—Kel McKnight, B1Daily

Before Spawn became an animated series, a movie, an action-figure empire and one of comics’ most recognizable antiheroes, Todd McFarlane made a decision that helped shake the comic-book industry: he walked away from Marvel at the height of his popularity.

McFarlane had become a superstar through his work on Spider-Man, but he wanted something the traditional work-for-hire system couldn’t fully provide: ownership and creative control.

In 1992, McFarlane joined Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino and Whilce Portacio in founding Image Comics. The company’s creator-owned model allowed writers and artists to retain ownership of their characters and intellectual property rather than automatically surrendering those rights to the publisher. Image Comics

Then Came Spawn

McFarlane didn’t leave Marvel merely to complain about the system. He attempted to prove another system could work.

Spawn #1 arrived in 1992 and sold approximately 1.7 million copies, an extraordinary figure for an independently published comic. Image Comics

Spawn was unmistakably McFarlane’s creation: dark, violent, supernatural and visually extravagant. More importantly, McFarlane owned him.

That distinction became Spawn’s greatest contribution to independent comics.

The character demonstrated that creators didn’t necessarily need Marvel or DC to produce commercially enormous superhero properties. A creator-owned character could sell comics, generate merchandise, reach television and movies, and develop into a multimedia franchise.

Spawn Became the Proof of Concept

Image Comics didn’t invent creator ownership, and independent comics existed long before 1992. But McFarlane and his fellow Image founders gave the movement something enormously valuable: mainstream firepower.

These weren’t unknown artists publishing photocopied comics from a basement. They were some of the industry’s hottest creators deliberately walking away from established corporate characters to build their own.

Spawn became perhaps the loudest demonstration that the gamble could work.

In 2019, Spawn #300 was celebrated by Image as making the series the longest-running creator-owned comic of its kind, and the title has continued hundreds of issues beyond that milestone. Image Comics

Meanwhile, Image grew into the home of creator-owned successes ranging from The Walking Dead and Invincible to Saga and Monstress. Image Comics

McFarlane’s Bigger Legacy Is Ownership

Todd McFarlane will always be remembered for Spawn’s enormous cape, chains, glowing green eyes and gloriously excessive 1990s comic-book energy.

But his larger contribution may be philosophical.

Create something. Own it. Control it. Build upon it.

Spawn showed generations of comic creators that working on Batman, Spider-Man or the X-Men didn’t have to represent the summit of a career. Creating the next great character yourself could be the bigger prize.

McFarlane didn’t destroy the Marvel-and-DC establishment.

He helped prove creators could build another road around it.

And more than three decades later, Spawn is still walking down that road.

—Kel McKnight, B1Daily