Todd McFarlane Explains Decades-Long Wait for Spider-Man/Spawn Crossover Comic: “It’s a Massive Undertaking” (Exclusive)

In the late 1980s, Todd McFarlane became a superstar illustrating Amazing Spider-Man for Marvel Comics. But after creative clashes with the publisher over censorship during the “Sabotage” crossover with McFarlane’s adjectiveless Spider-Man and Rob Liefeld’s X-Force, the visionary writer-artist quit Marvel. McFarlane and six other creators — including Liefeld and McFarlane’s successor Spider-Man artist Erik Larsen — formed their own company, Image Comics, in 1992. It was there that McFarlane birthed Spawn, an anti-hero forged in hell and star of the most successful independent comic book ever published.

McFarlane announced via ComicBook that his McFarlane Toys will be collaborating with Marvel to bring some of his iconic Amazing Spider-Man covers to life as a collection of 3D statue-like figures, part of a first wave featuring the works of Amazing Spider-Man artists Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr., and former Marvel artists and Image co-founders Liefeld and Jim Lee. Speaking exclusively to ComicBook about the collection, which launches this summer, McFarlane gave an update on his upcoming Spawn movie reboot from Blumhouse andrevealed if the Marvel collaboration might spawn another: a Spider-Man/Spawn crossover comic.

“I don’t know if it will. I have conversations with Marvel on a semi-regular basis, and that’s the only topic of conversation we have,” McFarlane tells ComicBook. “Usually, it’s a 20-second conversation. It’s like, ‘Todd, are you any closer to thinking about it?’ And it’s like, ‘No, not really.’”

McFarlane’s long-running Spawn comic has crossed over with another Image title, Witchblade, but it wasn’t until Spawn/Batman that his creation starred in an intercompany crossover. Published by Image in 1994, the one-shot was written by The Dark Knight Returns visionary Frank Miller and drawn by McFarlane, who had penciled Batman in issues of Detective Comics for DC in the late ’80s. The Hellspawn and the Dark Knight would cross paths again in the one-shot Batman/Spawn: War Devil, by legendary Batman writers and artists Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, and Klaus Janson; in 2022, McFarlane scripted Batman/Spawn, a third crossover one-shot drawn by Spawn and Batman artist Greg Capullo.

Unlike Spawn/Batman and Batman/Spawn, McFarlane will handle both writing and art duties when he eventually returns for his first Spider-Man story in more than 30 years.

“It’s a massive undertaking for me because it has to be Spider-Man/Spawn, and I have to do all the artwork,” McFarlane explains. “Anything less than that is not doing it proper. So I just have to be able to see myself clear to be able to devote the time needed and not feel like I’m a little bit here, and a little bit here, and I’m rushing it, because it will show on paper. I need to be able to channel all the things that people like in my artwork when I was doing it on a regular basis and put it back on the paper.” 

McFarlane paid homage to his covers for 1987’s Amazing Spider-Man #298 and Amazing Spider-Man #299 with Spawn #298 and #299 during “War to 300,” the lead-up to the history-making Spawn #300 in 2019. In 2020, McFarlane took to social media to share a “momentous occasion in comic book history”: his first official artwork featuring Spider-Man and Spawn together. The piece (above), a cover for the Overstreet Price Guide, was embraced by fans who then asked: Will McFarlane ever bring Spider-Man and Spawn together in a comic book?

The Image Comics president and McFarlane Toys CEO likens a potential Spider-Man/Spawn crossover to a “revival tour for a band.” And like many long-awaited revival tours, it could be another decade before McFarlane returns to the stage to play the hits, so to speak.

“Will [Spider-Man/Spawn] ever happen? I don’t know,” McFarlane says. “But my guess is that it’s probably more likely to happen once I sort of wind down the distractions in my life and I actually do have time and I go, ‘I can just go back to drawing and don’t have to worry about a hundred other things I have to do.’ It might be 40 or 50 [years after Spider-Man] by the time we get there, but we’ll get there.”