Todd McFarlane Talks King Spawn & CreatorOwned Books and Rights

Todd McFarlane Talks King Spawn & Creator-Owned Books and Rights

We spoke to Todd McFarlane about the record-breaking King Spawn launch, popular creators leaving the big two and joining Substack, and much more.

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Todd McFarlane’s King Spawn #1 is shattering preorder records ahead of its much-anticipated release. With nearly 500k copies sold before the book hits the stands later this month, McFarlane’s iconic franchise has shown no signs of slowing down. Nearly 30 years after Spawn #1 hit the stands, the comic still resonates with readers – leading McFarlane to introduce a handful of new titles set in the Spawn Universe.

McFarlane spoke to Screen Rant about what it was like to see Spawn continue to do well decades after it was originally released. We also spoke about creator-owned books and the recent Substack moves, creator rights and fair pay, and what’s next for Spawn.

What is it like to see King Spawn #1 shattering sales records ahead of the release?

Todd McFarlane: It was a surprise. I’m pretty good about calculating what I think’s gonna happen, so I was thinking that if we could get to about 300k, that’d be a home run. But it just kept going and going and going – and even in the last day, it almost added another 100k. It’s like, “What?!”

For us, all we care about is the order. Once we’ve got that, then that number is locked and loaded, because you’ve got to give it to the printer. They’ve gotta know how many they’re going to put on the press and go.

But it was a shocking number and, all of a sudden, puts it in to rarefied air. Spawn’s Universe was the biggest in the 21st century for Image; this one is the biggest since 1994, when we were in our infancy now. You get to the point where you go, “Since the last 25 years, what books have sold over half a million copies?” You can start counting those on fingers now. Some of them sort of tricked their way to those numbers – [some are] licensed product, so it’s not even company-owned. I could make the argument that other than Action Comics #1000, there hasn’t been a book that sold [more].

It’s an ongoing book, and there’s one single issue I could argue was the only one that’s outsold it now. A couple have bigger numbers, but they tricked their way to those numbers. I chose not to use tricks. Which basically means that they can’t show me a single Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther – whatever book that has sold as many as this book has sold here. I’m going, “I took down the Avengers.” I’ll give you 25 years, I’ll give you 1000 characters – who’s holding more than a half million copies?

Spawn’s shattering records 30 years after its debut. What is it about Spawn? What’s the secret behind this?

Todd McFarlane: If I knew, I would’ve been doing it 20 years ago. Anytime you get some success, I’ve found it’s usually a handful of reasons. There’s never one button you can push and go, “There. That’s it. That’s going to work for us.”

I think if you’re asking me, and I had to make an educated guess? You’ve got a branded character that’s been around for decades. So, you’ve got to have a top brand. You’ve got longevity, which is part of having a strong brand. You’ve got to have some consistency, so the book keeps coming out to the point that we’re at #321 of the original book. You had sort of a pop at issue #300, where they bought a bunch of those books, and #301 set the record for the longest-running independent book. The sales have been going up on the regular book, and then they buy Spawn’s Universe at a pretty elevated number – that worked for them to the point that I’m in my third printing of that. Then I’ve said out loud that the books are all going to be $2.99 once you get past the first issue, so it’s going to be easy for people jump in.

I think they’re just sort of building on a bunch of momentum: a little bit here, a little bit there, and it all sort of adds up. I’ve got a couple of them where, if they order a certain amount and put a coupon in, they can get the book rated. Nobody’s ever done that before. You just do 5-6-7-8 things, then you put it in a blender and spit it out, and that’s your drink. There’s your cocktail, and it happens to be working.

That bodes well for Gunslinger Spawn coming out in October – which, if everything keeps trending the way that is, that’s going to be another record setter. That one’s going to be the largest launch of a new character probably in 25 years, because the one or two issues of King Spawn – characters like Superman or Batman or Spider-Man – already [did well]. Once you say “new character,” I don’t even know what the number is.

If Gunslinger does 400k, I now have to say out loud, “What’s the last launch at 400k for a character who’s never had their own book before?” It’s not the fifth Batman book or whatever, so I don’t know how far you’d have to go back on that one? That could be close to 30 years, and I’m including Marvel and DC and everybody when I’m asking those questions. Not just Image, just an industry-wide question.

It’s still very much the beginning of the year of Spawn. Are you already looking ahead with titles like Gunslinger?

Todd McFarlane: Well, I think that they’re all feeding off each other. I was saying that if Spawn’s Universe comes out and does well and sells, then when they get to their orders for King Spawn, that’s going to be fresh in their mind. They’re gonna say, “Oh, I’ve got to put in my orders. How many did I do on Spawn’s Universe? I did really well. As a matter of fact, I had to put in a couple of reorders. Whenever I order, I should probably raise it a little bit. Plus, Todd’s doing this cool thing here and this cool thing there – he’s gonna give us a coupon or whatever else. Cool, I’ll do it.”

Now, when they get to Gunslinger, they’re gonna have even more momentum. They’re gonna say, “I now have data on my sales for Spawn’s Universe.” They’ll have data on King Spawn and know whether they over-ordered, it was the right amount, or they under-ordered and adjust accordingly. And if King Spawn sells, then why not keep the momentum going on Gunslinger, who seems to be pretty hot character. There’s a lot of buzz on that character right now, so he could be a huge surprise yet.

Hopefully Gunslinger works, and I’ll have three for three. So, they’ll go, “I guess I might as well order some of this one. Todd’s on a hot streak, what the heck. You could do worse.” There’s lots of books out there, and they’re just looking to spend that budget that they have every week on product they think is going to move. If you’ve got a track record that goes with it, that’s not bad.

What was it like to ink Donny Cates’ cover for Spawn?

Todd McFarlane: He’s awesome, and it’s a cool-looking cover. But I will simply say he’s no Jim Lee. But he did me a favor, and it was sort of fun to see his interpretation.

In comic books, we used to do goofy things like this all the time. We try to harken back to that, bringing in all my Boomer things. “In my day, we used to do this!” But I keep doing it, and it works. So it’s like, “Alright. It wasn’t a Boomer thing.” People just enjoy seeing certain looks and and experiments, I guess, that we used to get with more frequency than we do now.

Did you see his [and Ryan Stegman’s] Venom with the chain? It’s very much inspired by Spawn in a really cool way.

Todd McFarlane: No. Sadly, this harkens back to about 1992. We started Image comic books, and I put my head down and didn’t really pay attention to the competition. So, there’s not one single decision I’ve ever made since 1992 based upon what my competition was doing. I don’t care. I’m like, “Here’s what I’m doing. You either like it or you don’t.”

If they happen to have 10 new books this month. I don’t care If they have zero, I don’t care. Here’s my new book: do you want it? I don’t even know if I was going to be up against some big event book from one of the other companies. That’s not my concern. Here’s what I do: does anybody like it?

Unfortunately, I don’t get to keep up with their books. So, I haven’t seen the chain.

Have you heard about the recent news with Substack, and James Tynion IV [and other creators] leaving DC? It kind of harkens to the original Image Comics crew making a similar move to creator-owned projects. Is it interesting to see moves like that in the industry?

Todd McFarlane: It is interesting, because I think there’s an experiment here. And again, I think we have to be careful on what we compare to Image, because I think there’s slight differences.

We saw it years and years and years ago – most people forget that. There was company, or at least that enclave, trying to do an Image thing with nothing but writers. Because we had a bad reputation that we were just artists with big pictures. But here’s the big difference between writers and artists: artists can do one book a month, period. And that’s not an insignificant piece of information.

It basically means that, if you go back to 1992 and I come up with a book called Spawn that sells 1.8 million copies – it’s still a record for independent books – do I think for one second they were buying it because of the character? No, they’re buying it because they want to see more from that Spider-Man artist. They’re going, “Hey, that Spider-Man is going over there and doing some book. I don’t even know what it’s called, but if I want to see his artwork, I gotta buy this book.”

At that point, the pressure’s on us as creators to then deliver books that people want. What we don’t have the luxury of as artists is to do multiple books in one month. What we couldn’t do was say, “Oh my God, I’m going to do a Spider-Man, and I’m going to do a Superman, and I’m going to do the Avengers, and I’m going to do my own creator-owned book, and I’m going to do a book for Dark Horse.” We don’t have that luxury; we have to literally put all our eggs in one basket.

Writers historically haven’t done that; they haven’t put all their eggs in one basket, they spread them all out. And it’d be interesting to see what difference that makes.

The other thing that’s interesting to me is that some of the moves are bypassing the retailer. That is going to be the most interesting reaction to me. I don’t know. If I came out with Spawn’s Universe and King Spawn and Gunslinger, and they’re all huge… And then I said, “Hey, thanks for buying all those books. My next three books, I’m gonna take it away.” I don’t know. I’m sure they’d have some type of reaction. There’s a piece there that I’m going to be very curious about as a sideline watcher in all this.

James has mentioned that books are going to go into print eventually, but the retailers I spoke to were surprised by it and want more information.

Todd McFarlane: There’s the other piece too. One of the hardest things is doing something that’s out of the norm, because now you have to start educating people as to why they should change their habits. If you’ve got a bunch of people who exclusively buy printed books, and you’re saying, “You can only get this as a digital,” will people change their buying habits? I guess we’re about to find out.

I know that retailers are quite proud of some of the support they’ve given to us creators, and they feel like they’re a part of it. That’s the piece of it that I’m like, “Wow, it’s going to be interesting to see what the reaction is.” But, ultimately, it matters what the consumer thinks at the end of it. The victory is still that the creative person is making the calls on their career to do what it is that they see fit. Which is awesome.

You recently spoke out about the importance of fair contracts with talent, and other comic creators are also speaking up about the lack of compensation. I know Ed Brubaker talked about it pretty in-depth recently. Are you happy to see the reality of the situation finally being spelled out to readers, that this billion-dollar industry is in some cases not treating creators as they should?

Todd McFarlane: I think that the topic is important. Whether the consumer is going to get overly concerned about it is another question. They’re like, “Hey, guys. Advocate for yourselves. I like Wolverine. Whether you get paid for it or not in a fair way, I think Wolverine’s super cool.” I don’t know that the consumer is going to get too involved with that. If they do, that’s always good because it puts pressure on some of the companies that are there.

But I know from when I’ve been in Hollywood, I just go, “Guys, I don’t understand it. You pay crumbs.” All you’ve got to do is pay three times or four times crumbs, and you look like geniuses. I’m not saying give the bank away, just multiply the crumbs by three and you’ll look like the most generous person there is.

It’s strange to see characters like Thanos make Marvel so much money, and then Jim Starlin says that KGBeast made him more money. It seems like an important conversation to have, even if it might not be as interesting to consumers.

Todd McFarlane: No, I think it’s something that needs to get out to the public. The question is: what’s going to drive the change, if anything? Is it going to be consumers saying, “This is bullshit, I’m going to boycott,” or is it just going to be that companies don’t want to be embarrassed? They’ll just do something because they just don’t want to have a headline about their company. There’s a lot of different reasons why corporations do what they do.

Is there anything else you can tease about future Spawn projects?

Todd McFarlane: Yeah, I’ve got some other books still lined up behind the original four. I’ve got some new characters that are sitting on the launch pad, and I’m hoping to start bringing in a wider range of people and their skills – international people who live in different places, male and female – and just sort of see where it all goes.

Content is going to be king. You have to have good stories at the end of it. And in comic books, because they’re a visual medium, you have to have a certain level of art that goes with it. I’m biased towards the visual part of it. And then we get some of the Hollywood stuff going that all feeds into it, and it becomes big-time loop. It becomes a bit of a snowball effect.

Unfortunately, I don’t control all those levers right now. Name’s Todd, it only rhymes with God. So, I have to limit myself to where I have control and take care of those areas as much as I can.

Thanks to Todd McFarlane for the conversation. King Spawn #1 is in comic book stores on August 25.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/todd-mcfarlane-interview-spawn-substack-comics/

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