The Toddfather introduces us to all his neat new toys in Spawn’s Universe #1, an introductory one-shot debuting the new line of Spawn characters and teasing their respective titles. Written by Todd McFarlane; drawn by Jim Cheung, Brett Booth, Stephen Segovia and Marcio Takara; inked by Adelso Corona and McFarlane; colored by Fco Plascencia, Andrew Dalhouse and Peter Steigerwald; and lettered by Tom Orzechowski and AndWorld Design.
I love Spawn. Unironically.
I know that might sound like a weird preamble, but stick with me; I’m going somewhere with it. And it’s something you do have to state up front when you talk about Spawn and his boisterously sincere, wholly singular creator.
From the early issues I used to smuggle into my room in the many trailer parks I lived in throughout childhood to my purchase, just this very year, of the first Compendium edition omnibus, Spawn has always been a part of my life. Even if I wasn’t particularly connected to the current era of the title.
I have always dipped in and out of the series, but ever still I appreciated the value it brought to creator-owned comics, as well as its constantly entertaining and interesting creator, who throughout the whole press cycle of this new initiative, has remained a constant source of enthusiasm for comics and the just-as-weird-as-he-is people who make them.
So, it is with ALL OF THAT in mind and with a heavy heart that I have to report that I’m not sure Spawn’s Universe #1 is very good, either as a single issue of comics or a clean jumping-on point for the new line of titles.
But starting with what works, however, the actual characters themselves are very cool. And the whole whopping, almost triple-sized affair is rendered in some pretty incredible artwork, should you ignore the Brett Booth of it all. To clarify, his efforts top out at “Just OK” amid the splashiness of others like Jim Cheung and Marcio Takara.
Walking us through the new “team” of Spawns, Todd McFarlane delivers punchy, brazenly overwritten introductions to the new Gunslinger Spawn and She-Spawn, and kicks things off with a thunderously Dungeons & Dragons-inspired re-introduction of the fan-favorite Medieval Spawn, shown here doing the good and proper activities of hacking through dragons and chopping the heads off evil hell-wizards.
It is all appropriately heavy metal and still radiates with the same giddy, “throw it all at the wall” spirit that made Spawn such an interesting “indie” narrative experiment. I say “indie” like that because it’s hard to think of an Image NOW that exists in a purely independent market space, but Spawn’s Universe #1 at least FEELS like something totally new for the title, moving it beyond just a long-running solo title and trying out new, interesting kinks in the chains kids love that make up Spawn. Alongside opening it up to a bunch of other creatives, who will surely sprint away with it, just like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Frank Miller and others did with the original runs.
But, unfortunately, just thinking of the opportunities Spawn’s Universe will afford to creatives instantly calls to mind one of the roster’s most glaring missteps: the lack of any female writers or artists on the line. Which is then pulled further into focus during the She-Spawn introduction, as it’s basically just “What if Jessica Drew was a Spawn?” which would absolutely come across better under the pens of a woman.
There is also the issue of these introductions being tacked onto an especially wordy but run-of-the-mill “episode” of Spawn, which spends a great deal of its panel layout tediously laying out the reason we have a team of Spawns now and putting over the new villain, Sinn, who plans to take control of the ongoing war between daemons and fallen angels for the empty thrones of Hell.
I absolutely understand WHY this issue has to be so expository, both as a regular comics reader and professional critic. You have a whole gaggle of new characters, along with a new villain and plot setup that you have to make sure hook readers well enough to be willing to follow the new Spawns to their respective titles. You also have a bunch of different power sets to walk through. Each new Spawn has their own “gimmick,” blossoming off from “prime” Spawn’s necro-regeneration powers, so you have to take a bit of time, at the very least, to display the rules of how they work, both visually and narratively.
But at the same time, if the goal of this one-shot was to introduce us to the new cast, it would have been more successful had we spent more time with them all. Sure, the team-up between Spawn, Cy-Gor (a robit monke that rules) and Gunslinger Spawn that makes up the main story provides plenty of bombast and sumptuous artwork from Cheung and company, but it feels like this shouldn’t be the place we are focusing on. A feeling further exacerbated by the placement of the vignettes as backup stories to the main action.
I really do love Spawn. And I am excited for it to branch off into its own self-sustaining indie comic production silo, stringing it across multiple titles. But it’s that same love and excitement that makes me comfortable saying that Spawn’s Universe #1 is a mixed bag. It certainly looks great (save for the Booth section, which again, is FineTM but visibly the weakest effort stacked against the rest of the art teams) and contains some choice comic silliness that I can’t help but root for. But the lack of women creatives on the teams, along with the heavily expository makeup of the main story, keeps it from being the “can’t miss” issue we want it to be.
Ultimately, I wish Spawn’s Universe #1 gave us a bit more of the Universe and maybe a touch less of the (original) Spawn.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
