spawn AL SIMMONS DEAD

[tank]

Todd Mcfarlane really looks desperate by watching this interview haha http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18639 it kind of sucks for me though I grew up knowing Al Simmons being spawn. Now as a sign of desperate needs he jumped into the band wagon like DC and Marvel does killing off their characters and I hate it. I think what it needs to jump start spawn again is I guess its time to make another spawn movie with a good director and writer making the film, but thats just my opinion. So todd made a new spawn guy and it got sold out the first day its like killing off captain america and got sold out right away. For me as a long time Fan of spawn its a low ball doing this, coz spawn for me always has been different. I hope they bring back AL Simmons again. but then again it might be interesting to see a new spawn emerging.

[promethuem5]

I dunno... I've never read Spawn before, but when I heard McFarlene'd be returning to his baby, and bringing Whilce Portacio back on for pencils, I was intrigued, and it's been a fun ride so far with gorgeous art. I could see being pissed at how Simmons goes as a fan tho, but really, I'd always been under the impression Spawn was pretty stagnant anyway.

[areaseven]

Old news. I read about this on Wizard magazine last Christmas. According to the article, Al Simmons is dead for good, as he realizes that no matter how many times he goes to hell and back, he'll never be with Wanda again. So instead, McFarlane is to introduce a new Spawn.

[Radd]

The problem isn't that they killed Spawn, it's that McFarlane didn't follow through with his original idea, that Spawn would be a finite story, and that the character only had a limited amount of time before he was dead. And when he died, it would be over. Spawn got sucked into the "it's making money, milk it forever!" problem. I hate most comics because of that. Sure, comics like X-Men, Superman, Batman, and the ilk can produce a good yarn now and then, but the characters remain fairly 2-dimensional, never aging, never moving on. As such, they're fodder for a forgettable but fun comic now and then, but the characters themselves don't really carry any weight as characters. Even death is often a temporary device used to bump sales, with big return expected to bump sales again later on.

Spawn was originally pitched as being different from all that. I was really disappointed when that was tossed out the window.

[Duke Togo]

*yawn*

[EXO]

The whole Image thing is disappointing, the came out of the gates thinking they were going to rock the world of Comic books but they just stole characters and perverted them so they could make money off them. The only good that came out of it was they brought coloring into the new millennium. Spoiled bunch that came out of the evil speculator's boom of the 90s. Most of those guys never even finished their books, they started handing them out to paler comparison of themselves. Same thing with DreamworksSKG... the company that would revolutionize motion pictures that just became a jerk off session for rich and powerful entertainment moguls.

[Wes]

It was kinda hard to follow it after he killed Malbolgia, but I had to stop reading after he pretty much won the apocolypse. I mean even that Bible-thing kinda died down after that. Spawn should have ended it's run long before #200

[Grand Admiral]

I used to be a HUGE spawn fanboy in college. I had every issue, even had some POGs.

After the sucktacular movie and several spinoff books, I sold all my collection on eBay and washed my hands of it.

I really hate it when comics publishers spread a story out across several titles, forcing you to buy all of them. It's a crappy marketing tactic.

[reddsun1]

I remember collecting the first couple dozen or so comics in the series. Never did get an iss. #1--LOL, I remember thinking $40 was too much, and that was just a couple years into the running of the series. I've seen where an iss #1's gone for as high as $800 on evilBay--but then again, amazon dot com also has new issue #1's for about $3 bucks; so, take it with a grain of salt. It's been about a decade since I've collected a comic book.

I remember collecting some of the early McFarlane Toys figures, and being somewhat disappointed with them because of their limited posability, i.e.: don't call 'em action figures when they're frozen in one stinking pose and only have 3-4 points of articulation!

Last I'd heard--and this may well be some years ago--McFarlane was being villified as guilty of the very same dirty practices with artists that he claimed were the impetus for his leaving Marvel to start his own line? Not compensating artists fairly for character rights, that sort of thing? Did some sort of legal dispute ever come of that?

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

The only good that came out of it was they brought coloring into the new millennium.

Well more creator's rights too.

[mikeszekely]

Last I'd heard--and this may well be some years ago--McFarlane was being villified as guilty of the very same dirty practices with artists that he claimed were the impetus for his leaving Marvel to start his own line? Not compensating artists fairly for character rights, that sort of thing? Did some sort of legal dispute ever come of that?

Something about Neil Gaiman creating some of the popular characters like Angela in an issue he was hired to write, and after years of paying Gaiman royalties, McFarlane decided that he was the sole owner of those characters. Gaiman sued, McFarlane lost, appealed, and lost again.

The bigger question is... do people actually still read Spawn? Despite the gore and religious themes Marvel or DC wouldn't have touched with a 10 foot pole at the time, Spawn struck me as a bit juvenile, even back in high school.

Sad thing was, I did actually admire what Image was doing when they first started, even if WildC.A.T.s and Cyberforce were X-Men... "inspired." Things started going downhill when Wildstorm started doing the crossovers (Wildstorm Rising, Fire From Heaven, etc). When Top Cow split from Image and Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC, I gave up on Image entirely. I'm pretty much all Marvel and IDW now.

[Scream Man]

i read some Spawn, but was never a big fan. I liked that 90's animated series they did, that was fun.

For me Image was abotu Shadowhawk. I LVOED HSadowhawk. Still one of my fasvourite titles, though it got a tad wonky towards the end of its initial run. Once it became about the shadowhawk totem and the shaowhawks through time it lost its focus and uniqueness. But the first 2/3 minis and the end of the series with paul Johnstoen were great.

Always meant to give the new series a go, but never did....

[EXO]

Well more creator's rights too.

But they never created just cloned. Dark Horse did more for actual creators. Why do you think Frank Miller, Mike Mignolia and people with actual originality went there. Image just found a way to do the same books that they did for Marvel under a different name. IDW just surpassed Image as the third largest comic book publisher. If their titles were so great then how can they lose that place?

[promethuem5]

To be fair, IDW pumps out tons of licensed garbage that is picked up by rabid Transformers fanboys... I have finally decided to stop buying their terrible, awful books.

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

But they never created just cloned.

Well, I meant in regards to retaining the rights to your work. For example, the situation that the creators of Superman found themselves in with DC/Warner Bros. is unlikely to ever happen to the Image guys, where a legal battle over royalties, rights, licenses, and others goes for decades and still hasn't finished today

.

To be fair, IDW pumps out tons of licensed garbage that is picked up by rabid Transformers fanboys... I have finally decided to stop buying their terrible, awful books.

I don't mind Fuhrman's stories, and I prefer Su's artwork over the marshmellow, bloated styling that Pat Lee would use and enforce his other artists to use as the "house style". As a sequential artist, I think Su is one of the better TF comic artists. For guys like James Raiz and Don Figueroa, I think their works post-dreamwave works are better because they didn't have to follow a house style. The best and worst thing about Dreamwave were their color applications. Awesome at first because a lot of mainstream companies weren't doing what Frozenlight and other Dreamwave companies were doing, but got to be overkill with way too many color applications making the colors muddy.

[EXO]

To be fair, IDW pumps out tons of licensed garbage that is picked up by rabid Transformers fanboys... I have finally decided to stop buying their terrible, awful books.

I've never bought their books either but that further proves that a less known publishing company can overtake Image's starpower with their crappy books.

Well, I meant in regards to retaining the rights to your work. For example, the situation that the creators of Superman found themselves in with DC/Warner Bros. is unlikely to ever happen to the Image guys, where a legal battle over royalties, rights, licenses, and others goes for decades and still hasn't finished today.

Again they are just trying to retain rights to character that they changed enough to be able to make money off them, even though they are almost the same as their Marvel counterparts... C'mon... Pitt/Hulk by Dale Keown? Wildcats and Cyber....whatevers from former Xmen artists? hmmm... alright well I'm gonna assume this has all been argued before in some comic book forum so I'll drop it. My point was that I would have more respect with the whole creator's rights thing if there was more creativity involved. An Image book called Th Maxx comes to mind, even though Sam Keith drew another big bulging Marvel character it was different enough to call it it's own thing.

Back to McFarlane... I hear he wants to direct this. He rather have a small budget and direct it on his own than have a bigger budget director take a shot at it. I don't know what spells disaster more. I'd rather rewatch Darkman, it's probably going to feel the same.

[Vermillion21]

Ahhhh Image Comics ... brings me back to the o'high school days. My favorite was StormWatch by Jim Lee.

[areaseven]

Ahhhh Image Comics ... brings me back to the o'high school days. My favorite was StormWatch by Jim Lee.

Wetworks was better, but not by much. As >EXO< mentioned, majority of Image's titles were clones of the artists' previous works with Marvel.

[mikeszekely]

As >EXO< mentioned, majority of Image's titles were clones of the artists' previous works with Marvel.

That's not always a bad thing. I really enjoyed WildC.A.T.s until Alan Moore crapped all over it. Backlash was another favorite of mine.

[hyp36rmax]

ahhh the days of image comic books, i was a very big fan of the wildc.a.t.s. before the original team split up, spawn, wetworks, and gen 13 was very fun to read

[areaseven]

As much as we like to rib Image Comics for being derivatives of Marvel characters, at least they didn't suffer the same fate as Valiant Comics. Back in 1992, Harbinger #1 was listed on Wizard at $150+ near-mint. Today, Valiant titles are no longer listed on Wizard, and Harbinger #1 isn't even worth a roll of Charmin.

Now I'm hearing that Paramount has acquired the rights to adapt Harbinger to the big screen, with Brett Ratner (the guy who turned X-Men: The Last Stand into a train wreck) as director.

[kaiotheforsaken]

I liked Last Stand...

On topic though, I've alwaysliked Spawn from an art standpoint (especially Spawn himself) but Al never really did it for me. Some of the things Al did were cool, but he himself was just kinda eh in my book. So hopefully this new character will be interesting. I may even start reading Spawn again if he is.

[nukatsuka]

If you do happen to have Harbinger #1 or any of those pre-unity early valiants in mint condition Ill gladly give you some charmin for them. Some of us still collect them...

As much as we like to rib Image Comics for being derivatives of Marvel characters, at least they didn't suffer the same fate as Valiant Comics. Back in 1992, Harbinger #1 was listed on Wizard at $150+ near-mint. Today, Valiant titles are no longer listed on Wizard, and Harbinger #1 isn't even worth a roll of Charmin.

Now I'm hearing that Paramount has acquired the rights to adapt Harbinger to the big screen, with Brett Ratner (the guy who turned X-Men: The Last Stand into a train wreck) as director.

[areaseven]

If you do happen to have Harbinger #1 or any of those pre-unity early Valiants in mint condition Ill gladly give you some charmin for them. Some of us still collect them...

I had X-O Manowar #0 and Magnus Robot Fighter #25, as well as a random issue of Bloodshot, but the termites ate them. Unfortunately, they got half of my Marvel and Image collection as well.

[EXO]

When you set up a story where everything is stacked up against you, you owe the audience a smart triumphant ending. It sounds like Spawn just petered out.

On the Valiant end, the problem was that they sold to Acclaim and Shooter was kicked out. Reminds me of when they ousted John Kricfalusi from Ren and Stimpy. How can you do that?

[tank]

ahhh the days of image comic books, i was a very big fan of the wildc.a.t.s. before the original team split up, spawn, wetworks, and gen 13 was very fun to read

Wild Cats always reminded me of Young Bloods, I think their related or something, I really don't know but I love the character designs