1900HOTDOG

Teamworking Day: Todd McFarlane Presents Spawn

Added 2022-09-08 12:00:09 +0000 UTC

Brockway: We used to think every horror show needed a host welcoming you into his hellish parlor to explain what spooky means before showing you a short film about a doll coming to life. We did that with everything, and for way longer than you think. Even with cartoons. All the way into the late ‘90s. And yes, even if that host was Todd McFarlane, a placid Canadian comic book artist whose most dire threat was drawing you into nasty fanfiction where Bodd McFarlane would blast you straight to hell while all the women applauded (tits out). Here, I don’t know why I’m bothering with words when this picture of Todd in sunglasses and a leather jacket reading his own comic books in a scrubland tells you everything I cannot.

Seanbaby: If a picture is worth 1000 words, this one says, "I wish dad loved me as much as he loves that dirtbike" eighty three times. This looks like the senior photo for a kid no one knew went to their school. This feels like the last place entry in a Make Comics Look Cool contest, dweebs and below division. This is how you would picture the Hamburglar if you were from a country where "ham" meant "comic book." I don't know why I'm bothering with words when that picture of Todd in sunglasses and a leather jacket reading his own comic books in a scrubland tells you everything Brockway already did.

Brockway: Todd McFarlane is most famous for creating Spawn, the character you’d get if you explained the burgeoning 1970s goth movement to a sheltered Canadian teenager. That’s… that’s actually Spawn’s origin story – Todd came up with Spawn when he was 16, and hit no emotional goalposts between that time and its publication in 1992.

It was 1992 though, so we loved that shit! Spawn was a huge hit and we made Todd McFarlane the dark champion of the world, like a proto-John Romero who rocked a little less, fucked a lot less, and used wadded-up newspaper to bulk out his leather jacket. Spawn blew up the comic book scene, and five years later in 1997 we gave it both a movie and an animated TV show – same year! The cartoon featured stylish animation and adult themes, while the movie featured John Leguizamo.

Brockway: When he pitched Spawn to HBO execs Todd had only one question for them: “Can I say the F-word?” That’s an actual quote. You can tell by the way his voice quavers while you read it. Todd’s genuine reasoning: ‘cause if they let him do that nasty adult word he could prolly do all sorts of grown-up stuff, too!

It’s exactly the one question a 13 year old would have about his first unchaperoned sleepover.

Seanbaby: It's weird other auteurs don't have stories like that. I never heard of Vince Gilligan begging his script supervisor to change "baseball cards" to "methamphetamines." And M. Night Shyamalan never asked for permission to make 11 straight terrible movies. He just fucking did. It's almost as if... okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I think that spooky guy wearing sunglasses and a gold chain on his comic reading crate might be a nerd.

Brockway: Everybody’s got 20/20 vision looking backwards. Nerd, sir? In 1992, sir? In Alberta, sir? Women had to wear special absorbent shorts just so they wouldn’t lose traction if they ran into Todd McFarlane on a linoleum floor.

Thank god those executives gave him permission to say the angry daddy word, because Spawn the Animated Series was technically a horror cartoon. And as we have established: That needs a host. Todd McFarlane himself opened all six episodes of the first season of Spawn, and it may be the most savagely disturbing 8 minutes of Canadian depravity this side of a Drake sextape.

I’m sure our editors will cut that line. Oh… Oh shit. I have just spotted a weakness in our site’s strategy.

Seanbaby:

Brockway: We are not at all interested in Spawn the Animated Series, beyond the fact that it starred Keith David’s voice, just like some of the best cartoons, most of the best Keith Davids, and all of the women in my dreams. We don’t even care that Spawn was adapted for television by Alan McElroy, who wrote Rapid Fire – the Brandon Lee movie where he did NOT say to Dolph Lundgren “Just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you: you have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen on a man.”

Seanbaby:

Brockway: We’re not interested in any of that! We’re not even going to mention it. We will just and only be talking about the eight minutes Todd McFarlane tried to do a Rod Serling impression and accidentally inspired Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

Seanbaby: Spawn introductions. Are they born of crazed madness? The howling nightmares of a sick dog? Pulled from the depths of Hell, still dripping with the wet meat of forgotten sinners? It would be weird if any of these insane, wordy questions had coherent answers. Hi, you're Todd McFarlane, and I'm really glad we're watching these.

Brockway: We open on big boxes marked SPAWN and VIOLATOR PARTS like we just paid the devil $40 sight-unseen to purchase Danzig’s abandoned storage unit.

Given equally ominous billing, surely at Todd’s insistence, is a box labeled TODD’S TOYS. Just as scary, cool, dangerous, and sexy as VIOLATOR PARTS, as all girlfriends agree, provided they exist. The easy joke to make here is it’s Todd’s sex toys – these are where he keeps the whips and chains Spawn characters get instead of emotional development. But nothing about Todd McFarlane earns that assumption. Based on everything I’ve seen of his demeanor, I assume these are mostly old McDonald’s Changeables. Specifically just crate after crate of the Low Fat Milkbot. With boobies drawn on in faded sharpie.

Seanbaby: TODD'S TOYS sounds like a charity that gives taxidermied rats and fake blood to children. Their slogan is Todd McFarlane asking what you would do if a toy killed your screaming family by the glimmering light of the blood moon. They retail for $79.99 and include 17 interchangeable feet.

Brockway: Oh shit, what a nefarious scenario! What would you do, if some dark Albertan night the devil came calling, and he wanted to do foot stuff? There’s no right answer, it’s a morally gray area. Hi, this is Todd McFarlane, let’s zoom in on him hunched over a single table in the smoky belfry of a church in hell, because that’s how all horror writers work.

Seanbaby: "This is a bit fucking much," said Actual Spider Interiors Magazine. Seriously, though; I don't know how Todd gets any work done with the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster rolling through his office every 12 minutes. This looks like a birthday party for a three-year-old skeleton. It's where you would find a treasure if the clue was "Look in the sex dungeon where no one has fucked."

Brockway: In the Mouth of Madness is a 1994 John Carpenter movie about Sutter Cane, a horror author whose books are inspired by demonic forces and begin to manifest in reality. Here’s his office.

It’s literally a smoky belfry in a hellish church, and it’s less overwrought than the place where Todd draws his evil ice cream men. Some set designer saw Sutter Cane’s office, complete with throbbing ichorous door that whispers maddening nightmares from beyond time, and they said “yes, that’s exactly where Todd McFarlane belongs. But let’s lose the doberman, because he’s scared of big dogs.”

Seanbaby: As Brockway knows, John Carpenter also directed Big Trouble in Little China which is pretty similar to the title Showdown in Little Tokyo which, as he mentioned, is the movie where Brandon Lee tells Dolph Lundgren, "You have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen on a man." McFarlane historians refer to this phenomenon as Spawn Degrees of Dolph Lundgren's Big Dick.

Brockway: We need to be careful, or this is going to turn into an article about Showdown in Little Tokyo, which is a much more fun idea, in part because of the time Brandon Lee caringly whispered to Dolph Lundgren, “You have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen on a man.” But also because of that time Dolph Lundgren impaled Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa on a pinwheel and it lit up and spun around while he screamed for so long that people started buying tickets, trying to guess where it would stop so they could win a stuffed otter.

Instead of doing that, let’s push in further to show the dire images that are Todd McFarlane’s infernal designs!

…

He is doing texture work on some bricks.

Seanbaby: This pen inks nothing but terror! Maybe there was a take where he was drawing some bathtub caulking and they decided the masonry was spookier.

Brockway: Let’s do the Showdown in Little Tokyo thing instead.

No, you’re right. This is a sunk cost. Hi, this is reluctantly still Todd McFarlane.

We approach him gently, as if hesitant to disturb this resting beast but oh no – the Todd has sensed our presence! Flee, you fools while it’s not too la-

Todd McFarlane swivels about and it’s clear they want to give off “the mage has foretold your arrival” vibes, but everything in his body language is screaming “you dare trespass on the Employee’s Only closet at the Jamba Juice? Begone, lest mall security be summoned and you suffer the wrath of Jeff, who was almost a cop!”

Seanbaby: "I knew you'd find me. Indeed, I've been expecting you. For over three sevens of hours I have waited for the adventurer clever enough to get past my VIOLATOR PARTS. The fart smell was here already. When I got here."

Brockway: Also, maybe give the devil’s unholy emissary on earth anything but a drafting stool that he clutches to like a horsey spring-rider at the playground. Horsey Spring-Rider of the Damned, surely!

Seanbaby: This looks like Dracula's kid getting puberty explained to him. It looks like a wedding singer waiting for the toasts to finish at a Harry Potter-themed wedding. This looks like Skeletor's boyfriend asking to have a talk after going through his Facebook messages.

Brockway: This is a 2001 bar mitzvah boy deep into a Matrix phase whose parents compromised with him on the suit. This is how you dress if you’re summoning the devil to ask that everyone else’s weiner be made smaller so that yours is the biggest. This is-

All right, we could be here all day. Let’s stop dragging Todd’s general existence and get into the show itself: Every time Todd mentions Spawn he gestures off to the left, as though hell’s avenging soldier is waiting just offscreen while he’s introduced, like a shy boy before a new class.

Does Todd McFarlane think Spawn is with him, here? Was Spawn his childhood imaginary friend, all trying to teach him self confidence so he can fade away when he’s no longer needed, but now it’s 30 years later and Spawn is still whispering “demand the big boy chair!” in Todd’s ear?

Seanbaby: This all makes more sense if we imagine Spawn is a sitcom about a demon only Todd can see and there's a running gag where Todd keeps doing stupid shit to almost reveal the secret. Like he'd be in a meeting and scream, "I don't need you right now, Spawn!... ges! I...uh, I bought a new set of sponges, but no one has spilled anything yet. But when you do, I have the spon-- no, you're the idiot, demon!... strates, uh, the kind of words you shouldn't use at work!"

Brockway: “What infernal deal? You didn’t even help me with my erectile dys- … track. My erectile diss track! Fuck you, you’re the worst liar!”

Finally, Todd McFarlane speaks. He says, in an ominous accent straight out of the stygian depths of Calgary:

I’m not saying Canadians can’t be scary – David Cronenberg is Canadian, and surely his body horror was inspired by the maddening medical autonomy of universal health care. I’m just saying if you want to propose an infernal bargain, you wanna go with a British accent. Maaaybe Eastern European. You do it in Calgarian and it sounds like you’re trying to haggle a snowblower. It’s not fair, but New Zealand got the same deal.

Seanbaby: Stage fright is a pretty relatable fear, so in that way, Todd McFarlane is a master of horror. Behind his eyes is the panicked confusion of a thousand boiling crabs. Each one of these takes took 5 years off his life. He moves like a chihuahua fighting its way out of a CPR dummy.

Brockway: The director told him “think about something scary” and he thought about calling to argue a cable bill. Todd also doesn’t have the body language of some dripping bog wizard, ready to twist your mind with tales of the impossible. This sassy little snap to headwaggle-

Is meant to signify your life is over like that, in the blink of an eye. But it reads more like “that’s it! It was Tommy Oliver, Tommy Oliver was the secret identity of the Green Power Ranger. That’s who I think of, when I think of what it means to be a man.”

Seanbaby: "You're on TV! Do something with your hands, Todd," hissed the invisible demon to his left. "Oh, a little snap. Totally natural, horror boy. Have you even seen hands? You look like you're telling everyone to get out on the dance floor at a Christian sock hop."

Brockway: Here’s how Todd McFarlane ends his dark philosophizing…

I’m not going to sit here and make fun of Canadian politeness, I’m just going to point out that Vincent Price didn’t end every tale of terror with a firm sidehug and an offer to call later to see how you’re doing.

Brockway: When pressed to come up with scenarios where the ordinary man needs to know the line between good and evil, Todd McFarlane, master of the profane, came up with Grocery Shopping, Calculus Finals, Date Night. “Are ya confident thatcha can distinguish the forces of light from da forces of evil? Even while choosing corn? Wait, hold on, what about doggystyle? Nothing is black or white at the Save-On, or while fingerbanging.”

Seanbaby: "Before we get to my very scary cartoon, have you ever thought about the ethical ramifications of almond milk? Hi, I'm Todd, which is a type of Terry. Behold the pleasures of my dovecote, a kind of pigeon undercroft. I'm Todd. Sorey, I said that already. I'm a little nervous still."

Brockway: “Just another schmoe like you ‘n me – constantly at war between the forces of heaven and hell.” Are you really trapped in a war between darkness and light every moment of every day, Todd? Your name is Todd. It seems unlikely. Maybe I’m not Schmoe enough, but that is not how I live my life. Am I living an unexamined existence? Maybe every time I feel a tomato, decide it’s too ripe, but don’t put it back because that’s cheating – that’s the warrior forces of the nephilim charging at my side. Maybe every time I think about asking my wife to call me Buzzsaw so I can grab my dick and say “I love this saw. This saw’s part of me, and I’m going to make it part of you.” – that could actually be the lustful armies of hell speaking through me. But if so I listen, because I already own the costume, and sometimes the devil is right.

Seanbaby: Maybe it's because you and Todd McFarlane keep bringing up the act of making love, but this is more sexually charged than I thought our Make Fun of the Spawn Intros article was going to be.

Brockway: Episode 3! It’s only Episode 3 and Todd is already going off the rails into his Spawn cuck fetish. “Not so bad now watchin’ a scarred buck satisfy yer missus like ya never could, eh? Hi, I’m Todd McFarlane, fuck my wife or burn in hell.”

Seanbaby: See? This is what I mean! Todd could have put anything here for his Sophie's Choice of agony and he went with "hot, boring carnival" and "watching your girlfriend bang Rob Liefeld." Those are the exact same thing, Todd!

Brockway: This is the hand gesture Todd McFarlane uses to physically explain his trolley problem of infernal spitroasting.

Seanbaby: Canadian Sign Language is so expressive. It's almost lewd.

Brockway: This is the entire intro! Todd really doesn’t want to let this thought exercise go. He wants to drain every drop of life out of this premise, just like his wife drains every drop out of Sam Kieth while Todd watches from behind a pinhole drilled in a Maxx print.

Seanbaby: Oh shit, is Sam Kieth his best friend? That is going to break Rob Liefeld's heart. And really fuck up the plot of this erotic short story I'm writing. Sorry, sorey, this isn't about me. I'll let Todd finish...

Brockway: No, he’s still going!

Brockway: Welcome, viewers, to the dark corridors of Todd McFarlane’s mind. Where you must explore questions so vile and impossible that to even entertain them is to lose a part of your humanity. Questions like, “Ya think ya get screwed in heaven if ya say a swear at a pregnant lady? What aboot if it’s not oot loud, but just in yer head? Yah… yah, yer prolly right, best not ta risk it.”

Seanbaby: I love this one because it's nowhere close to anything. It's how you would begin to explain religion to a cat. At the start of the other episodes he had these ethical predicaments. He was like, "Quick! Zombie, yes or no!" Or "No time to think about it! Lava circus or weird sex while I watch!" And now Todd is just asking if we've heard about the afterlife, because he has, and he's a strong maybe.

Brockway: Todd’s the kinda guy that “comes out” as agnostic to his parents.

Brockway: You find this attitude in some creative types. They’ll tell you “oh tee hee, I’m so nasty to my characters!” They’ll hide their naughty faces behind a coffee mug that says “CREATIVE JUICE” on it, and they’ll prance off to peck out 200 savage words about a frail British man that doesn’t quite get the kiss he wanted. And here’s Todd like “I am god, and god is unkind. Someday Spawn will break the fourth wall and come for me, and when he does, I hope it’s on my wife while I’m facetiming them.”

Brockway: “Do ya think he’d pork my wife if we took ‘im oot to Old Spaghetti Factory first?”

Seanbaby: "Hi, I'm Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, and these are the questions that got a priest to tell me to shut the fuck up in front of my mom."

Brockway: Todd muses that one never knows the face of true evil – why even he, Todd McFarlane, could be the face of true evil!

“Pretty scary, huh?” Todd asks, in much the same way a low confidence child would finish a summer camp horror story.

No, Todd, if you’re the face of True Evil then I can thwart True Evil with a rude comment that gets a laugh at the office party, and True Evil would just silently fume about it all the way home in True Evil’s Certified Used True Evil Toyota Camry.

Seanbaby: "Maybe the guy who sold me this Camry is a black belt who taught me a forbidden punch. Maybe here in my belfry I can animorph, like the Animorph books, eh. You can't know. There are a lot of scary reasons you guys should stop making fun of me, Todd, creator of Spawn."

Brockway: This is the actual origin story of Spawn, which he came up with at 16, during the fallout from that time he got a public boner at the 4-H Dance Weekend.

Brockway: Hey Todd, this does not sound like a good episode of television! Remember that’s what we were doing here? Trying to prime viewers to stick around for a dark tale of the macabre? That’s what this was mostly about, before this was mostly about wife-swapping with wizards.

Seanbaby: This is a masterclass in building tension. You start by telling your audience that Satan is real and you're him and then break it to them how they're about to watch a cartoon about a sad guy taking a nap. You'd think Todd would know the importance of raising the stakes. After all, he's the one who created Devil Venom with every super power and then gave him an ice cream man to fight.

Brockway: Todd McFarlane does not believe you have the moral fortitude of Spawn, a fictional character he created as a teenager because not enough comic book characters were also proud bondage babies. I know I’m taking it hard to Todd here, instead of to his wife, as is his preference. Spawn was pretty okay for its terrible era. We were rebelling against the corny earnestness of the ‘80s with unironic edge that we had no idea how to pull off. It’s just that this is my least favorite Adult Theme to explore – “Is revenge okay, or bad? Um, should we entertain that it’s bad?”

It’s nothing. This is toddler morality our kids mostly grasp after their first slapfight ends in tears for both sides.

Seanbaby: Would you know toddlers fighting if you saw it? Maybe those toddlers weren't fighting, but climbing into the same shirt to disguise themselves as an older boy? Maybe they dropped the "lers fighting" from their name and shortened it to "Todd." Hi, I might be two violent babies or the devil, and I am leasing this oubliette to store my toys. Press 1 on your touch tone phone if no man should be the arbiter of life and death, and press 2 if we should kill those fuckers. Long distance rates may apply.

Brockway: If you press 2 it’s just a long silence and then Todd going “... … … … … pretty scary, huh?”

Brockway: Todd’s lil’ noncommittal “maybe.” Maybe the good guys win. This was what being a bad boy in the early ‘90s looked like. Like a nerd at a junior high prom, carefully sitting on the bleachers in such a way that you could see his wallet chain through his rented tuxedo. Maybe Todd doesn’t wanna let the good guys win because he knows the forces of light are less likely to rail his wife in the bathroom of a Crabby Joe’s while he listens through the stall.

You know what? I’m sorry for all the cuckold jokes. Open relationships require a kind of bravery that I don’t think Todd McFarlane is capable of.

I’m not going to stop making them; I’m just sorry.

Seanbaby: I mentioned this earlier, but it's still weird how discussing Todd McFarlane always turns into a sexually charged moral dilemma.

Brockway: I didn’t choose this! Todd did!

…

That’s the same thing his wife screams as Jim Lee brings her to climax!

Brockway: No Todd, nothing you’ve told me in this intro implies I know the answer to that question. Is it “something bad?” Is that the answer you want? If I answered “something bad” would you cross your arms and nod like “exactly, that’s what’s so scary: Something bad would happen”? I know so much about you from these 8 minutes, Todd McFarlane. I know how and when you lost your faith in humanity, I know it was the ice cream man, and I know you can’t cum unless an Image Comics writer is railing your wife in a Poncho Punch mask. But I don’t know this-

Oh shit!

Seanbaby: "Did you ever take a philosophy class? I haven't. Hi, I'm Todd. Darkness: where does it mean? Does second base count if Rob Liefeld asks if you ever join in with your wife and the other guys? Anyway, tonight Spawn is going to sit around doing nothing until he makes the wrong decision, and I might eat a real spider. You don't know. Caww!"

Brockway: That’s it. That’s a wrap on Todd McFarlane, season one. He threatens that you might find out what something bad is, and then spins around smugly, his work finished… for now.

No, not for now. These are over. Spawn was a decent cartoon for the time, so it actually got a season 2 and 3, but not with Todd McFarlane’s Moral and Sexual Dares from the Drawing Dungeon.

Seanbaby: Then what is the fucking point!? We're supposed to, what, watch Hot Topic Ghost Rider fight clowns without any nervously presented trolley problems? Fuck that. I'd rather eat a slow, searing corn dog from Satan's funnel cake stand.

Brockway: I think I’d rather fuck Todd’s wife, but that depends on the condiments.

Jesus, maybe this was all too much. Were we wrong, to do this?

There’s an alternate world where I actually feel for Todd McFarlane, because it’s possible none of this was his fault. He had this awesome high profile deal with a prestigious cable channel to adapt his ridiculous story and he took it – every one of us would. It’s possible part of that deal was some executive saying “fine, it’s a green light for the cartoon, but only if we get the creator in here to put on the suit he wore to his grandma’s funeral and explain moral deviancy to us in a thick Canadian accent that sounds more at home offering cookies to political canvassers.”

That might have happened! And if I were Todd, I still would have leapt at that offer!

And if they asked me to sit on a lil’ stool and talk about the devil banging my wife, I’d ask if it swivels, and can it just be mouth stuff or is it full penetration?

Seanbaby: