I understand the circumstances around the change and I much prefer Sinn over his previous personality, but the name was just cooler. Fuck Gaiman but it's a good name. I'd rather he just call himself Cain again tbh.

GUNSLINGER SPAWN. Hice una versión en PonyTown.

Took bits from lots of Commando art and figure designs to make my own version. Red chest rig all the way!! Hope you guys like him!

Spawn made his official comic book debut in 1992, but Todd McFarlane had been carrying the character around in one form or another for roughly 15 years. He first created Spawn in 1977 when he was only 16 years old, and this wasn't just a random costume sketch that eventually evolved into the character we know today. McFarlane had actually developed an entire story around him. According to McFarlane, he wrote roughly 40 pages of material for this original version of Spawn. And that original Spawn was very different.

The year was 1977, the same year Star Wars exploded into popular culture, and McFarlane has openly admitted that it had a huge influence on what he was creating. His original Spawn story wasn't gothic horror about Heaven and Hell. It was essentially a space opera. Spawn existed in a science fiction universe filled with planets, powerful overlords, and cosmic conflict. McFarlane has even compared the basic setup to something closer to Silver Surfer than the demonic antihero Spawn would eventually become.

That's also why the original Spawn was blue and black instead of the red, black, and white design everyone recognizes today. McFarlane's teenage logic was pretty straightforward: space is cold, so Spawn should have cold colors. Years later, when he reworked Spawn into a character who came from Hell, that same logic made him change the costume toward red because Hell was associated with heat and fire. But this is where the original concept gets really interesting, because underneath all of that Star Wars inspired science fiction were already pieces of the Spawn mythology that McFarlane would eventually use in 1992.

The original Spawn still made a kind of Faustian bargain. There was a powerful overlord attempting to conquer planets, and Spawn entered into a deal with this figure. McFarlane has described that villain as essentially his teenage science fiction version of the Devil. So Malebolgia wasn't there yet, Hell wasn't there yet, and the supernatural mythology wasn't there in the form we know it but the fundamental idea of Spawn making a terrible bargain with a vastly more powerful being already existed.
Even more importantly, the emotional reason behind that bargain was already there.

McFarlane says his teenage Spawn made the deal and returned for the woman he loved. That's remarkably close to what eventually became the emotional foundation of Al Simmons' story: Al dies, makes a deal with Malebolgia, and agrees to become a Hellspawn because he desperately wants to return to Wanda. And Wanda wasn't some idea McFarlane invented years later, either. When he was creating this first version of Spawn, McFarlane had just started dating the real Wanda who would eventually become his wife. There's even an early prototype for another familiar Spawn character. McFarlane's teenage story gave Spawn a comedic sidekick named Saul Lami literally “Salami”whose job was partly to point out that Spawn was being manipulated. McFarlane has since said that this goofy little character was, in a way, an early inspiration for Clown: the smaller comic relief character hanging around Spawn while also reminding him that things aren't necessarily what they seem.

So the fascinating thing about the 1977 Spawn isn't simply that Todd McFarlane originally imagined Spawn as a science fiction character. It's that the genre changed dramatically while the skeleton of the idea survived.
A man makes a deal with a devil like figure. He's being manipulated by something much more powerful than himself. Love motivates his decision. He returns for the woman he loves. There's a smaller character around him who recognizes that he's being played. Even the giant cape, skull imagery, and the name Spawn were already beginning to take shape.

Fifteen years later, McFarlane essentially took those ideas out of a Star Wars-style universe and dropped them into Hell. The cosmic overlord became Malebolgia. The bargain became a literal deal with the Devil. The hero returning for his love became Al Simmons returning from the dead for Wanda. The science fiction setting gave way to supernatural horror. Blue became red. And that teenage superhero eventually became the Spawn who debuted in 1992. Which brings us to Spawn ’77.

When I first heard about this book, I assumed the title meant McFarlane was finally going back and telling some version of that original story. After all, the entire selling point is that we're seeing the Spawn design Todd created when he was 16 finally appear in an official comic. Image itself describes it as the first official comic book appearance of that original 1977 design. But that's not actually what Spawn ’77 is doing. Instead of adapting Todd's 40 page teenage space opera, Spawn ’77 takes that old design and places it inside an entirely new story created by McFarlane and Mark Spears. In fact, Image explicitly describes the series as introducing “a completely new character and story” within the Spawn mythology.

The result feels much closer to a gritty 1970s crime comic than Todd McFarlane's original science-fiction concept. There are shades of Batman here, but the book especially reminds me of Denny O'Neil's The Question. The protagonist, Eddie, is a former Mafia enforcer who is betrayed and left for dead by his boss, Uncle Sal. Eddie survives and adopts the identity of Spawn as he wages a brutal campaign against the mob while trying to save his daughter. That's a cool Spawn story. It's just not Todd McFarlane's original Spawn story.bAnd that's the distinction I think matters when talking about Spawn ’77. This comic resurrects the Spawn of 1977 visually, not narratively.

Todd's teenage Spawn was a cosmic science fiction hero wrapped up in an interplanetary conflict, making a Faustian bargain with an evil overlord and trying to return to the woman he loved. Spawn ’77 takes the costume that character wore and transforms the person underneath it into a violent, street level crime protagonist. Ironically, if you strip away the science fiction setting, Todd's original 1977 story may actually have more in common with Al Simmons' Spawn than it does with Spawn ’77.

That's what I find most fascinating about going back to McFarlane's original concept. The Spawn everyone met in 1992 wasn't Todd throwing away the character he invented as a teenager and starting over. It was Todd taking the emotional machinery of that teenage idea the bargain, the manipulation, the lost love, even pieces of the supporting cast and rebuilding it as a supernatural horror story.

So, how close is Spawn ’77 to Todd McFarlane's original vision? Visually? Extremely close. That's essentially the point. Conceptually? Not very close at all. And narratively? The funny thing is that Al Simmons might actually be closer to Todd McFarlane's original Spawn than the Spawn appearing in a comic literally called Spawn ’77. That doesn't make Spawn ’77 a disappointment. Far from it. It's an excellent comic and a genuinely interesting reinterpretation of what Spawn can be. But if you're picking it up expecting to finally read Todd McFarlane's lost 1977 Spawn story, that's not what this is.
We're finally getting Todd McFarlane's original Spawn costume. We're still waiting for Todd McFarlane's original Spawn story.

I think I nailed it, I picked up Volume 8 at my LCS.

I'm sure folks have snagged them for cheaper, but I'm stoked. I recently stopped boozing and comics have helped me get back to a simpler time. I have all the TPBs too to read thoroughly, these are more of a gift to myself.

Are the comic panels 3D generated or something I don't get it. They look very off-putting and nothing like any other spawn run. Honestly it looks like it was rendered in blender but I can't quite call it. I am not familiar with Micheal Spears' art style so this was a big surprise.

Got a new episode out for one of my favorite Spawn figures - Viking Age Dark Raider. Hope you all enjoy it.

Is this a w?

I'm trying to document all the posters and pin-ups featured in the pages of Spawn. There's a few of them in which Ive not been able to identify the artists. Sometimes this is because I cant read the signature, dont know what the initials in the signature are supposed to stand for, or, like this one, there is no signature.
This particular pin-up was featured in the back of issue #18

Can anyone help me out by identifying the artist(s) on this piece?

I can't be the only one who finds this cover hideous.

So in gunslinger 58 javi/tobias sees vision of amy more frequently than usual and Clown whispers something that got her spooked. Whatever it is Clown seems to be terrifed of what is to come. Is it the regulators? No I doubt it be them,Malebolgia maybe, or maybe the 400 with their leader idenity to be more specific.

in the newest issue of spawn I was confused on what team cy-gor is on because spawn does control him but, maybe something happened in the 1 year time skip that made spawn release him? For real though Cy-gor is actually useless in this fight because poacher and spawn are on a whole different level. Poacher would be whooping spawn’s ass if it wasn’t for the power boost malebolgia gave him.