Interview: Todd McFarlane on the State of Comics
Yesterday, the first part of my interview with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane focused on issue 185 of the long-running comic and the changes in store for readers as he returns to active creative duty with Whilce Portacio and Brian Holguin.
Since part one ran, it has been announced that the shipping date has slipped a week and the issue, complete with previously unannounced variant covers, will now be in stores on October 29.
In the second part of our discussion, we chatted about approaching the big 200 mark, the comics landscape overall today and what it might look like in the future, as well as a few Spawn-related surprises.
ComicMix: With issue 200 on the horizon and the “end of Spawn” being teased, will Spawn continue past issue 200?
Todd McFarlane: Yeah, [Issue] 200 we’re already planning for. We’ve thrown enough ripples out already and that people will sort of go ‘whoa’ and have to pay attention to keep pace with it. And 200 will allow us to get to one of the big notes and it’s all sort of a Pandora’s Box; you close one door and another one opens. We’ll have a nice compelling story for 200.
CMix: The comic landscape has changed and continues to change in a lot of ways with all kinds of different formats on the shelves and walking into bookstores now with full sections devoted to trades and original graphic novels, as well as the rise of webcomics and digital formats on the Internet. What are your thoughts in general on these trends and new directions in comics as a medium?
TM: The medium of comic books, which is a combination of words and pictures, I don’t think that medium is ever going to go away. I believe what will evolve over our lifetimes and it’s been a slow evolution, is the delivery mechanism. Is it possible that some day everybody who reads a comic book will turn on a computer? I guess, but it’ll still be words and pictures, it just happens to be in digital form. The basic form of what a comic is will never die. The delivery mechanism, to me, is less important. If people want them in trade paperback, in book form, on their computers, on the back of cereal boxes, I mean, whatever, but it’d still be a comic book. So I’ll let the consumer tell us where they want to get their fix on this medium and then we’ll hopefully not be too far behind the curve and we can give it to them.
CMix: Do you see the monthly pamphlet format headed for extinction at some point as some people have suggested?
TM: It’s possible as long as someone can offset it with another business model that gets it to the consumer. Again, as long as you give people an option as to where they can get it. Change for change’s sake doesn’t make much sense. At some point, there might be an economic tipping point where you look at sales and see you’re selling 51% or more doing something a new way rather than the old way so you start putting all of your resources behind the new way like the transition from VHS to DVD at Blockbuster where [DVD] was 5% and then 10% and then it took over. If we’re going to go in that direction, I sort of see it being the same as other business models where it’ll simply be a slow transition. (more…)
IDW has released details about the prequel comic book miniseries leading into next May’s Star Trek reboot. Entitled Star Trek: Countdown, it will focus on Nero, the villainous Romulan played by Eric Bana and said to be seen at the film’s beginning set in Trek’s present before the time travel elements kick in and we see the familiar crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise unite for the first time.
24 Hour Comics Day
On October 22, DC will be releasing the hardcover graphic novel 
(originally titled [[[Joker: The Dark Knight]]]), presented to you by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo. This is the same creative team who were behind the mini-series [[[Lex Luthor: Man of Steel]]], which explored the mind-set of the Metropolis multi-millionaire and touched on his justifications for why he sees himself as the necessary anti-thesis to the Last Son of Krypton.
Comic books, admittedly, don’t have a great history when itcomes to video game adaptations.
have this mighty gem.
It’s a good year for Marc Guggenheim. He’s got a brand new comic series at Marvel with Young X-Men and he’s one of three co-writers for the upcoming Green Lantern film at Warner Bros. Now comes word from 
I was but a wee babe in the ‘60s, and I don’t really remember JFK’s assassination, or his brother’s, or King’s. I don’t think we had separate drinking fountains for black and white kids in New Jersey. But I remember racism. Anti-Semitism affected me directly (we were the only Jewish family in a heavily Catholic neighborhood) but, as our suburb became integrated and I was best buddies with a black boy, the jeers of racists were never far behind. Prejudice is kinda hard to forget, too, since it never went away.
There’s been 
I guess we’ll have to get our superhero fixes from comic books for a while, though I’m not complaining, because isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? My glances through the various newspapers and magazines that come to this house tell me that there are no superhero movies coming to a theater near me, and the closest thing to a new superhero on television is those can-do wheels on Knight Rider, whose ancestor is the Batman utility belt of the middle-period comics and the early Green Arrow quiver; whatever the situation calls for…well, here it is – just the thing. Some of last season’s superdoers are back, and some of them will be on our living room screen, though the plot(s) of one seem to be unfocused and the future of another, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, seems to be iffy, which saddens me because one of the stars makes my dirty old man merit badge pulsate.
