“Spawn” #185

Filed Under Comics

I’m not ashamed to admit that I like Spawn. I probably should be, but I’m not. I’ve noticed that Spawnie’s gotten a bit of a bad rap on the geek sites. But of all the Image titles that launched shortly after the heavy-hitters departed from Marvel Comics to form their own creator-owned publishing house, “Spawn” is one of the two (the other is Erik Larsen’s “Savage Dragon”) books that still hits shelves monthly. For better or worse, the character has endured. Creator Todd McFarlane had breathed new artistic life into Spider-Man before his game-changing “Spawn” #1 sold almost 2 million copies, a record for an indepedent book. He since revolutionized action figures for the “mature collector” (i.e. perpetual adolescents like me) and produced a middling “Spawn” film and animated series in the late-’90s.

To his credit, he helped revitalize a flagging medium. Or did he? I started collecting comics in 1991 during the speculator boom, which also creatively bankrupted the industry. Before the housing bubble, before the Internet bubble, there was something that could be called the “comics bubble,” a period when speculators bought up piles of comic books, thinking that one day they’d be as valuable as “Action Comics” #1 (the first appearance of Superman) or “Detective Comics” #27 (the first appearance of Batman). And publishers acquiesced. Tons of #1 issues were put out. They had special gimmick covers. There were crossovers out the yin-yang. It was all sizzle and no steak. By the mid-’90s, Marvel Comics had filed for Chapter 11. DC had run out of A-list characters to kill or cripple. Meanwhile, Image couldn’t ship a book on time to save its life. The bubble burst. Comic books ultimately became so much paper gathering dust in some speculator’s basement.

Having weathered this perfect storm of greed and mediocrity, McFarlane’s become something of a controversial figure. He’s not much of a writer, he’s a bit of a credit hog, and he’s been in and out of court with Neil Gaiman over the rights to certain characters. Yet “Spawn” is still published every month. I think I have every issue of the core title. If I’m missing a few, it’s not intentional. I’ve fallen behind on my reading. It’s also not the easiest book in the world to follow. That brings us to the new storyarc, “Spawn: Endgame,” which kicked off yesterday with issue #185, and is supposed to change everything as we know it!

Um, I’m still lost. For the unintiated, Spawn was once a man named Lt. Col. Al Simmons, a government assassin who was betrayed and murdered by his superior. He went to hell and made a deal with the demon Malebolgia. Simmons returned from the grave, desperate to see his wife again. Unfortunately, he returned some 5 years after his death as Spawn, maggoty corpse that bleeds green “necroplasm,” and slums around with the dregs of society in the back alleys of New York. His wife has since remarried. Life — or “afterlife” — sucks for Spawn. To make matters worse, Spawn’s deal with Malebolgia guarantees his services as a general of Hell’s armies when they attempt an overthrow of Heaven.

That’s how I understand Spawn’s origins, having read the first 100+ issues. From what I saw in the issue recap at the beginning of #185, the world was recently destroyed, Spawn remade it and now God and the Devil are fighting their endless battle in a parallel universe…or something. But #185 begins with Spawn blowing his own head off, someone waking up in the hospital from a coma, and the demonic Clown stumbling upon Spawn’s decapitated corpse. Whilce Portacio — one of the Image’s lesser talented founders — has taken over the pencilling duties for this run. I’m not thrilled with his art. It’s not nearly as incomprehensible as Angel Medina’s work, but McFarlane really should take on the artistic chores again. This is one of the few books I’ve stuck with because, at the very least, it has pretty pictures.

I was hoping that “Spawn: Endgame” would wipe the slate clean and start the series afresh. Issue #185 seems to just complicate things further. McFarlane’s not interested in telling a straighforward superhero story, and that’s fine. But the book’s never been a great read. It gets mired in overly complicated tangents or becomes endlessly redundant. Then every couple of years, McFarlane shifts gears with a storyline like “Endgame” and adds another layer of confusion to the proceedings. Conceptually, I like Spawn — an agent of hell gone rogue. The storytelling unfortunately never quite lives up to the character’s potential. I think I’ll stick with “Endgame” for another couple of issues and see what happens. Like I said, I’m not ashamed to read the book, but if “Spawn” doesn’t improve, I won’t be ashamed to drop it, either.

-Brad Lohan

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