Before co-founding Image Comics in 1992, superstar artist Todd McFarlane drew Batman in four issues of Detective Comics between 1987 and 1989. The Infinity, Inc. penciller took over from artist Alan Davis for three chapters of the four-part Batman: Year Two written by Mike W. Barr, who would later describe McFarlane’s Batman as “a mass of broken glass, impaling his foes.” In 1987’s Detective Comics #576-578, McFarlane depicted the Dark Knight as just that: a creature of the night, shown mostly in shadow except for his white eyes, with tall, pointed bat ears and an even longer, jagged-edged cape that seemed to be almost supernatural.
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McFarlane would go on to create Spawn, a brooding vigilante cloaked in darkness who stalked the streets from the shadows as he preyed on criminals (a superstitious cowardly lot). 1992’s Spawn #3, written, penciled, and inked by McFarlane, was even dedicated to Jerry “the Joker” Robinson, famed Batman artist and co-creator of the Joker and Robin, as the eponymous resurrected Hellspawn fought the Clown-faced demon Violator.
But as McFarlane’s creator-owned Spawn drew comparisons to Batman — whose “no kill” rule was in full effect by the 1990s — McFarlane sent a message with 1992’s Spawn #5. The issue saw Spawn avenge Sherlee Johnson, a 7-year-old girl abducted and killed by pedophile serial killer Billy Kincaid, who had lured 27 other children to his “Mr. Chill-ee” ice cream truck before being released from an institution on a technicality.
A spirit of vengeance, Spawn tortured and killed Kincaid (off-panel), stringing him up with chains and impaling him with an ice cream scooper and popsicle sticks. Spawn then left Kincaid’s corpse for the police to find with a chilling message: “Boys screamed and girls screamed so I made him scream and scream and scream…”
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“This was the beginning, the infancy of Image Comics, and I wanted [Spawn #5] to be my message that said: ‘He is not Batman,’” McFarlane tells ComicBook. “And so when you see that last page of the brutality of what he did to Billy Kincaid, hopefully people got it, one way or the other, whether they liked it or not.”
“But that was it. That was just to say, ‘Get ready for this new character called Spawn. He’s not gonna be like the other corporate-owned characters,’” the former Spider-Man artist continues. “That’s what that story was.”
While Kincaid would continue to literally haunt the long-running Spawn title over the next three decades, Sherlee Johnson wouldn’t appear beyond a four-panel sequence and the horrific aftermath of her murder. That will change in Spawn The Curse of Sherlee Johnson, a new Spawn spinoff series from artist Daniel Henriques (in his writing debut) and Spawn and King Spawn cover artist Jonathan Glapion.
According to Image Comics, the new standalone series is an accessible entry point for new readers “while rewarding long-time fans with unexpected appearances and deep connections” to the larger Spawn Universe. Image will also reprint Spawn #5, which contains the first appearance of Billy Kincaid and Sherlee Johnson.
“Daniel and Jonathan took one thread out of that [issue] and said, ‘We’ve got an idea. How about this?’ And so here we are 30 years later with a followup,’” McFarlane says.
Here’s the official synopsis: “What happened to Sherlee Johnson, the seven-year-old victim of the infamous serial killer Billy Kinkaid? The Curse of Sherlee Johnson, an epic new chapter in the Spawn Universe, explores the fate of the innocent young girl. Her harrowing adventures with the Stranger are laid bare as her story and the world she now inhabits is revealed.”
“The Stranger, we begin not knowing a lot about what he is. One of the things we know is that in [2019’s] Spawn #301, we had the big necroplasmic explosion that opened a lot of things — from time travel, dimension travel everything,” Henriques says, referring to what McFarlane calls the Time Rip. “The Time Rip allows us to play with a lot of things, and that is what enables the Stranger to meet Sherlee.”
He continues, “But it has a meaning behind it that we eventually will discover: Why does Spawn’s necroplasmic Time Rip bomb have this connection? Why does it go towards Sherlee? Why does it impact their past? There is a reason that they’re connected, and part of what they’ll do next, it has its own ramifications in the universe.”
Spawn The Curse of Sherlee Johnson #1 goes on sale with a new reprinting of Spawn #5 on May 21.
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