The World vs Todd McFarlane: Part Two
The World vs Todd McFarlane
PART TWO: FORMING IMAGE, CREATING SPAWN and NAMING TONY TWIST
After
quitting Marvel, McFarlane took time off to be with his family. With the money
that he had already earned and the cash continuing to pour in from Marvel, he
could more than afford to reflect upon his next move, and he wanted his next
move to be one of total control. One person he was talking to, who had the same
kind of success, but was pilloried even more than Todd McFarlane, was Rob
Liefeld, then hot off the New Mutants
and, like McFarlane, had a new title created just for him, the newly launched
title X-Force. Liefeld also wanted
more control over what he was producing, so the seeds for what would become
Image Comics were beginning to be sown.
“I'd been
having off and on conversations with sort of other free-lancers and friends
about sort of saying, ‘Why don't we start our own company. What are we working
for the companies for? Sort of dancing to their tunes to some extent. Why don't
go we go and try to band together.’ And so by the end of 1991 we had gathered
seven of us and three of us announced to Marvel that we were in unison leaving
Marvel comic books to sort of start a commune of artists and writers together
and that started, that began that we ended up calling it Image Comics and that
began in 1992, the beginning of '92.
“Image was
put together to sort of create a logo. You know, we had sort of a brand name.
We as artists were not necessarily skilled in the details of business at this
time and so we ended up running into some people that had a smaller company
called Malibu Comics and they offered to publish the books for us to help us on
our way; let us sort of as much as possible concentrate on doing the art, if
you will, and the books and the writing and not worry about sort of the other
things that are inherent with publishing a comic book. So each one of us went
to our little hovels, started our own companies, created our own characters and
then fed those ideas in the forms of comic books into this commune and then
those were published by Malibu Comics starting in 1992.” (McFarlane Deposition,
20 June, 2002)
Image was a
collective formed by McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen
and Jim Valentino. Chris Claremont and Whilce Portico were also announced as
being part of the start-up of Image, but Portico quickly dropped out due to
personal reasons and Claremont never really signed on. It was decided that all seven
Image founders would all launch a new title with Image, with original, never
before seen, characters – although Liefeld’s Youngblood had appeared as early as 1987 in the pages of Megaton Comics Explosion #1 published by
Magaton Comics, and Larsen’s Savage
Dragon dated back to 1982 when Larsen debuted the character in his own
self-published title, Graphic Fantasy.
McFarlane’s title was Spawn. Although
appearing for the first time, Spawn
had been created, at least visually, by McFarlane as far back as his
(McFarlane) high school days.
The new
titles from Image were launched with some controversy.
“I think
that in many ways we've been holding back. Most of our best creations have yet
to be seen and will be seen under the Image imprint for the first time. We're really
going to turn some heads with this stuff. We haven't wanted to give away our creations
to the big companies. This setup is ideal. We can share one universe just as we
would at the 'big two' plus we can retain full ownership of whatever characters
we create-it's fantastic! And it helps that Rob, Todd and I are buddies to
begin with. This is the most exciting thing to happen to comics since the creation
of the Marvel Universe.” (Larsen, Mailbu Sun, May 1992)
Larsen’s
claim that the Image founders had been ‘holding back’ while working at Marvel
and DC drew criticism from some high profile creators who were entrenched at
the two companies. Writer Peter David took particular exception to the
comments, and fired back in the pages of the title that he currently writing The Incredible Hulk. Challenged to a
formal debate with McFarlane at the 1993 Comicfest, David figuratively tore
McFarlane apart. This only seemed to anger Larsen more, and the feud between
the two, Larsen and David, continued in the pages of their respective titles, letter pages and David’s own regular column in The Comic Buyer’s Guide.
George Perez draws the outcome of the now infamous 1993 Comicfest debate between Peter David and Todd McFarlane |
McFarlane
took on the role of writer and artist of Spawn,
keeping in line with other Image founders. For him, the concept of Spawn was as simple as could be.
“For me, at
its core, its simplest overview, it's a love story. The main concept of Spawn is that he literally trades
everything at a moment of death to come back to see his wife one last time. I
think most of us put in that position would probably do the same thing. I have
a wife that I love dearly. The wife in this comic book is called Wanda, the name
of my wife, so I sort of draw from things in my personal life.
“And then
you take that piece of the story, which is, I betrayed everything to come back
to my own life -- and you go, fine, sign on the dotted line, which is the deal
we make with the devil. And you come back and the world is topsy-turvy and now
what do you do? You find out that your wife, the only thing you came back for, this
love, this great love of yours, she is now remarried, she has had a child. He
wasn't able to bear children with her.
“And now he
finds out he has got these fantastic powers -- and I will get into the comic
book part of it -- he has these fantastic powers. His identity has been
stripped from him. He has no skin. He is not recognizable.
“And now he
goes, ‘Wow! The one thing I wanted to do was just to get back to my wife. She
has got children, which makes her happy. She is married to a good guy, which is
my best friend. So of all the guys in the world that I would like to take care
of my wife that would be him. And now I have got all of these sort of crazy
powers and forces, no identity, what now?’ And it just becomes the beginning of
the journey of the hero quest.
“I set out
when I left Marvel to create a character that is African American but get rid
of the one thing that we have a tendency to do when we look at people that
aren't the same as us, is we just make instant judgment. And the reason we
don't like people of color is because of the color of their skin, so just made
a solution, strip the skin off it, get away from that.
“Every time
in comic book history they try to do something that is a minority character,
they draw attention to it. I wanted to actually be the opposite. I wanted to
sort of take that piece and make it go away so that Spawn just became this
hero, regardless of whatever his skin color was. So besides my personal
philosophical input, the other part is just, ‘You want to go see your wife? Ha-ha-ha!
I'm the devil. I'm going to trick you. I'm going to strip your skin off you.
And even if you go see her, she is never going to recognize you.’” (McFarlane,
Motion Hearing, 14 June, 2010)
The Image
creators met with mixed reactions to their respective books. The art was of the
era, flashy, loud and big. It either left people cold or invigorated them. Most
people felt that the company was a gimmick and would not last without the kind
of support that Marvel or DC could provide.
“When Image
started, they were getting a lot of stick from fans and from the comics press
for being illiterate garbage, which is probably a polite way of putting the
things they were saying about the comics, chiefly those written by Rob Leifeld.”
(Gaiman Deposition, 24 June, 2002).
The one
thing that critics of Spawn could not
deny was the sheer popularity of the title. The first issue sold an amazing
1,700,000 copies, a record for an independent title. Priced at $1.95, McFarlane
earned the lion’s share of the profits, proving, once again, that everything he
touched turned to gold.
Sadly the
early days of Image weren’t all wine and roses. Books came out late, in some
cases titles were solicited and pre-orders taken only for the books never to
appear. McFarlane, Larsen and Lee did their best to carry the line with regular
books, but even McFarlane found himself behind schedule and tapped Grant
Morrison and Greg Capullo to quickly work up three fill-in issues while he took
time out to draw the Frank Miller scripted Spawn/Batman.
No matter
the merits of the books produced, Image promised that any creator who worked
under their umbrella would completely own their characters and work unlike
other companies. They wold also be paid and treated better than they ever had
been at the likes of Marvel and DC. These points, and the fact that McFarlane
appeared to fail in adhering to them, would prove important with his later
battles with Neil Gaiman.
The first Spawn, allegedly created by McFarlane in high school |
Despite the
naysayers, Spawn has lasted the
distance, as has another Image comic, Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon. However, unlike Savage
Dragon, Spawn has made the jump
from comic book to celluloid, appearing in a feature film. To be fair, there
was an animated Dragon series, but
then there was an animated Spawn
series as well. In short, if Image has a flagship character, and title, it’s Spawn. By 1996, Spawn was selling an average of 160,000 books per month.
By all
means, feel free to argue that point in the comments section of this blog. I’m
more than willing to get into it.
CREATING & NAMING TONY TWIST
“Twist is
the Mafia Don of the greater New York area, and takes any assault on his power
very personally. After the Violator
killed several of his men, Twist mistakenly attributed the killing to Spawn, who had just made his first
appearance. A war was declared on Spawn
and Twist hired the Cybernetic mercenary Overt-kill
to hunt and slaughter Spawn. Spawn has made several direct threats to
Twist, and Twist has reluctantly called off his vendetta against Spawn However, he is constantly scheming
and planning new ways to destroy Spawn.”
(Wizard Spawn Tribute)
As well as
creating Spawn and his backstory,
McFarlane also created a rogues gallery. Characters such as Clown, Violator, Overt-Kill and even
Satan himself would appear to battle Spawn.
As well as fighting super villains and creatures from Hell, Spawn also came into contact with more
earthly villains. And it was here that McFarlane appeared to make the first of
two errors that would cost him dearly for years to come. The second came when
he reneged on his deals with Gaiman.
When it came
to naming characters, McFarlane stuck to a tried and true formula for him – he
named his characters after real people. Usually these were people he knew; Spawn’s name was Al Simmons, a childhood
friend of McFarlane’s. Spawn’s wife,
Wanda, was named for Todd’s wife Wanda, whom he’d known since childhood. Other
people saw their names appear in his comic books, along with their images (that
practice went back to his days on the Hulk)
and most were flattered or, at the very least, amused at seeing themselves
immortalised in a comic book.
McFarlane's Tony Twist |
The HBO Spawn Animated Tony Twist |
The real Tony Twist, on the left, about to punch someones head in |
In the sixth
issue of Spawn, McFarlane introduced
a mobster, named Antonio Twistelli, aka Tony Twistelli or, as he became known,
Tony Twist. As McFarlane envisioned him, Antonio Twistelli was a large man,
kind of like the Spider-Man and Daredevil foe The Kingpin, only with hair, glasses and a dark suit, and with a
toothpick between his teeth, which often hovered in mid-air, suspended if you
will, while Twist screamed at someone handy. If you think this all sounds like a
cliché, then you’re probably right. All in all, Antonio Twistelli isn’t one of
McFarlane’s best efforts.
Tony Twist,
in the comic, was an evil mob leader, prone to such announcements as, “Make
sure he suffers before you kill him. Then bring me his heart.” “Now let us
vote. Do we continue letting some back-alley hero keep killing us, or do we
dispose of the parasite?" (Spawn #6)
and “If I find out he’s in any way connected to our mysterious hero, his balls
are mine! Hell! Even if he’s not connected, we’ll dust him anyways! . . . A few
deaths should do the job.” (Spawn
#21)
Unfortunately
for McFarlane, he didn’t reach out and talk to the real Tony Twist before
publication. “I do lots of products, I have a lot of employees, and that one
time on one page, one person making an opinion doesn't speak for the whole, but
overall, I've never spoken to Mr Twist prior to this lawsuit.” (Cross-examination
of Todd McFarlane from first Tony Twist trial)
McFarlane
could have saved himself millions of dollars simply by picking up the phone and
reaching out, but he didn’t.
All of the above - the real Tony Twist in action. He would claim that his reputation as a caring, kind family man was damaged by McFarlane's creation |
NEXT INSTALMENT: Writing for Spawn, in which McFarlane takes the fateful decision to hire four writers for one issue each, pays them a cool $100,000 apiece and then builds upon their ideas.
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