- This is Todd McFarlane
and today I'll be answering your questions from Twitter.
This is "Comic Support".
[upbeat music]
@ricas_minas, "What is more important
in the comic: art or story?"
Here's my complete and utter bias
and I'm going to my grave with this answer.
I can sell a book that is drawn by Michelangelo
and written by my dog, I can sell that book.
But what I can't do is sell a book
that is written by William Shakespeare
and drawn by my mom.
@JayNEspinoza, he asked,
"What's your favorite, not necessarily most valuable,
comic book in your collection?"
I actually have a copy of "Action Comics #1".
This is a reprint.
Historically, this is when superheroes began.
It's also the first appearance of Superman.
Recent issues have sold for like close to $4 million.
There's a couple things that drive the price.
One is it have historical significance.
Two, way more important is the first issue.
Three, it happens to be the introduction of a new character.
So if you happen to have the "Fantastic Four" issue
that has the first appearance of the Black Panther,
that issue is gonna be way more expensive
than the issue before or after it.
@jedigavin asks "Why are so many comic book illustrators
scared or unable to draw feet?" [laughs]
Here's the first rule in comic books
that every comic book artist is taught.
If in doubt, black it out.
If you're not good at something, hide it.
If you can't draw feet,
make sure that they're always standing in thick grass.
Here's what our big goal is in comic books.
You have a 2D piece of paper that means it's flat.
And what happens if I now take webbings,
and I put webbings back behind him,
it goes through his leg, comes back up and around here,
I create this sense of volume.
The moment I put an arm in front, I've created a plane
and then if I turn my hand and I break it
down at an angle and I do something with my fingers
I've created seven or eight more planes.
Then what happens if I turn
and I put my hand back behind it?
So I've got foreground, mid-ground background.
But then what happens if I'm doing Spider-Man
and I put the foot up on top of it?
Take 2D and create as much depth as you can
and you're gonna be a hell of a comic book artist.
@NotSoRiley, "Is Comic-Con even about comic books anymore?"
When San Diego Comic-Con first began,
was it 95% about comic book creators,
comic book stores, comic book paraphernalia?
Yes, yes and yes, right?
It was held at a small little hotel in a basement.
Maybe a couple thousand people attend it.
That was in the '70s, early '80s.
Now, fast forward, what is Comic-Con?
Now it's literally every walk of life.
Do I think
that there's something in that building for everybody?
Of course there is.
It is literally pop culture.
@Mirkand asked "What's the difference
between comic and graphic novel?
A comic book is what you see here, right?
It's sort of what you're used to.
It's pretty thin, pretty flimsy.
Usually 20 pages of interior artwork, costs maybe $4.
A graphic novel is more of something like this
that basically is four or five issues put together.
A true graphic novel though, somebody saying,
"I don't wanna do five issues of 20 pages
which equal a hundred pages.
I wanna do all 100 pages in one book."
@SillyRabbet442 ask
"Just got done watching 'Venom 2,'" the movie,
"and now I wanna learn how to draw Venom."
Venom to me is he's got a big eye, right?
Make sure you have a big eye
and his eyes a little bit sort of craggily,
because you don't want it to be smooth
'cause otherwise that's gonna be Spider-Man.
He's got his big head here.
And then the one thing that we like about Venom
is he's got the big mouth, right?
So we're even gonna make him smile just a little bit.
Then make sure when you drawing teeth
that they're all different size and shapes, right?
Take a look at the inside of your dog's mouth
or any animals, and don't make 'em perfect.
I hate perfect teeth on monsters,
they don't go to dentists.
And then the thing that makes him better than Spider-Man
is that he's big.
As long as you get the big eyes and you get the cool teeth
and the tongue in there and you make 'em big like the Hulk,
you can get there pretty quickly.
Venom is a complete and utter happy accident.
Why?
Because when I was taking over "Amazing Spider-Man"
Spider-Man was in the black costume and I didn't like it.
Put him back in the red and blue costume.
What if I take the costume off the dude,
put it on something else.
I'll give you some drawings.
Those drawings ended up being what we now know
as the look of Venom.
@ComicsSteve "What is the Marvel method?"
And the Marvel method, what he's talking about
was for years and years
the writers would only give an outline
of what they wanted the pages to look like to the artist.
I would then have to interpret a couple of pages of outline
and turn those into 20 pages.
Which is basically how Stan Lee did it
which is where the Marvel method came from.
You have five people working on a comic book.
You have the writer, obviously,
is the one that comes up with the storyline
and will eventually put the words
into the character's mouth.
The penciler is the person who, as you can imagine,
has a pencil takes blank paper
and is the one that is responsible for all the drawings.
The inker then is the one that applies black ink.
The colorist then, as you can imagine, comes in
adds some cool colors 'cause that in black and white
might not be quite as sexy.
Then the letterer then takes the script
and then comes in and puts all those word balloons
and all those captions,
and when all five of those people touch the page
you end up with a complete comic book.
@SystemsEmenos asks, "How do people write for comics?
Is it full on novel, just keywords and descriptions
or straight up improvisation?"
Most writers write full scripts.
They give you basically how many panels they want
and that's basically how many different drawings
they want on a page.
They give you the dialogue, they give you the captions
and then they give you descriptions of what they want
inside each one of those drawings.
They're essentially writing and directing.
I think you should give way more freedom to the artist.
So when I'm writing, I just give descriptive stuff.
I'll give you an example.
I got three pages.
You have two cops they're in their office
they're talking about a case.
At the end of that three page
I need one of the cops to be mad at his partner.
Do I care, personally, whether in those three pages,
the two cops get mad at each other in the first page
at the beginning,
and then they're mad with each other at the very end.
Or if they're actually doing a good thing
for two and a half pages and then near the end
one of the guys says something
about the other guy's mama and he goes, "Screw you."
And then he walks out and he slams the door, do I care?
I do not.
@MajinIsy asks, "How the [beep] do comic book writers
keep up with their continuity?"
Let's define what comic book continuity is.
Basically, every time you come out with an issue
you're laying another sort of stone on a pathway, right?
And so you can't contradict something
that has previously been written,
unless you give a reason for it.
I'll let you in on a little bit, little secret.
Spawn, he's got a costume and the costume it's alive
and it moves and it morphs.
It wasn't actually alive on issue number one
at least in my head, it wasn't alive.
I was drawing my first issue of "Spawn"
and I was putting like leg packs on him
and putting some spikes on him.
And then somebody wrote a letter saying,
"Todd, how come on page four,
the leg pack is on the left leg
and on page nine the pack is on the right leg.
And he used to have three spikes, now he has four spikes."
Confronted with this criticism, you have two choices.
You either say, "Sorry, [beep] up."
or you take the other one, which what I did,
which is that's because the costume is alive.
And if anybody ever asks I go costume's alive,
it's always morphing, it's never the same.
Where when you're doing Thor and Spider-Man and Batman
you have to actually nail it from panel to panel.
Not old Spawny here.
@dukealoops asks "On a scale of 1-10
how much would I regret reading 'Spider-Man: Torment'?"
If you go and read "Spider-Man: Torment".
"Spider-Man #1" was the biggest selling comic book,
still is to this day for a single creator.
Is it my best writing?
No.
Is it a cool read?
I don't know, I think so.
"Spider-Man: Torment", just to give some context
is the first story I ever wrote
when I became a writer on Spider-Man.
Todd, the the artist who was the penciler and the inker
had been doing this for about five or six, seven years.
I wasn't a writer in those first six years.
I was starting to do some innovations on Spider-Man.
It's literally what sort of made my career
over at Marvel Comic Books.
When he put the costume on, he was a bug to me.
And so I made big eyes.
I gave him way more webs on his costume.
I reinvented his webbings.
I put 'em in these freakish positions.
He was a rubbery guy.
When they tried to do the first Spider-Man movie,
Sam Raimi, who directed it,
they couldn't emulate those poses.
They had all my artwork, they couldn't emulate it
because I wasn't paying attention to anatomy.
I just was going for the cool factor.
@Comixcentral asks "In comics, historically
characters are often binary.
Evil or angelic, on or off, good or bad.
How does the anti-hero archetype change the game?"
I'm gonna tell you a character I think is boring to me.
Superman, and here's why, he's perfect.
He says everything right.
Oh, and by the way,
he has the power to spin planets on his finger
and he's a boy scout.
The characters I always liked
were the ones that were flawed.
We think that being a hero automatically makes you good.
I don't, I think it's the decisions along the journey
that are way, way more interesting.
I have a character called Spawn.
He is a completely flawed man.
He lets his emotions get the better of him at times.
He does things that he regrets afterwards.
Will he ever figure it out?
I don't know.
I hope I never have to write the last issue of my character.
@DylanJa77545989.
His question is actually shorter than his name.
"What gave you the inspiration for 'Spawn'?"
I was just starting to date my girlfriend,
who's now my wife, and I just thought
that having a hero come back for love instead of revenge
would be a cool idea.
I created him when I was 16, put him in my portfolio,
went to school, ended up getting a job at Marvel.
And years later in 1992 when I was almost 30,
pulled him out of my portfolio
and the first issue of "Spawn" came out.
I never gave Spawn idea away
to either Marvel or DC when I was working for 'em.
I saved him till the proper time.
@Slade_left asks "Not a big comic guy,
why is Batman a fascist?
And how did Frank Miller contribute to this?"
He's not a fascist, that dude's a badass, go Bruce.
I actually get Bruce Wayne.
He knows that there are bad people out there
and that they basically pick on innocent people
that are basically less powerful than them.
I'm gonna come up with this black costume.
I'm gonna go scare the shit of those bad guys.
If you like the Batman movies today,
you can thank Frank Miller.
He did a twist on a character
that I thought had gotten stale, and so did he.
And he just basically messed with the icon.
And sometimes that's what you need to do.
Every now and then you just need to shake the cage
and let people see something a little bit different.
@NickWetmore "Which comic covers
will always catch your eye and you can't help yourself
to comment about on social media."
I tried to basically just make it
so that, what I call the three second rule,
I can just do a drawing.
Get my mom, go "Mom, one, two, three, what did you see?"
She should be able to say "It looked like a person
was jumping or flying over a city."
And if she gets that basic information
then the clarity of the image is what I basically need.
One of the covers I did that a lot of people seem to like
is "Hulk 340".
Wolverine was in it and he's screaming
the camera's on Wolverine's face and he's got his blades up,
and I made his blades instead of spikes I made them fat
almost like butcher knives.
And then reflected in the knives was a screaming Hulk.
I thought it was okay cover, I didn't think it was my best.
Years later they did a voting on Marvel's website
for the all time best comic book covers
ever in the history of Marvel, it was voted number one.
@ScottENoble asks "I was thinking about
Martin Scorsese's comment where he said
'Marvel films are not cinema.'
And I must beg the question
can comic books be considered a form of literature?"
Of course, of course.
What are we talking about?
Here's what comic books are.
The combination of words and pictures.
If you don't think the comic books are literature or art,
don't consume them, go and find something else.
But please step to the side
'cause somebody behind you might think they are
and we need them to come to the party.
So here's the easy answer,
Martin, you don't like 'em, don't go,
and people who do like it will go.
@flyfoxpro asks "Who are some of your biggest
comic book inspirations,
specifically as they are reflected in your art?"
Jack Kirby, just because again, I don't draw like him
but his storytelling was big and bombastic.
John Byrne for the way
that he basically did some of his action.
Gil Kane was a guy who when he hit somebody,
bam it felt like you were getting shot out of a cannon.
George Perez, he would draw machinery
that still to this day, stuns me.
Marshall Rogers did some of the coolest capes I ever saw.
All these people you put them,
a little bit of those influences in a blender
pour it out and that becomes Todd McFarlane's style.
But it really is using ingredients that have preexisted,
I think, from all the people that I grew up on.
@Hunt50501 "How was it like working with Stan Lee?"
Stan Lee, for hopefully only two of you out there
that don't know, is the one that basically co-created
almost every single Marvel character
that you've ever heard of.
The Stan Lee that you saw in person
that big gregarious guy, "excelsior"
he's the exact same dude.
He would hand it over to the artists
and the other people on the team and he would say,
"Go, I'm gonna give you a germ of an idea.
You go and do your thing."
He was a good man, we all miss him.
@Figureoftheday asks "What is the most important feature
on an action figure?
Detail, articulation, arms at stretch into next week?"
For lots of people who collect action figures,
movement matters.
Can my figure move?
Here's what most toys looked like when my company began,
McFarlane Toys, they had five movements.
One was a head, one was an arm right here,
nothing else moved just the shoulder.
This character right now not only has way more detail,
is bigger than those toys were when I started,
but it has 32 moving parts.
The other ones had five.
After I broke into the toy business.
I understand why toys are made a certain way.
They're maximizing their margins of profit.
@Harold_Magnus "Back in February 1st, 1992
three friends called Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee,
and Rob Liefeld founded
a little independent comic book company called Image Comics.
Have you ever heard about it?"
Yes, I have, I'm one of the co-founders of it.
We all were working at Marvel Comic Books
and we were sort of the elite artist at that time.
We left started Image Comic Books.
What we were just trying to do
was come up with a way of doing business
in the comic book industry that would make more sense to us.
And so the biggest piece of it
was all of us got to own our own ideas.
When you're doing Batman, when you're doing Superman,
when you're doing Spider-Man,
although you can have as much fun as you want,
you don't have any rights into those stories.
@Jellyfish_GS "So if I wanna get into comic books
or graphic novels, where do I start?"
On the superhero front?
It depends, if you like Big Fantasy,
I would go with maybe some of the team books.
If you like, sort of urban grittier stuff,
I'd go with "Batman", "Daredevil",
even something like "Spawn".
"The Walking Dead", it's basically a zombie book.
It's really about the human condition.
Go into a comic book store,
tell the person working at the front
what your personal tastes are,
and I promise you there's a book
that is in that store that's for you.
So those are all the questions today.
Thanks for watching "Comic Support".