Spawn Will Utilize Many Different Costumes Like Iron Man Says Todd McFarlane

Spawn is no stranger to a bunch of different looks over the life of the character. Issue # 300 brought yet another costume into the mix, but that doesn't mean a drastic departure. Todd McFarlane is saying that he's taking a similar approach to Iron Man with the character at the moment. The suit is an extension of the hero and not the other way around, and the stories will be enhanced because of it.

Comicbook.com's Jim Viscardi got a chance to speak with Todd McFarlane and explore the new costume. Spawn #301 is going to explore sides of the character that the creator hasn't spent a lot of time with before. He told Comicbook that the Iron Man approach just made sense because of the consistency inherent in the core of the character despite the changes to his outward appearance.

"...Arguably the most important piece is that it's not really his new look. So don't read into it more than this. What it will be is one of his looks," McFarlane explained. "So if you think about it more like Ironman suits, who has multiple suits that Spawn now can either be that zombie look, the good looking human, that look you saw that Greg showed us at the end of 300, the classic Spawn from issue number one if you will, and then sort of the gnarly nasty Spawn that was somewhere between 150 and 250, this sort of quasi sort of monster in a costume with the teeth and stuff."

He continued, "So there's like four or five looks you can do and each one of them comes with an attitude, a certain attitude. And so what this allows me to do is that it gives me variety in the stories I can tell. And it also allows me, when I go and find artists that want to help me sort of continue to tell these stories, sort of say, "Where do you think your strengths are? What do you want to draw? I can come up with a story that will basically be in your sweet spot and I've got to look like you tell me you want to do superheroes, I've got that look. If you tell me you want to do monsters, I've got that look. You tell me you want to do sort of cool bad-ass stuff, I've got that. I can give you the look and so I can sort of bribe the artists in. And so this is just long-term thinking of how do you keep the book relevant? Well, you get good talent on it. How do you get good talent? Make it fun for them."

That sense of fun sounds like it will be key to the title going forward. The flair in Spawn's design is something that is intrinsic to the book at this point and that aesthetic is bleeding into everything about this run.

McFarlane added, "And for me too, that is the person that's going to be writing the majority of the stories going forward too. Then I just don't have one story I can tell. I can do superhero stories for four months and then say, "I want to tell something slightly different" and it will all work. And this is, for me, how I can do it for 27 years and still have enthusiasm to continue to do it. I just keep morphing it or at least give myself a ton of flexibility instead of saying it's one group. I create multiple groups."