn IP alive since the early 90s. Todd broke into comics in the 80s drawing interiors for a comic book called “Coyote” , and this was his first job as a professional artist. Eventually, Todd became known for his intense art style and gained a reputation for breaking the norm. His hunger and ambition mixed with his truly inventive art style eventually landed McFarlane a job at one of the big two publishers… Marvel Comics. Fast forward a few years and Todd has revolutionized comics with his top-selling run on Spider-Man. Todd nearly quit Marvel in the 90s and to keep him on board they offered him a shot at doing his own one-man show series of his favorite Marvel character. The first issue (which you’ve definitely seen the cover of) shattered sales records and single-handedly breathed new life into the industry. His art was full of energy and dynamism and comic readers of the early 90s were all the way bought in. But, here’s the thing…
Todd was a superstar in comics, but Marvel didn’t care about that. They wanted Todd to put his ideas and ego aside and draw what they told him THEY wanted. Whether it was tweaking the position of Bullseye stabbing Elektra to please the comics code, or re-drawing entire pages because the panel layout was too innovative, Todd felt like he was being pushed around. And he wasn’t going to have any of that.
So, Todd assembles some of the top artists from the big two publishers. Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, Erik Larsen, and Jim Valentino all met with McFarlane individually and he pitched them the idea of starting their own publishing company. A company that would rival DC and Marvel with its top artists running the show.A publisher that would break the mold for the indie publishing scene and allow the artists to retain the rights to their own characters. See, if you didn’t know, if you work at Marvel or DC, and you create a new character for a book, you don’t own that character. Once it’s published, it’s owned by the company. But Image was doing things differently, They would let the creators own the property and it would remain theirs no matter what. Image didn’t own the characters, and as such, nobody could push Todd around anymore.
His first book needed to be something big. Something his thousands of adoring fans would eat up and get behind. Something edgy, dark, gritty, and dank that Todd wouldn’t get away with at Marvel. And in May of 1992, Spawn issue #1 was released. And, no surprise, Todd broke another record. This comic book was EVERYWHERE. It’s not even really rare today because there were just SO many copies printed and sold.
Spawn follows the story of Al Simmons. A Government gent who specializes in taking out hard target bad guys who is killed on the job and immediately sent to hell. In hell, Al makes a deal with a demon to return to earth to see his beloved wife, Wanda. This deal is (as you’d expect) a trick, and Al is resurrected 5 years later as “Spawn” . His whole deal is that he has to basically be a bounty hunter for souls to send to hell and to help him do this he’s given a set of superpowers and a badass spiky super suit. Eventually, he embraces his new identity and stalks the dark streets looking for his next victim. This storyline is STILL GOING by the way. Over 300 issues in and Spawn’s original series is still not over. That might be because this character burst on the scene and made McFarlane enough cash for him to do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. Now, Todd isn’t still writing and drawing the books, as he wanted to let other creatives work on the project as well, but he does pop in to ink issues and draw covers once in a while.
How Spawn Made It to Hollywood
With the instant success of Spawn and the newly-minted Image Comics, it didn’t take long for greedy studios in Hollywood to start trying to get in on the action. As early as 1993, Todd had been getting calls and meeting requests from producers and studios. Similar to how Todd was with his career in comics, he was not going to lay down and let the studio heads walk over him. He was interested in making a Spawn movie, but only if it was done his way. After all the pitches, talks, and dinners, Todd struck the deal with New Line Cinema who wanted to make a dark action thriller with Spawn as the main character. The deal was… a power move. I think.
He sold New Line the rights over the top bidder (Columbia) for just $1.00 because they agreed to let Todd get the rights to the merchandising (which made him even MORE rich than he already was) and he was granted creative control of the movie. Columbia was willing to pay BIG for the rights, but Todd decided to bet on himself once again.
Spawn (1997): What Worked and What Didn’t
And this movie… Isn’t that good. But ya know what, it REALLY isn’t that bad either.
In this film, they stuck pretty close to the comic book origins of the character and started the movie with an intro to Al Simmons on a mission for the CIA. Michael Jai White stars as the titular character and folks, say what you want about the movie itself, but this casting and performance is PERFECT for the character. Simmons is killed on the job and we do see that this is a difference from the comic in that originally Al was killed by Chapel, who is a sick character but was created by Rob Liefeld for Youngblood and New Line didn’t have the rights to that character. In any case, he’s killed by the actor who played Julie Cooper on The O.C. instead, and boards passage on the highway to hell. The VFX in this scene in particular… look like shit. It’s unfortunate that this happened so early on in the movie because it definitely stands out, and these sequences pop up periodically throughout. By the way, I’m watching the director’s cut which IS better. Industrial Light and Magic had one of their sister companies work on this movie and maybe at the time it wasn’t so bad but it doesn’t hold up so good nowadays. What did you expect man it was 1997! The suit looks great, though. It’s awesome.
Spawn returns to life years later and is missing a lot of his memories (and skin) but he remembers the most important thing. Wanda. Then he immediately finds out she’s moved on with his best friend, which is also comic book accurate. So the setup is definitely straight out of the comic book which means that it doesn’t take long for us to meet the scene-stealing, maggot-eating, and absolutely brilliant John Leguizamo as The Violator. Or as you may know him, The Clown. This is what REALLY worked for the movie. Everything from the incredible costume and makeup work to the over-the-top performance and that kick-ass transformation scene is just oozing with grossness and leaking awesome sauce. I didn’t like saying that sentence but I stand by it. The clown is a character that makes for the villain being AS entertaining (or more entertaining) than the hero. This dude is just a walking ball of earwax with blue makeup on and I can’t get enough. The way he taunts Spawn and pushes him to the edge while being endlessly watchable is what comic book menace is all about. I love the scene of him transforming into his demon form and these special effects are great for the time. It looks like something out of Men in Black and I love it.
The unfortunate things about this movie are apparent, though. Other than an amazing suit, a great villain, and amazing lead actor, the kind of side villain of this movie (Jason Wynn, played by Martin Sheen) does this movie NO favors. What a boring asshole and a total waste of a talent like Sheen. He’s behind Spawn’s death and blah blah blah he fucking sucks. I also am not a fan of the mid-movie showdown when the cape FINALLY enters the movie (we’ll talk about that in a sec) and the VFX look very… silly. Imagine how good it could look now though.
So yeah, the thing about this movie that really docks it some cool-points is that 2 of Spawn’s coolest assets (his cape and his mask) are mostly absent from the film. This comes down to budget and technical limitations. In order to make the cape look right, it needed to be done with CGI. The thing about Spawn’s cape is that it IS a character if its own. The way it flows and drapes itself is almost like it has a mind of its own. Spawn’s suit is technically “alive” so I guess his cape is too. Practical red capes looked too out of place, a black cape made him look too much like Batman, and realistically, animating a living cape onto the actor was just out of the question. So, they ditched the cape for much of the movie. BUT the director’s cut has more cape stuff and some of it is cool for the time. But we also don’t see as much of the mask as fans were hoping. In the comics, Spawn almost always has the mask on. In this movie, it’s the opposite with him almost always having the mask OFF. Now, this can be explained by it not being practical for the actor to emote or express emotion, or be heard by a microphone with it on, and Michael Jai White does so good with emoting through all those prosthetics, but I can’t help but miss the Spawn face. We do get some sequences where he’s wearing it but it really acts as like a helmet with it only seeming to come on when spawn might be in danger. I also think an important thing to mention here is that part of what made this movie suffer critically was the pacing of the film and the hollow revenge-quest plot.
There are flashes where it feels like the nasty, supernatural superhero movie it wants to be, graveyards, alleys, chains, motorcycles, heavy shadows, industrial rock and metal blasting on the soundtrack. The costume itself looks great whenever the movie isn’t asking the CGI to do too much, and the film deserves some credit for attempting a violent, horror-influenced superhero story years before darker comic-book movies became commonplace.
The bigger problem, though, is the storytelling. The movie tries to cram Spawn’s murder, resurrection, deal with Malebolgia, relationship with Wanda, friendship with Terry, battle with the Violator, and an impending apocalypse into roughly 90 minutes. As a result, Al Simmons never gets enough room to breathe as a character.
Personally, I think the big problem was just that the movie didn’t have enough space to explore. There’s too much going on for just one movie. The problem with being overly accurate to the comic book lore is that you kind of end up in a box too tight for the screen. Stories that work in comics often translate well to the screen, but the best of them always think a little more in terms of moviegoers than comic-readers. I think that if Columbia had gotten the rights to Spawn (and McFarlane WASN’T so creatively in control) they might have re-imagined certain aspects of the character to make something fresh and exciting, which this movie is kind of just not. But McFarlane was NOT going to stop.
Why the HBO Animated Series Worked
With Spawn not working out in the movies, Todd decided he would wait to try again until he was sure he could make it perfect. But he wanted to get Spawn in every pillar of media. It wasn’t long before McFarlane struck a deal with HBO to make an adult-rated harDCore Spawn cartoon. I can’t stress this enough, but Todd McFarlane is nothing if not a forward thinker. He wasn’t interested in settling for anything less than what he knew was good. And the Spawn cartoon is JUST THAT. McFarlane wanted animation that felt sexier and more dark than what was popular at the time. He was specifically drawn to the artwork on Batman: The Animated Series and recruited as many of the crew that worked on that show to work on his. In 1997, episode one debuted on HBO to massive success. This show is awesome and I watch it often. But aside from what I think, this show did 2 very important things, it brought Spawn’s brand awareness to a whole new market, and it PROVED that adults would be interested in Spawn’s dark and highly mature tone. The cartoon was also very accurate to the comics with subtle changes here and there, but every episode was a ratings hit. The show ran for three seasons and helped fans of Spawn get their fix between issues for years. The animation style is still very good with heavy black shadows and spectacular lighting. This is a polished version of what the movie could have been had it gone right. Keith David was already an icon in those days, but doing the voice of Spawn on this show cemented the way readers would hear his voice forever. No shit, every time I check in on the Spawn universe and read his lines, I hear them in his voice. It’s probably the same for you. In fact, Keith has been the voice of Spawn ever since this show. It’s just his job now.
What Happened to the Spawn Reboot?
In the years since, Spawn has popped up in a series of video games (some are his games and some areMortal Kombat 11), and there have been talks every few years about a Blumhouse-produced Spawn remake starring Jamie Foxx as Al Simmons. I think as Foxx gets older (and more expensive) the likelihood of this actually happening withers away more and more. However, Todd has said that if there is to be another Spawn movie in the future, he’d be the one directing it. That works out sometimes, but other times you get Frank Miller’sThe Spirit, so… let’s see how that goes. Jason Blum has stated that he’s hard at work on Spawn at Blumhouse and that he’s really excited to make the movie happen too, but he’s been saying that for years and it just doesn’t seem like any progress has been made.
As recently as THIS year, McFarlane stated that a Spawn animated feature has been made but he’s waiting to find the right studio to finish the animation and distribute it. I don’t know what stage of production the movie is in, but McFarlane did let it be known that Keith David DID record the lines for the character of Spawn already. I’d almost sell my soul just to hear the lines in his voice again.
Will Spawn Ever Return to the Big Screen?
So, we have an industry pioneer, a million dollar character, an endless well of source material, and a studio ready to back it and we STILL don’t have a concrete Spawn film coming any time soon. It’s disappointing, but I’m sure one day his day will come. Hell, if the comics or movie industry get broke enough they’ll start rolling out remakes for every superhero that’s ever appeared on screen and I’ll be the dickhead dumb enough to watch it all so I can bring the goods to you all. I like Spawn, I read the comics for some years but eventually moved on from it but I’m a huge fan of the cartoon and The Gunslinger, and I’d definitely be in line to get a ticket for any movie that comes out, be it animated with Keith David, or live action with Jamie Foxx. How do you guys feel? I defend this movie as much as I can because I want to enjoy the good stuff and if you haven’t seen this movie, maybe you’ll enjoy it too. I’ll see you guys in the next one!
