SPAWN #30 - April 1995

The Clan

Credits: Todd McFarlane (story), Tom Orzechowski (story assist, copy editor, & letters), Todd McFarlane & Greg Capullo (art), Steve Oliff & Olyoptics (colors)

Summary: Spawn continues to wander the South. He encounters Brad Armstrong, whose family is being terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan. When Spawn tries to stop them, he’s shot in the head and lynched. After recovering, Spawn discovers that the local judge is also a KKK member. Spawn secretly punishes the various Klansmen, then arranges to meet the judge alone. Spawn transforms Judge Missen into a black man, which soon leads to his own lynching by the Klan. Spawn hands Brad Judge Missen’s files, which implicate the local government’s attempts to steal Brad’s property, and leaves town.

Spawntinuity: Sam and Twitch have a brief scene, reminding us once again that they have dirt on Chief Banks. Spawn’s thoughts confirm he had a tryst with Angela. When speaking to Brad, Spawn calls Terry Fitzgerald a “token black” for the government, and says that “the white man” is responsible for torching him and replacing him with “the next one who was let into line.”

Spawn vs. Lawyers: Two of the Klansmen are named “Johnny” and “Peter.” Peter David has said that John Byrne contacted him, asking David to join him in a lawsuit. David assumed the names were a swipe at them, but didn’t want to pursue a lawsuit.

Spawn Stuff: The first hints of a Spawn movie have begun. The movie is released relatively soon by New Line, the studio mentioned in this issue.

Review: I’ve always liked the fact that McFarlane made Spawn a black hero without really drawing attention to his race. Rather than creating one character who’s supposed to represent an entire race, Spawn exists as a character who happens to be black, which is significant in its own way. Now, because the character is in the South, he just has to run into the Klan, and give a speech about how terrible the white man is. After witnessing the Klan’s harassment of Brad, Spawn reveals to him that there was a racial motive behind his own murder. That’s a potential avenue to explore, but why is this only coming up now? And why wasn’t it ever brought up again? If Spawn really believed this, why wouldn’t he use “racist” as an adjective when listing all of Jason Wynn’s other horrible attributes? I have to assume Tom Orzechowski scripted this sequence, if only because it just doesn’t fit with the previous stories McFarlane wrote (Spawn also uses thought balloons in the start of the issue, which only happened in the issues Orzechowski scripted).

If the last issue didn’t fulfill McFarlane’s cliché quota, he’s working overtime here. Apparently, doing research on the KKK just meant watching movies set during the 1930s, which is the decade this town apparently lives in. Everyone lives in shacks in the middle of barren fields, and I’ll just bet none of these hicks has ever experienced the joys of indoor plumbing or electricity. If Spawn actually did travel through time after exiting Hell, that’s a potentially good idea. It would keep him out of the alleys for a while, give him a wider variety of people to meet, and pose the dilemma of how he could get back to modern times. Instead, he just happened to land back in America, just not in the specific state he wanted, and his main obstacle to getting home is how long it takes him to walk to a train station. (He couldn’t even land in Kosovo, or Darfur, or someplace engaged in conflicts we don’t normally see in comics?)

For some reason, he stays in this town for what seems to be a decent amount of time, since some of the Klansmen from the issue’s opening are sued by Brad and found not liable (Spawn couldn’t have taken care of the Klan during all of those weeks?). After giving the lead Klansman his appropriately ironic punishment, Spawn hands Brad a file that details everything the local government’s done against him (another story resolved with a manila file folder!) and wanders off, “The Lonely Man” playing in the background, I’m sure. The judge’s ironic fate actually works fairly well, as it’s reminiscent of something that might’ve happened in an old EC comic (“Racist Swaps Race” might’ve been an actual EC story for all I know). Since that type of story has mostly died out by the ‘90s, Spawn’s a good enough title to resurrect it, and I believe that is the direction McFarlane eventually goes in. Everything else in this issue, however, is hackneyed beyond belief.

SPAWN #20 - November 1994

 Showtime - Part Two

Credits:  Tom Orzechowski & Andrew Grossberg (story), Greg Capullo (pencils), Todd McFarlane & Mark Pennington (inks), Tom Orzechowski (letters and copy editor), Steve Oliff & Olyoptics (colors)

Summary:  Spawn and Houdini chase Porsche MacNeill in Houdini’s magic car.  Houdini grows bored and leaves, while Spawn notices Terry Fitzgerald nearby.  Spawn disguises himself and rescues Terry from the Ukrainian bodyguards of Volokhov, the rogue atomic scientist.  Volokhov is at Porsche’s store, having a detonator repaired.  Spawn and Houdini reunite at Columbia University, where Volokhov threatens to detonate an atomic bomb if the Ukraine isn’t given a massive loan.  The bomb ignites, and Houdini learns his teleportation device has been disrupted by the Overlap.  In retaliation, he uses magic to transport the atomic blast to the Overlap.  Volokhov and Porsche are arrested, but Porsche is released due to lack of evidence.  Spawn plants a tiny explosive in his apartment to teach him a lesson.

Spawntinuity:  A flashback reveals Spawn first met Terry in “Language Immersion School” in Monterey, California.  You’ll also notice on the cover that Spawn’s eyes are much larger than they used to be, which seems to be one of Capullo’s contributions.

Review:  Fill-ins, by their very nature, don’t leave a lot of room for creators to have an actual impact on the characters.  This fill-in arc puts the writers in an even more difficult position, since it had to take place in-between two already published issues of the series.  Consequently, it occasionally feels like a Houdini story guest-starring Spawn, but I think the final result reads quite well.  Spawn never seemed to have a lot of motivation to do much of anything, so a character like Houdini is needed to kick off a storyline, anyway.  The actual moments that focus on Spawn mainly reiterate what we’ve seen in the previous issues (Spawn still views Terry as a friend on some level, and he doesn’t want Wanda to become a widow again), but they’re successful in making Spawn seem more human and likable than usual.  The plotline about a mad Ukrainian scientist isn’t typical Spawn fare, but this was still early in the book’s run.  The deviation didn’t feel totally out of place, since McFarlane hadn’t decided to make the entire series about dark urban horror yet.

SPAWN #19 - October 1994

 Showtime- Part One

Credits:  Tom Orzechowski & Andrew Grossberg (story), Greg Capullo (pencils), Mark Pennington (inks), Tom Orzechowski (letters and editor), Steve Oliff & Olyoptics (colors)

Summary:  Members of the mystic Overlap are studying the effects of atomic energy on Hell-Creatures.  A subliminal message is implanted within a Ukrainian atomic scientist attending a seminar at Columbia.  He’ll detonate an atomic bomb when Spawn is nearby.  Harry Houdini, an unpopular agent of the Overlap, is assigned the case with the hopes he’ll also be wiped out.  Meanwhile, Porsche MacNeill, a young electronics expert, is detonating bombs in his neighborhood, hoping to scare off the local homeless.  He accidently bombs Spawn while he’s asleep.  Spawn chases him but is interrupted by Harry Houdini, who promises to teach him about his powers.  After Houdini lectures Spawn, another bomb detonates.  Houdini teams up with Spawn to stop Porsche.

Spawntinuity:  The Overlap is described as a “reality that intersects all planes of existence” and the birthplace of magic.  It’s also trademarked by Andrew Grossberg, so it’s not an idea that sticks around Spawn continuity.  Houdini teaches Spawn how to draw magic from his costume.  He asks Spawn to summon a marble with the costume’s power, leading Spawn to accidentally create a marble statue.  I don’t think Spawn’s ability to create inanimate objects with his costume shows up again.  If Spawn really could draw magic from his costume, that would seem like an easy way to avoid going to Hell after his own powers run out.

Spawn #19 might be the next chronological issue, but it was released after issues #21-#24 were already published.  McFarlane skipped issues #19 and #20 and went straight to #21 after finishing the Spawn/Batman crossover.  He only offered a vague explanation in issue #21, but the rumor at the time was that Diamond changed their policy on late books, leading McFarlane to cancel all orders on the already late #19 and #20 in order to avoid making them returnable.  I was tempted to review the comics in the order they were released, but it seemed unnecessarily confusing.  The actual release order goes Spawn #1-#18, #21-#24, #19, #25, #20, then #26.

The Big Names:  Flint Henry draws a pin-up, mocking Todd McFarlane’s inability to count. 

Spawn Stuff:  The first wave of Spawn action figures is announced.  McFarlane manufactured them himself under the brand “Todd Toys” and I believe they were the first action figures to be made of any Image characters.  They did look very impressive at the time, but as Mike Sterling has pointed out, they look rather meek when compared to modern action figures (which owe a lot to McFarlane’s continued efforts to essentially make them slightly articulated models).

Review:  I don’t think Tom Orzechowski has too many writing credits, but he did write a few Classic X-Men backups before this fill-in run (his Nightcrawler story was great).  Plus, he went on to write a Harry Houdini miniseries with Andrew Grossberg.  I don’t know if this incarnation of Houdini or the Overlap ever appeared before this comic, but the story gives them a credible introduction even if the issue feels a little crowded.  This is certainly the opposite of decompression.  McFarlane could occasionally go overboard with the narrative captions, but he never produced a Spawn issue that took so long to read.  This isn’t a complaint; it’s just surprising to read a Spawn story that feels like a Jim Shooter-era Marvel comic.  At the very least, Orzechowski and Grossberg have a natural writing style, and Orzechowski’s lettering always makes giant chunks of text look good. 

The story so far has little to do with Spawn, but instead plays off the potential strangeness a being from Hell could attract while on Earth.  There is an effort to connect Spawn’s mercenary past with a Russian scientist, and to bring in Terry Fitzgerald as a government agent, so it doesn’t feel as if it’s a totally random story shoved into Spawn.  I like the portrayal of Houdini as an arrogant scoundrel who actually did know magic, and his condescending interactions with Spawn are fun.  McFarlane didn’t seem to push his guest writers into following a specific formula, which enabled them to go places we wouldn’t normally see in the series.