Todd McFarlane Would Still Like to Make Spawn/Batman II

Could we see another Spawn/Batman crossover in the comics? Todd McFarlane hopes so.

Todd McFarlane may be the co-founder of Image Comics and a veteran of Spider-Man, but his creator-owned character Spawn’s most notable crossover is probably the one he and Frank Miller did, with Batman, in 1994.

Not long after, there was a follow-up planned; while McFarlane drew the first one with wording by Batman staple Frank Miller, the planned sequel was to feature a McFarlane collaborator with no Dark Knight experience to speak of…at least at the time.

“We had the first one Frank Miller and I did, that did pretty well. Then years later we announced another one that I was going to do and Greg Capullo was going to draw,” McFarlane said of the idea. “Then Greg ends up being the pre-eminent Batman artist of the last few years, so we were sort of ahead of the curb. Maybe we’ll resurrect that when the time’s right. I think that both of the characters visually fit with each other, and I think that there’s enough character differences that it’s not just the same guy in a different suit. The story I pitched them was about how all the opposites — character flaws if you will. Hopefully someday I can find an opening there to do that myself.”

Time is always a factor for McFarlane, whose deadline troubles as an artist are well-documented and who has not only Image publishing but also his action figure, statue, and collectibles business to oversee as well. Still, he’s always found time for Spawn, the title that he launched when Image was founded 24 years ago. Recently, McFarlane completed a year-long, status-quo-altering run on the book with fellow Image co-founder Erik Larsen, culminating with a Savage Dragon crossover.

While DC was pretty much out of the inter-company crossover game for a long while, recent years have seen them return to it, with high-profile projects like Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, Justice League/Power Rangers, and Green Lantern on the Planet of the Apes.

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