♪♪♪
McFarlane:
There is a fine line between
being diligent and persevering
and being delusional
or being an asshole.
Once you accept that
every human being
isn't going to like your stuff,
you're free.
I came to Marvel at the point
when Marvel was at
a boring stage artistically.
Every time I tried
to do something,
they went, "You can't.
You can't."
So I can't do panels
that overlap.
I can't have appendages
come out panels.
Why?
♪♪♪
I said, "Break the rules
and make it look cool."
And guess what?
It made my career.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Silvestri: Todd's a visionary.
He could see what people wanted,
regardless of what others were
telling him that people wanted,
and 10 times out of 10,
he was right.
So they're bumpy like this, but
then the ones that cut across...
Lee: Todd is one of those
one-of-a-kind creators
that comes across
every generation or so
that kind of redefines the game.
If you look at Todd's career,
getting to tell
his story his way,
it's the lighthouse
in the distance.
Silvestri: When Todd's run
of "Spider-Man" hit,
it hit like a bomb.
No one was doing
what Todd was doing.
Quesada: It didn't matter how
much he was abstracting figures
because he was guiding your eye
into the story,
giving you the sense
when you opened the page
that those characters
were literally just
punching you in the jaw
and not each other in the jaw.
Silvestri:
I could not wait to get
the next Todd McFarlane book.
It wasn't just "Spider-Man."
It was the next
Todd McFarlane book.
Lee: He likes the idea
of a challenge.
It motivates him when he sees
something in his way that says
"You can't do this."
Silvestri:
That's how Todd lives his life.
"What is the status quo?
I don't care.
This is where it's going to go."
Bernardin: He was a believer in
himself as an artist.
He was a believer in "Spawn."
Silvestri: When the first issue
of "Spawn" came out,
it was a game changer.
Production values were higher.
The paper quality was better.
And it was Todd McFarlane,
his own character
the way he wanted to do it.
Bernardin:
You get these amazingly rich,
just vibrantly sick characters
and images
and world and landscapes.
That's Todd's brain.
He wants to make that happen.
Kirkman: Todd did for toys
what he did for comics.
It came in
and he brought extra detail,
more devotion
to how the toys actually look.
Avila: Todd helped reinvent
comics and toys.
Name another person
who's at the impact on comics
and toys that Todd McFarlane
has.
Kirkman: He takes that into film
and television.
This is insane.
Silvestri: That guy literally
came from nowhere,
out of nowhere
and built everything.
He did it on his own strictly
by just sheer force of will.
Love it, like it, loathe it,
whatever it is,
you have to have respect for it.
And you have to have respect
for the journey
that he's taken
to get to issue 300
of his own superhero
supernatural story.
[ Applause ]
The history that we're making
is that 300 ties the record
for the longest-running
creator-owned comic book ever.
For me, it's been
a 27-year journey.
There is no shortcut to get to
300 issues of a comic book.
So I don't drink coffee,
don't drink tea,
and don't drink alcohol.
I need my water for my pens
so they don't get clogged.
I think there's lots of
great artists who never
worried about anatomy
being 100% accurate.
As long as you're
in the ballpark,
people go for the ride
because then you get a style.
So these pods here are going
to convey his muscles here.
There's lots of people
that draw way better anatomy
than I do, right?
Greg Capullo, Marc Silvestri,
Jim Lee,
I mean, they draw circles
around my anatomy.
So what helped keep me
in that pool,
whenever I had a character,
I went,
"How can we make them
as interesting on the page
at key moments?"
So I've got one, two, three,
four money pages.
You sort of build up
and you go back
and you build up
and you go back.
And then would be Spawn
and his cowl.
When I knew I was getting
to one of those moments,
I intentionally made
the previous page bland.
I was just lulling
the reader into, "Oh, okay.
This is nice and something
is going to happen,"
and then boom,
and then there's a visual.
Should be something
fairly big and dynamic.
That's why most people know
two lines of a thousand songs,
because they remember
those moments.
If I can get three
or four moments in a comic book
out of 20 pages,
I've done my work.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
I was the proverbial
best artist in the class
since I was 5.
I was an incessant doodler.
I was that kid that every time
somebody had to be drawn
on the chalkboard,
they'd go,
"Todd, can you
come draw a horse?"
I bought my first comic at 16.
I just went [Gasps]
I got smitten real fast.
Comic books, you just get
to come up with crazy stuff.
So I went, "Hey, I'm going
to teach myself the style."
And I was collecting
comic books.
I was a comic book fiend.
I was thinking, "Oh, it would be
cool being on a comic book."
I was starting to try
and teach myself.
But, you know,
it all happens in New York.
I'm a Canadian, you know?
Never gonna happen.
And then flipping
through the channels
and one of the channels
is a public broadcast.
And on this grainy show,
somebody's holding up
a comic book page.
I went, "Whoa, comic books."
And then it got better.
The page they were holding up
was from "The Uncanny X-Men."
The guy holding it
is John Byrne, the artist,
and then he says
the magic words --
"I live here in Calgary."
[ Imitates explosion ]
The guy who draws
the best-selling comic book
lived in the same city I did?
As a Canadian kid, that was
the moment I went, "Wow.
If he can live in Calgary,
then it's doable."
And I put my head down.
That was it.
So it looks like
I'm doing really good.
Whoa, whoa.
They forgot about him
for a second.
That's so great.
Oh, my gosh.
I met Todd at a baseball park.
He was a groundskeeper
for a Major League Baseball team
in Calgary, Alberta.
McFarlane:
Run into her a couple times
because I was working
at a ballpark or whatever.
And I get smitten pretty quick.
Kolomyjec: He's very handsome.
I pretty much fell head
over heels right away.
One of the things that drew me
to Todd was his energy
and his sense of humor.
He's a storyteller.
"I love you,
and happy sweet 16th birthday."
Todd would write love letters
and poems for me.
In the letters,
he would sketch something,
even on the envelope
or in the letter.
I remember right
from the beginning
just being blown away
by what he could do.
He can be very,
very energetical,
like at a comic book convention.
He's friendly and he's smiling
and he's greeting people
and he's jumping over the table
to take pictures with people.
He is on.
Todd's a bit of a contradiction,
though.
In some ways, he's, like,
very funny and very playful.
But then he can turn around
to be very serious
and very intense.
He has this ability to just
go through walls
and never give up
and never take no for an answer.
Keeping him in balance
is a -time job.
♪♪♪
My dad was one of the hardest-
working people I ever saw.
He was just
a blue-collar grinder
who was honest and fair.
And yet there were times
when people took advantage
of my dad.
As a kid,
I thought my dad allowed them
to take advantage of him.
And it shaped me
because early on I said,
"I want to be just like my dad,
except, I'm going to fight back.
I'm not going
to get pushed around."
I was in the state
of Washington.
They don't have baseball
programs in Canada,
and I wanted to play baseball.
My day routine -- get up,
play baseball, go to school,
have a three-hour janitor job,
go to my second
baseball practice,
go home to the trailer
I lived in, do my homework,
and then at about midnight,
pull out blank pieces of paper
and do my sample.
And then I would send them
to every company.
Not just Marvel, not just DC.
There was First Comics.
There was Eclipse Comics.
There's Pacific Comics.
If they existed,
I found out who the editors were
and I'd send them off
to 35 of these people,
and I'd sit back and I'd wait.
And I did that for years.
♪♪♪
I got 300 rejection letters.
♪♪♪
I'm walking home
from practice one day.
Wanda's standing.
I can still see her.
And as I get close,
she yells to me and she says...
"Who's Steve Englehart?"
"He wants you to
call him back."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Applause ]
One of the things I wanted to do
was to do something big
and do something special
with it.
For 300, I wanted to do
my "Oh, my gosh" issue.
Who's going to look at this
and not go, "Oh, my gosh.
Look at all of that."
And that's not even color.
Cover to cover, it's 76 pages.
It's a big deal
to be part of this big,
big milestone
in "Spawn's" history.
Some of the challenges
that we've had
to try to make this issue
were coordinating
a lot of artistic talent.
McFarlane:
Jason Shawn Alexander,
who is my steady artist,
his style is super cool.
Jerome Opeña is only doing
a couple pages,
but great cover.
J. Scott Campbell
is a very famous cover artist.
What would be awesome
is if I could say that,
"Not only are you doing a cover,
you're doing pages
on the inside."
The home run would be
"Could I get Greg Capullo
to come back?"
He's done more issues of "Spawn"
than anybody.
I go, "Man, if I could just
bring him back
just for one last encore."
Capullo:
So I wasn't between contracts.
I'm in the thick of it.
Oh, I says, "You're going to
have to let me go and do this
because it's 'Spawn' 300,
and I did so much of 'Spawn,'
and this landmark thing
and it's history making."
And they understood
the magnitude
of what Todd has
achieved here.
Why I should
be a part of that.
That's good, because I would
have went and done it anyway.
So I'm walking home
from practice one day.
Wanda's standing.
I can still see her.
Four steps up to get into
the trailer.
And as I get close,
she yells to me,
"Who's Steve Englehart?"
And I went, "Steve Englehart?
He's a comic book guy."
"He just phoned.
He wants you to call him back."
And I phoned him,
and he offered me a job.
And boom, I'm in a comic book.
The samples specifically were
this character called Coyote.
They gave them to
Steve Englehart.
Steve Englehart didn't need
somebody to draw Coyote.
He needed somebody
to draw a backup story.
About halfway through
my second issue,
they said, "We're canceling
the book."
Took years to get
into the business.
I now basically am unemployed
four months later.
Every now and then, there are
these forks in the road,
and the fork is really called
the dumb luck fork.
"Infinity, Inc." --
the artist of that book died.
It left an opening.
I get hired.
And then all of a sudden,
Bob Harras says,
"I got this other book,
'The Hulk.'
You want to try and draw it?"
That's the moment
when I became the artist.
Marvel then says to me,
what I heard, "Make it boring.
This is what we do.
We do boring layouts now."
And we clash artistically.
Todd started out as someone
that was rising up
through the ranks
that wasn't embraced
by the people
running Marvel at the time.
Silvestri:
You couldn't hold Todd down.
That was probably
a big frustration
for a lot of people at Marvel.
Big, ballsy,
energetic stuff resonates.
That's why Jack Kirby
was so great.
It just jumped off the page.
Silvestri:
And this was happening with
someone who was very young
and working
for a huge corporation
that was paying his paychecks.
And still he was going,
"No, this is how you do it."
As much as sometimes upper
management was complaining,
the readers were rejoicing.
And "Hulk" just catapulted me
even further.
Okay, how do I,
Todd McFarlane,
assert myself in the sea
of artists that do comic books?
You want to take the books that
nobody's paying attention to.
Take those over
and prop them up.
And all of a sudden people go,
"Oh, my gosh."
"Spider-Man" was now starting
to fall down the sales charts.
They warned me to stay away
from the Spidey office.
So I marched into that office,
and they were right,
because it was a mess.
If I was going to draw it
the exact same way
and repeat what was not working,
that would be a fool's errand.
Silvestri: Todd got pushback on
pretty much everything,
but that's what happens
when you're a visionary.
♪♪♪
McFarlane:
Jim Salicrup was my editor,
and he was, to this day,
the best editor I ever had.
He just said,
"Don't draw something
just because
you're just drawing it.
Have a purpose for it."
He didn't care
whether it was a right or wrong.
He just wanted to know that
I wasn't doing it arbitrarily.
The first thing he said to me
was "What's with the webbings?
Spider-Man had been around now
for 297 issues.
This is not
how the webbings look.
What are you doing?"
You could not take
Spider-Man's webbing
and shoot it towards camera.
Up to that point, from my
perspective, artistically,
they were doing Spider-Man,
emphasis on "man."
When I took it,
I went, "Oh, no, no.
It's gonna be 'Spider'-Man."
I don't care about the "man."
And so I just came up
with this thing
that to me was just
almost like frayed rope
that just went "chk-chk-chk"
as it was shooting.
And I could shoot
it in every direction,
and, more importantly,
towards camera.
So he goes, "Alright,
you've got a reason for it."
He went for it.
Silvestri: The webbing --
people always wondered,
why does it look like that?
And Todd was like,
"It wouldn't."
Lee: I don't know if they ever
let him do it his way.
I think you just had
more old-timers,
people from previous generations
that knew how comics were
created in yesteryear.
McFarlane: Every time I tried
to do something, they went,
"You can't. You can't."
When they told me to stop
doing the stuff on "Spider-Man,"
I just said yes,
and I kept doing it, right?
Who's that crazy 22-year-old?
Silvestri:
Todd had no fear ever,
and as long as it
translated into sales,
suddenly the memos came out,
corporate --
"Let Todd do what he wants."
McFarlane: Got me in trouble
and it broke
some of the iconic looks of it.
Ended up being things
that the fans liked.
I got to the point
where I wanted to start writing,
so I quit.
They came back to me
and they went,
"Whoa, Todd,
don't overreact here.
There's three Spider-Man books.
What if we created a new book
and we gave you your own book?"
"Do I get to write it?"
"Yeah."
"You're gonna give me
a number-one Spider-Man issue,
and I've never written
a thing in my life.
I think you guys are crazy.
But I'm in."
Silvestri: When Todd's run of
"Spider-Man" hit,
the reaction
was pretty spectacular.
Avila: And that thing
just stood out
from a mile away on the shelves.
First issue of Todd's
"Spider-Man" series
sold two and half million
copies.
At that point, it was
the biggest-selling comic ever.
McFarlane: "Spider-Man" is
the number-one-selling book
that I'm writing,
penciling, and inking,
had just set some record,
and yet it wasn't
good enough for Marvel.
They started saying, "Todd,
you got to change the story.
You got to change the tonality
of it.
Maybe start going back
and putting Spider-Man
a little bit more classic."
And I thought
it was just absurd.
They didn't want the artist
to shine.
They wanted Spider-Man to shine.
They didn't want Todd to shine.
You know, Marvel was making
all kinds of money
off of the backs of people
that were creating
all these properties for them
and creating these stories
for them,
the writers or artists.
The wheels were already turning.
About "Hmm, look at the sales
on 'Spider-Man.'
Spider-Man has been around
since the '60s
and suddenly it's selling
a million copies.
Why is that?
Uh, it's because of me."
So at the end of 299,
which is where we're picking up,
Spawn grabs the angel,
so we'll just start right there,
and then we'll get a reaction
of the guy he's grabbing.
He doesn't have any eyes,
so it's gonna be
a little bit tough.
Bailey:
It's a very ambitious issue.
I mean, Todd's been drawing
every single second
that he has been able to.
McFarlane: And so I'll scribble
all this out.
And I literally can go in
with my inking tool
and go straight into this.
Penciling is
here's the shapes
and here's the dynamics of it,
and here's whatever.
What inking does is it
three-dimensionalizes
these figures on the page.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Kolomyjec:
He will ink in the car.
He will ink when
he's in a meeting.
He will ink on the floor
if he has to.
When people see this,
they'll be horrified, go, "What?
I thought he had 300
all figured out,
buttoned up."
Bailey: The size of this book
is triple-size issues.
It's not going to be
an easy feat.
McFarlane: I thought
it was absurd that
they gave me the task
to get "Spider-Man" sales up.
I get the sales to arguably
the highest that anybody
at that point was doing
and set records,
and yet it still
wasn't good enough.
Rob, Erik, and I, we were having
these conversations.
And then the conversation
after a while was the what if.
What if all of us
did our own books,
and we did them
in the same place?
Nobody's done that yet.
We go to New York to basically
say we're quitting,
we're leaving, and we're going
to start our our own brand.
And while we're in New York
to have that meeting,
I accidentally bump into Jim Lee
and Marc Silvestri.
Todd saw me in the lobby
of the hotel
and he came up to me and said,
"Bud, I think
we need to have a conversation."
And the plan was just
get as many people together
and we're going to start
our own empire.
We're gonna own everything.
Everything you create is yours.
Lee: If he wasn't spearheading
this effort,
I don't know
if I would have left.
I conned them,
or sales-pitched them,
whichever word they would like,
to join.
And then, Jim, not only
does he say he'll join,
but he's got Whilce Portacio.
We went to bed with four.
We woke up in the morning,
and we added three overnight.
And we walk into that meeting
and we basically tell them
we're about to leave
and we're gonna
go start our own --
create our own projects.
Avila:
It's really hard to overstate
just how big a deal this was
at the time.
Marvel and DC
had no real competition.
Silvestri: Image was structured
in such a way
that the partners,
we had two rules.
You own everything you do,
and you don't screw
with the other partners.
Now it was official.
Now the only person that could
say no to Todd was Todd.
That was everything.
That was Image to him
was the fact that
he could do what he wanted
and he could make things
as cool as he wanted,
and no one could tell him no.
One of our first meetings
where we were all together,
and before anyone knew what
anyone was doing, sat around.
"So what's your book
going to be?"
Todd was like, "Oh, yeah,
I got this character.
He's dead. He's from Hell.
He's all disfigured.
And I'm calling him Spawn."
Issue number one
was just going to
basically be the origin
of this character
that nobody knew who it was
called Spawn.
And so I needed
to basically set the table
visually
as to what this world was
and the people
would get around it.
The original concept to Spawn
was this guy
who was in love with this woman,
and it's taken away from him.
He just wants to go back
and say goodbye one last time.
Because of that, his whole life
gets turned upside-down.
He makes literally the deal
with the devil.
That was easy for me to write.
Would I make that deal?
Of course I would, right?
Would I want to come back
and say goodbye to my Wanda?
Of course I would.
So we'll make it
so that Spawn's
saying goodbye to his Wanda.
That book is essentially
just a long-winded metaphor
for a lot of things in my life.
Silvestri: Everything that
drives Spawn, ultimately,
it's because he loves
his wife so much.
And he loves the family so much.
And he will sacrifice anything
to protect them.
In reality, Todd would be
the same way.
And now I go, "This is the look
of the character you bought.
This is who Spawn is.
And I hope that you guys will
go for a ride here
in the next little while."
Silvestri: When the first issue
of "Spawn" came out,
it was a game changer.
Not only did the fans go crazy,
but the professional side
of the industry went crazy.
Bernardin: The first issue's
cover was just gorgeous.
I mean, the colors were unlike
anything we'd seen before.
The fine detail of his art
was just popping in a way
that you could only do
when you controlled
every aspect of production.
Kirkman:
The horror elements of Spawn
really made it stand out
from not only all
the other Image comics,
but every comic book
at the time.
It was something
that was completely unique.
McFarlane:
It sold 1.7 million copies.
To this day, it's still the top-
selling indie comic of all time.
♪♪♪
I guess the only time that
things became a little shaky
was when the industry
started to implode.
rings
-Hello?
-Miss Karen,
this is Todd McFarlane.
How are you doing?
-Hi. Okay.
-Good.
You need a bunch of my covers.
If we're shooting for
the second week of September,
you need my covers when?
Karen: We were looking
for those covers today.
Okay, today.
And so today is a long day.
Give me a time.
5:00 my time.
Four hours from now.
But in reality,
at that point, 5:00,
10:00 tonight,
it's the same thing
as far as
when it gets touched
as far as when covers can get
bill and plated for press.
But I need something
to get to press to start with.
We had a cliff yesterday, right?
I guess
we all knew about it.
Didn't seem like
we were acting about it.
If we can't make something
happen by their deadline,
it means I got to
bump this book a week.
♪♪♪
The industry as a whole
was starting to collapse
because you could say
that even in the heyday
of Image comic books,
there was a big
speculator market.
The theory that as a collector,
you could in some way
amass wealth through comics
led people to buying everything.
Like every number one,
every variant cover
that every publisher decided,
"Oh, yeah,
we'll make that a hologram.
And we'll do that like tinfoil
pressing.
And we'll do that, you know,
whatever.
And we got this artist
to do this special thing."
The bubble of the speculator
market and the collector market
and the reseller market
began to wane
because everybody who wanted
a thing had a thing.
Avila: Throughout the early '90s
comics boom,
Image was really the engine
driving the comic
speculator market
until fans realized
all those number-one issues
they were buying
weren't worth anything.
It forced all of us
to basically either take stock
of what we were doing
or get desperate.
And I saw both.
I saw both not only at Image,
but at Marvel and DC.
And you're wondering
who's going to survive?
Is anybody going to survive?
But you had to admire
Todd's bull-headedness, right?
It's Spawn, Spawn, Spawn
all the time.
He stuck to Spawn.
Even to this day,
he sticks to Spawn.
McFarlane: I thought I needed
to put four pillars down.
If I could put
these four pillars down,
then I could build a skyscraper.
They were video games, TV,
movies, toys.
♪♪♪
When people talk about the movie
and the animated series,
those two properties
really helped keep Spawn
as a character relevant.
Fitzgerald: Loved the movie
when he came out.
Not too often you see, you know,
African-American superheroes.
So I was always really drawn
to that.
Bernardin: I remember the movie.
It conjured the feel that
you wanted from the comics
on the screen.
Avila: The movie made almost
$100 million at the box office.
Not bad 20 years before
the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But the HBO series,
it introduced Spawn
to an entirely new audience.
Bernardin:
I remember when the "Spawn"
animated show came out on HBO.
There were no other
animated shows like it.
It was anime-level
violence and maturity
on an American cartoon
that was really groundbreaking
at the time.
To have, you know, a weekly HBO
show that was a superhero show
but was also laced
with profanity and violence
and all this insane stuff.
I mean, it's just mind-blowing.
I kept on saying,
"Why aren't they doing this
with everything?"
♪♪♪
Can I say that there wasn't
a day where I said,
"I've got to start
a toy company" ever?
There just become moments
where I just go,
"If nobody's gonna do it for me,
I'll do it myself."
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
"Spawn" sets records. "Spawn's"
at the top of the charts.
When you're at the top
of the charts,
people who are looking for ideas
look at charts.
I had conversations with
all the Fortune 500 guys.
What they were telling me they
were gonna do was just a repeat
of what they had been doing
with every other brand
that they had had
for the last 20, 30 years.
Will they do R-rated toys? No.
Will they do sort of
scary content? No.
Why? Because they're selling to
6-year-olds and moms.
Toys were super boring
in the way
that some comic book art
in the '80s was super boring.
Kolomyjec: He'd look at them
and go, "What the heck?
I could do better."
Silvestri: When he told us,
"I'm going to make Spawn toys,"
the rest of us were just
thinking, "Wow,
one of these days
would be awesome
if Hasbro would make
an action figure
from one of our creations
that we own.
Wouldn't that be cool?"
That wasn't good enough
for Todd.
Kolomyjec: When Todd started
the toy business,
everybody said to Todd
what you never say to Todd,
"You'll never do that.
You'll never be able
to do that."
Silvestri:
He was going to personally go
to all the places that were
basically owned by Mattel,
owned by Hasbro.
"I'm gonna make a toy,
and you're gonna put it
on your shelves."
And all of us were like,
"Really, that's
what you're gonna do?"
But he never doubted it.
Kirkman:
You can really look at the toy
industry as a whole and go,
"Okay, here's how toys looked.
And then McFarlane Toys started,
and then here's how toys looked
after that."
Todd completely
changed the game
in the adult collectible
toys industry.
It's a multi-billion-dollar
business now,
and it didn't really exist
before McFarlane Toys.
To be able to see
some of the pieces
he did of me in uniform
was a real treat.
At times, I start corporations
out of anger.
I'll spend my money
and do it at my company
and I'll do it any way I want.
And then at least if I fail,
it's on my merit.
There's stuff that comes up
in life that's big
and overwhelming
that you have no choice about.
You just have to figure out
how to deal with it.
But I remember saying
"I'm really worried about this.
I'm concerned that this is
going to be too much."
McFarlane:
Notoriety comes with a target.
Toy
And now the heat
gets ratcheted up.
What do you think?
What's your first reaction
on it?
Man: First reaction to the 27
is he looks a little flat.
Yep.
Right now what he's got is he's
got the color hold in the back
and him solid in the front.
And I would almost flip it.
Bailey: It's been difficult.
It's been very difficult.
But we're family.
You go through the fire
every single day
with every single one
of these people.
For whatever reason,
when you're around McFarlane,
things just work out.
I know the sweat and the blood
and the tears
and everything
that has gone into it.
To be able to physically hold
that issue in my hand
is gonna be amazing.
It's going to be amazing.
Success, for the most part,
comes usually with notoriety.
Notoriety then comes
with a target.
Either the fans don't like you,
you've got critics,
you've got lawyers that are
coming after you,
wanting to start suing you.
Kolomyjec:
Todd's been involved in some
lawsuits through the years.
You can't run a business and be
as in the public eye as Todd is
and not have people
try to take down.
Avila: Todd definitely made
some big mistakes along the way.
In 1993, he named
a mob boss in "Spawn"
after a real-life NHL hockey
player named Tony Twist.
Tony Twist didn't like it, sued,
and it wound up costing Todd
millions.
Neil Gaiman lawsuit was over
the rights to three characters
Gaiman created
in a Spawn comic.
That suit not only
cost Todd financially,
his reputation also took a hit.
He nearly lost everything.
McFarlane: Have I seen the view
at the edge of the cliff?
On more than one occasion.
Bernardin:
Belief in what you're doing
lets you weather
just about everything.
It's not gonna be the money.
It's not gonna be the accolades.
It's not gonna be the fancy
house with your Spawn office.
It's not gonna be
any of that stuff.
It's gonna be, "I believe
in this story,
and everything else, fine,
whatever, I'll take it."
McFarlane: Look, if you're
an entrepreneur,
you get to see over the edge
of the cliff a couple of times.
And sometimes if you don't
watch out, you actually fall.
That's how I learn.
From my own stupidity.
Just going oof.
You step in crap, you learn
real quickly not to do it again.
I want to be just like my dad,
except I'm not going
to get pushed around.
You don't repeat history.
That focus that I have
can be a detriment
to the point that
I get so focused,
I lose track of other things.
I have two or three traits
that are probably
hyper-developed,
and then I've got others
that are lagging way behind.
Kolomyjec:
That piece of his personality
transmits to other things.
It is a challenge, you know,
to be able
to get him to be balanced.
Creative people
are a unique breed.
The blessing and the curse,
as it were.
We've got these
big imaginations.
Lots of stuff is spinning
in our head.
That can be
a marvelous thing
when you see the end product,
but it can be trying on others.
I got the better end
of the deal by far, right?
So I'm guessing that
I've given her plenty of times
to pause, as to sort of going,
"Wow. Wow. 50 more years to do."
Like, I think I can be tiresome.
I think I can be weary.
I think I can be aggravating
and a pain.
All of the above.
So I'm amazed
that she continues.
♪♪♪
That she continues
to deal with me.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Bernardin: The significance
of Todd McFarlane
getting to tell
the 300th Spawn story
is that if you believe
in yourself and your talent
and the story and the work,
you get to tell the story
your way.
Lee: It's really a rare creator
that can focus on one character
and do it for decades.
It's quite an achievement.
McFarlane: They're going to
always try and say
"It's not possible.
Don't do it."
Don't listen to them.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Bernardin: Hey, here's a dude
who made up a thing in his room
and thought it was super cool.
♪♪♪
And now there's cartoons
and there's video games
and there's feature films
and there's all of this stuff.
♪♪♪
Oh, that guy just built
this tiny empire
based on that one character.
That is how the next person
who grew up reading comics
and playing video games decides,
"Oh, I can do that, too."
Kirkman: I would not have been
as gung-ho about
doing my own projects
and paving my own way
if it hadn't been for
the example that Todd had set.
McFarlane: Any of us
that are able to climb
some level of success
can use that power now
to try to inspire others
to go, "You, you become
the next wave. Come on."
Bailey:
Everything that he has done,
it's always pushing boundaries.
It's always, always
pushing boundaries,
and he's not stopping.
Silvestri:
Todd puts no limits on himself,
and I think that's kind
of the secret with him.
And I think that's what people
can learn from Todd.
Really, it doesn't matter
if you fail.
That's not the point.
Kirkman: He takes this
insane work ethic,
this drive to push boundaries,
do things
in a little different way,
but always be there
for the fans.
And I think that's kind
of the key to his success.
Bailey: His fans are
the most important thing to him
because he is very, very aware
that without them,
he wouldn't be still doing this.
McFarlane:
They gave you their hard-earned
money to have a career.
We owe everything to the fan.
Bailey: People are like "Oh,
you work for McFarlane?
Oh, yeah, you know,
that 'Spawn' number-one issue
was my favorite.
It was so cool.
I still have it."
Silvestri:
What do you want out of life?
And what is it
that drives you in life?
How are you going
to have a happy life?
I think that's what Todd
has always understood.
McFarlane: After 27 years
of doing this character,
I'm just getting warmed up.
We're trying to get
the Spawn movie off the ground,
which I'd direct.
We've done a lot
of preproduction. We're ready.
We're just waiting
for the one final big check
so we can just go.
I am relentless.
I'm like a dog with a bone.
I will get there.
But ultimately, in all honesty,
I think
I'm gonna come full circle.
I think if you were to ask me,
"Where do you see yourself
when you're 80, 90,
if you're doing
anything creative?"
I think I'm just gonna be
a comic book guy.
And I'll just draw on paper
like I did when I was 16.
I won't be a 22-year-old
trying to make a career
and trying to get noticed and
trying to do all these things
you're fighting for
on top of it.
I'll just be able to draw
for the joy of drawing
because I like to draw.
♪♪♪
