Todd McFarlane Announces Spawn’s Universe Comics
Image Comics’ President Todd McFarlane announced his plan to create a greater multi-character, interconnected comic book universe based around his Spawn comic.
McFarlane made the announcement during a first-look presentation to the Direct Market Retailers at the Annual ComicsPRO Conference.
The character of Spawn will be at the forefront of the initial launch of new titles, but the long-term goal is that Spawn will become but one of many characters with potential to headline projects not only in the comics industry but in many mediums across the globe.
McFarlane’s plan is to capitalize on the huge success that Spawn has seen in the last year or so. The series, which recently broke Cerberus‘s record as the longest-running indie comic of all time, has seen sales increase between 150 to 600% from pre-pandemic orders, transforming the long-running supernatural adventure comic into a top 5 monthly selling title on the Diamond Distributors Top 100 Chart.
As part of his announcement, McFarlane announced four new titles coming out in 2021, with three of them continuing on as regular monthly titles, meaning that there will be an opportunity for fans of the Spawn character and his new expanding world, to get their stories from it on a weekly basis in the coming months and years, not unlike how the Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman titles functioned in the comics heyday of the ’90s.
The first of which is published in August with a book called KING SPAWN #1.
“The character Spawn will now join the rare company of stalwart characters, like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man, that will have multiple monthly books for the same title character. It will also mark the first time in twenty-eight years that anyone can buy a monthly issue #1 Spawn book”. Giving McFarlane hope of reaching a new generation of readers that missed out on the initial launch of Spawn back in 1992.
In October comes the second new monthly called GUNSLINGER SPAWN. This title character has been a huge hit among the fanbase the past year and each of his appearances has garnered enthusiasm at the stores and online.
To lend a creative hand on some of this expanding list of titles, McFarlane has recruited an all-star list of comic book creators such as Art Adams, Jason Shawn Alexander, Carlo Barberi, Brett Booth, J. Scott Campbell, Greg Capullo, Donny Cates, Jim Cheung, Mike del Mundo, Javier Fernandez, David Finch, Jonathan Glapion, Kevin Keane, Aleš Kot, Puppeteer Lee, Sean Lewis, Sean Gordon Murphy, Ben Oliver, Stephen Segovia, Paulo Siqueira, Marc Silvestri, Marcio Takara and Frank Quitely, as well as others he will be announcing in the coming months.
