“It felt like Spawn was becoming a little bit like a team-up book,” McFarlane recalls. “I think Spawn works best when he’s a solo act. As part of that expansion, I also gave Spawn another book, King Spawn. Now that I’ve got even more breathing space to show who Spawn is. Gunslinger Spawn, who I thought could be a breakout character, deserved some more room. The Scorched, to me, was a place where it was technically a team-up book and I could rotate different characters coming in and out.”
On the McFarlane Toys end, the company has unveiled a new line of highly detailed and accessory-loaded figures under the banner McFarlane Elite Edition. With the price of, well, everything increasing, the line was created to cater to toy collectors rather than compromising on the quality of the toys themselves. While retailing for a higher price point, the toys are not only more impressively rendered but include features like signed items that are more than worth the price of purchase alone.
“It’s us being able to make the toy exactly the way that we think the toy should be made,” McFarlane observes. “Instead of doing everything more cheaply, what if we made another division called the Elite Division? The price is going to go up, but it’ll let us make the figure the way that we want, give extra accessory pieces and get the articulation down, maybe throwing in a card or a signature in there. We’re actually doing a value box that hopefully people will respond to, saying that they got a lot for their money.”
One of the longstanding projects that McFarlane has been working on is a cinematic reboot of the character, following the 1997 superhero movie. With Jamie Foxx attached to play the hellish superhero, McFarlane notes that the project is still very much in the scripting phase, and the creator is looking for a screenplay that captures his dark and creepy vision for the character. Without having to worry about the property being tied to a corporate entity like DC and Marvel’s library of characters, McFarlane is holding out until the project goes all-in on how vicious and twisted Spawn can truly be.
“I’m not bound by having to worry about some big licensing program that’s out there in the world. I just want a cool movie and if that means I don’t sell a single T-shirt, that’s okay.” McFarlane notes. “Jamie can still do that level of intense acting that I think needs to come. There’s a love story component to the Spawn character and if you watch something like Django Unchained and you see the scenes in that movie where he sees them doing something to his wife but he can’t do anything about it, I feel the burn in his eyes. I feel that anger welling up inside of him as a character and that’s what I’m trying to harness.”
Written by Todd McFarlane and Mark Spears and illustrated by Mark Spears, Spawn 77 #1 is published September 9 by Image Comics.