I’ve been a comic book fan for roughly thirty years, but in all that time I never watched “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.” Oh, I remember Wizard Magazine raving about the adult animated series based on Mcfarlane’s Image comic. My best friend would also tell me to watch the show, but I never did, until now.
Last weekend I was looking for something comic book related to watch, and I came upon “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn” on Amazon. I haven’t read the Spawn comics in nearly a decade, but figured what the hell, I’ll watch the show since it’s based on the stuff I did read all those years ago. Plus I’d get to see if the cartoon was better than the 1997 live action movie.
So what did I think of “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn”?
Well, to tell ya the truth, after watching the opening of the series, I nearly turned it off. I respect Todd McFarlane as a comic book creator, but I didn’t need to see him dressed like a gangster asking questions to the viewer. His little speech was bad enough, but he finishes off with “And now Spawn. So turn off the lights.”
I don’t know if he was trying to act mysterious or that’s just how Todd McFarlane is in real life. Either way, the entire scene comes off wooden and ends up being a waste of time. I thought I was safe from this nonsense after the first episode, but it turns out McFarlane opens EVERY episode by introducing himself and by giving a little speech discussing that episode’s central theme. By episode four, I was skipping these intros which continued into season 2.
After watching the first season of Spawn, I decided to do a little reasearch into the tv show. Apparently, these annoying intros were directed by Doug Liman. This is the same Doug Liman who went on to direct movies like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “The Bourne Identity,” and “Edge of Tomorrow.” This was a shock to me because I like his work, so it makes me think everything wrong with the Spawn intros was all due to Todd McFarlane.
As for the cartoon itself, I found it mostly okay. The animation is solid, and so is the voice acting. Well, except for whoever voices Cyan Fitzgeral. Whoever did her voice is clearly not a kid, so she sounds… off. I know this show was aimed at a mature audience, but they should have hired someone young to do Cyan’s voice. Even her giggles were strange for crying out loud.
Anyways. the first few episodes of Spawn follow the early issues of the comic, and feature the usual Spawn baddies: his former boss in the CIA, a child killer, an innocent patsy, a Senator with a secret, and the alleys where the reborn Al Simmons makes his home with other homeless people. The different lighting, and color schemes for the different characters was a nice touch.
But while I liked meeting the alley folk, but I felt like too much of the action took place there. Surely after so many deaths in the same alley, the police would have cordoned off the area or at the very least had units nearby in case of anything. But no, they don’t do anything, which made detective Sam Burke’s reactions to always going back to the alley, even funnier.
Speaking of which, for me the highlight of Spawn was seeing Sam and Twitch in action. I enjoyed their comic title back in the day, but it was fun to see them in another medium. The two detectives are definitely quirky, but both are just trying to do the right thing. Sam clearly cares about others even if he doesn’t like to show it. While Twitch does all the grunt work and is the one with an eye for detail.
However, I do have one of two problems with the show. For one thing, the editing in the first few episodes is really choppy. There isn’t a a natural flow between scenes, and some seems to be cut mid-way. And some of the subplots don’t seem to go anywhere. In one episode there’s a long sequence featuring Angela that is never mentioned again in season one.
Also, some of the transitions between scene are just fades to black almost as if that’s where commercials would go. But Spawn aired on HBO, so I’m not sure what those fades to black were all about. To the creators credit, all of these issues got better as season one went along, and it wasn’t nearly as noticeable in season two.
Another problem I had with Spawn was the revelation that Chapel had killed Al Simmons. True, this is how it happened in the Spawn comic. But as any comic book fan can tell you, by 1997 when the show began, Todd McFarlane had a fallout with Chapel creator Rob Liefeld. This was made even clearer that year in the Spawn live action movie where Chapel was replaced by a character named Priest.
In other words, if you were a fan of “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn” on HBO and then saw the live action movie the same year, you basically saw two different origins. Maybe general audiences wouldn’t pick up on this, but comic book fans surely would.
Todd McFarlane has been promising for years a new Spawn live action movie and an animated series. After over 20 years, it looks like cameras will finally roll on a new live action Spawn this year. If everything goes as planned, maybe the animated series wont’ be far behind. For now though, I’m enjoying what “Todd McFarlane’s Spawn” series had to offer.
And at the end of the day, the Spawn animated series is much better than the 1997 live action film, so yay!
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