McFarlane Speaks!

[JON]

I haven't read comics since 93, but a piece on Joe Simon, creator of Captain America, was enough to get me to open the article. Lo and behold, on the second page, the conversation turned to McFarlane. Apparently, alls he ever wanted at Marvel was a small place in the editorial conversation! Who'd a thunk?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/books/16gust.html

[anarky]

Saw this in a writeup about the Image Comics panel at NYCC:

Keatinge revealed that two Image founders would be taking over "Spawn," but was sworn to secrecy about who those creators were. The moderator did go so far as to say that one of the creators hadn't done any work for Image for 10 years. It all begins with "Spawn" #185.

Okay, who?

It's almost impossible to determine the one who has done work for Image. And the "ten years" is likely an estimate.

This leaves Dale Keown (is he even still alive?), Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, and Whilce Portacio (he alive, either?). Possibly Rob Liefeld, considering his Youngblood book from last year never actually came out, but I'd consider that to preclude "hadn't done any work."

Interesting. Not a major news item, I suppose, but interesting. Any of those would draw a bitchin' Spawn.

I'm willing to bet the other will be a writer, and if it's one of the technical founders and not their support staff, probably McFarlane (who isn't writing it right now, and it wouldn't surprise me if his douchiness wanted to take over again) or Valentino (who's a better writer than penciller, anyway).

However, given the original premise of Spawn, shouldn't he have died in, like, 1995?

[jjreason]

Yep. The green line was fading pretty quick in the beginning - wasn't it originally planned to be in an around that 50 issue mark? I read about the first 24 issues or thereabouts - it seemed like a really good book at the time. I almost can't believe it's still going.

My money's on Todd McFarlane doing a pens/pencils stint, maybe for about 6 issues or so.

[anarky]

McFarlane pretty quickly realized that the character was popular, and the original premise meant a popular character would have to die. That bar was going down fast early on, then, suddenly, he realized he could use his suit's powers and not his own.

I think his going back on that, and not introducing a single other character of note, shows that McFarlane was never exactly a treasure trove of ideas.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I'm going to say Portacio drawing and Valentino writing.

Jim Lee's to busy with Wildstorm/DC, not to mention AS Batman. Silvestri is too busy with TopCow. Portacio is doing fuck all since that atrocious Batman Confidential series and Valentino? Shit. Who knows what the fuck hes been doing.


If McFarlane REALLY wanted to get his name back in the comic game, he'd do a three issue arc of Amazing Spider-Man. Fuck me, Wizard readin' fanboys would be wankin' to that news for six months...

[anarky]

It'd be pretty cool if Joe Q invited all the Image guys back to do one fucking killer miniseries each using the characters they were doing when they left.

Except Jim, who would apparently have to get something new, since Guardians of the Galaxy as he was writing and drawing it don't exist no more. I think.

And leave Rob out, since the fucknut already did X-Force.

So a new Jim Lee X-Men, Whilce Portacio X-Men, Marc Silvestri Wolverine, Todd McFarlane Spider-Man, Dale Keown Hulk, and Erik Larsen Spider-Man.

Y'know, imagine if they put aside their egoes and worked together. Larsen and Valentino co-writing Spider-Man, with covers by McFarlane, interior pencils by Larsen, and inks by one of the former Homage Studios guys? Fuck, that'd rock.

[vynsane]

Y'know, imagine if they put aside their egoes and worked together. Larsen and Valentino co-writing Spider-Man, with covers by McFarlane, interior pencils by Larsen, and inks by one of the former Homage Studios guys? Fuck, that'd rock.

you could leave the covers out of that, and it would still rock balls.

[anarky]

I included him because, like it or not, McFarlane and Spider-Man together would sell like gangbusters. Covers is the smallest amount of involvement he can have, art-wise. And, writing-wise, no fucking way.

[jjreason]

I never minded his covers OR interior art. Hell, put the gang of them on the 4-team rotation for a couple of months and see what ASM looks like..... neat-o I'd expect.

[Rollo Tomassi]

What would truly rock is if they did it and didn't announce it. It's like "Oh by the way, McFarlane on Spider-Man next issue..."

They would just have to overprint the run for all the inevitable reorders.

[anarky]

And McFarlane reaffirms his douchiness in an interview. The italics are mine, to distinguish the undistilled douchebaggery from the context.

OK, and this isn’t a judgment, but why use members of the founding group of Image creators? There are certainly other talented names out there who could lend their talents to a title like “Spawn” and increase its profile. Why specifically use previous Image founders?

I think the obvious answer to that is today’s world is a lot more different than when I was doing comics. Marvel and DC have gotten fairly aggressive at tying people up under contract, so really, in my opinion, there’s aren’t [sic] that many top notch guys out there I can choose from. There are 100s of guys who call themselves artists, but if you talk about guys in the upper tier, that’s what’s getting harder and harder to find. As soon as a guy shows he has any skill, bam, they’re slapping him with the handcuffs of a contract that doesn’t allow us or anyone else to bring them on board. Those fun moments we used to have with creators hopping from company to company have gone away. Even silly stuff like doing a cover for me has gone away because of those contracts. Yeah, they’ve sucked that fun out of the equation, too.

You mean people who actually still draw pictures, unlike you, call themselves artists, but aren't really?

Funny, it looks to me like there's really not a whole lot of artists under exclusive contract, relatively speaking. From what I see, it looks like the writers who are signing more exclusivity contracts of late.

[anarky]

So, Spawn is being resurrected, Youngblood is supposedly back, CyberForce is back, and now it looks like WildCATs is coming back, too.

What the fuck? Are there not enough shitty comics out there right now?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Looks like it was Portacio and McFarlane.


yawn.

[vynsane]

oh, jeezus... THIS is what we've been waiting for for 10+ years???

[anarky]

Wow. It's like suck dipped in gay with a side order of lame.