One of the most popular anti-heroes of the 90s, Spawn, aka Al Simmons, was a CIA agent
who was killed by his best friend.
He made a deal with an evil being named Malebolgia, trading his soul for the opportunity to see
his wife once more.
It wasn't as straightforward a deal as he thought; he had been transformed into a demonic
creature, a Hellspawn, and returned to Earth five years later, in which after regaining
his memory, discovered his wife had married his murderer.
It's an intense origin story, crafted by Todd McFarlane, that would resonate with fans who
wanted a darker alternative to the heroes of DC and Marvel.
So today, we're counting down some facts about Al and his universe with our list of the top
10 Spawn Shocking Facts.
10 Image Comics Let's start off by talking a bit about the
interesting publication history behind Spawn.
As most Spawn fans know, he's a character published by Image Comics, who also publishes
the likes of Saga, The Walking Dead and Witchblade.
In the early 90's, several large comic authors and illustrators left Marvel and DC, including
McFarlane, in a movement known as the X-odus, due to how many of them had largely contributed
to the X-Men franchise.
Image's mandate was that the creator rather than the publisher would own the work made
under it's title.
So, who was Image's first major hit?
Spawn, selling 1.7 million copies of it's first issue in 1992.
9 Soul Cailbur 2 Spawn is a playable character in Soul Calibur
2, as one of the special edition characters that came with the Xbox, while GameCube players
got Link for the Legend of Zelda and PS2 players got Tekken's Heihachi Mishima.
This is because Microsoft ran out of specific Xbox characters to include at the time after
a deal for placing a Dead or Alive character in the game fell through.
So instead, they went with Spawn.
Additionally, Spawn's cape was removed because it was hard to developers to properly implement
in the game.
8 Early Issues Some of the earlier issues of Spawn were printed
out of order.
While there's never been a full explanation given for why this happened, issues 19 and
20 were skipped over in the initial release, and were later re-released later on, with
issue 19 coming out between issues 24 and 25, and issue 20 coming out between 25 and
26.
7 Taco Bell During the release of the 1997 Spawn film,
the movie ran a promotion with Taco Bell.
But not everyone approved of the company promoting an R rated film, despite it creating less
controversy than McDonalds had when it ran a promo for pg 13 Batman Returns in their
happy meals.
6 The original design Todd McFarlane had drawn up the concept for
Spawn back when he was a teenager, and the original design was much more sci fi inspired.
He released some early sketches of the character, along with a note that read "Spawn didn't
always start out as a character from Hell.
When I first created Spawn as a kid, it was more of a sci fi story.
To me, sci fi means space.
Space is cold.
Cold is blue."
5 His Suit Speaking of Spawn's suit, the outfit he dons
is pretty remarkable.
It's a living sentient symbiote known as Leetha of the 7th House of K (or K7-Leetha), in which
he has dominance over, and is bonded to his central nervous system, meaning he can manipulate
it at his will.
The suit will also protect him even if he's unconscious.
As a neural parasite it feeds from Al's spinal fluid and other neural chemicals in his body.
4 Tony Twist McFarlane had a habit of naming characters
after real people.
Which, at first glance, may seem harmless, until someone sues you.
This was the case for one of his creations, a mobster named Antonio Tony Twist Twistelli,
who McFarlane even stated was named after the famous hockey player Tony Twist.
Tony Twist didn't like this much, and sued McFarlane, and was awarded $15 million.
McFarlane appealed, and eventually the two settled out of court for $5 million.
3 Jessica Priest McFarlane did manage to avoid one potential
lawsuit though.
When pitching the Spawn feature film to New Line Cinema, it was brought to his attention
that Al Simmons was killed by a character named Chapel, who was borrowed from another
Image Comics' series called Youngblood, created by Image co-founder Rob Liefeld.
Rather than use the character and pay Liefeld for the rights to do so, McFarlane created
Jessica Priest instead, who appeared in the film and was later noted in the comics as
being his true killer.
2 Neil Gaiman While McFarlane may have avoided another lawsuit
during the Spawn film, this lawsuit was one that he couldn't shake.
When Spawn's popularity picked up, various famous comic writers and artists were brought
on board to contribute to the series, with McFarlane promising them that they'd retain
the rights to whatever creations they added to the series.
Except, he went back on this.
One of these artists was Neil Gaiman, who introduced a handful of characters, which
he was meant to receive royalties for.
But McFarlane ceased all payments to him, claiming he owned the rights to the chararcters,
and in 2002, Gaiman sued him.
1 Race Spawn's face is one of the character's more
memorable traits.
But it's not just cause he's hellspawn.
It's because he's black.
McFarlane wanted to create a black superhero, but feared that readers might get too caught
up with the characters race, therefore burnt his skin entirely, making his race indistinguishable.
There we have it friends!
Which of these facts surprised you about Spawn?
Do you want us to do more Spawn lists?
Or lists on other Image Comics like The Walking Dead or Saga?
Let us know in those comments below!
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In the meantime, thanks for watching!
I've been Kelly Paoli and this has been top 10 nerd.
I'll catch you all in the next one.