Spawn #1-9

Spawn #1-9

Originally released in 1992

Written by Todd McFarlane, Alan Moore (#8), Neil Gaiman (#9)

Art by Todd McFarlane

I know very little about Spawn as a character or a franchise, so when Humble Bundle had a deal on 90's Image Comics, I picked that up.  There are plenty of other franchises that I'm equally unfamiliar with (Savage Dragon, Astro City...), but I decided to start with Spawn to see what it's like.

Spawn was originally Al Simmons, a military man who died in the line of duty.  Making a literal deal with the devil (presumably because things couldn't get much worse than being stuck in Hell), he agreed to serve the demon Malebolgia if he gets to see his wife again.  Brought back to Earth with a horribly burned body, a distinctive costume, and snippets of his memories, he is now known as Spawn.

Spawn's design is almost peak 90s comics - just give him a gigantic gun and he's set.  The most striking part of his design is his cape, which feels like it has a life of its own at times. My experience with anti-heroes in comics is mixed, but I'm enjoying reading about Spawn so far.  His desire to see his wife, Wanda, adds a layer of sympathy to the character, particularly when he discovers that their inability to have children (something that they both wanted) was due to Al being infertile, and now he found out that (once Wanda remarried Al's friend Terry in the five years since Al's death) Wanda has a daughter of her own.

Todd McFarlane handled both the writing and the art, and it definitely shows in the art.  Several demons show up during the story, such as Malebolgia and the lower-level demon the Violator (who has fly-like eyes in his human form and acts like Joe Pesci mixed with a clown when disguised as a human), and they take very clear inspiration from the Spider-Man villain Venom, with massive fangs and extremely long tongues.

While on Earth, Spawn only has a limited amount of energy, and he dies when it runs out. (I'm not sure if he would get sent back afterwards with his memories removed, or if he only gets one extra chance - if it's the latter, then I'm guessing the limit gets removed at some point) He acts as an agent of Hell while he's there; he's sent to Earth to kill sinners in order to build up the armies of Hell faster.

Once he finds out that his wife is remarried and has a child, he doesn't want to take that life away from her, so Spawn sets out to protect them from the scum of New York City, including child murderer Billy Kincaid.  The writing can get fairly wordy at times, though I'm not sure if this was a quirk of McFarlane's writing or just the style at the time.

Throughout the book, references are made to other Image Comics characters who were being released at the same time, such as the government team Youngblood and the solo hero Savage Dragon.  Even though Image Comics was created due to its founders being frustrated with how Marvel and DC treated their creators, I was surprised to see that there weren't any digs at either company, though there was a little jab at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason.

Then again, issue 10 (which isn't included in this collection, as it covers issues 1-9 and then skips to 11) apparently makes up for it in spades, with all sorts of just-barely lawyer-friendly depictions of Marvel and DC characters locked away in prison. I think that issue was written by a guest writer and included that writer's characters, which would explain the absence.

Speaking of guest writers, I was surprised to see that by issue 8, the series had gotten some fairly big names involved in writing it.  The first seven issues were written by McFarlane himself, but issues 8 and 9 were written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, respectively. (Issue 11, which I won't be covering today, was written by Frank Miller) Issue 8 deals with Billy Kincaid's experiences in Hell, where we learn that Spawn's costume is a living parasite that all of Malebolgia's servants get, while issue 9 introduces Angela, an angel who hunts hellspawn and who is eventually brought to the Marvel universe as Odin's daughter.

As a man who was recently brought back from the dead and looks like a burned and/or rotting corpse, Spawn's living situation isn't the best.  However, living among the homeless does add a humanizing or sympathetic touch to the character as he becomes part of the community; he protects them from people who would kill them and they protect him when the police come around trying to find him.

I enjoyed these early issues of Spawn.  While it contains some of the excesses that 90s comics were known for (Violator's calling card is removing the hearts of his victims, which is shown in graphic detail at points), I found Spawn's personal conflict to be a compelling one (which was not a sentence that I thought I'd be saying when I went into this) and I'm interested to see where the story goes from here.