spawn

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with 75 years of superhero comics behind us right now, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite characters in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're taking a look at Todd McFarlane's Spawny guy, the most successful creator-owned superhero ever based on salmon mating rituals. If you haven't read Spawn since your Hot Topic days, maybe there are some things you forgot or never knew. Great news! This is a video where you can learn about how Spawn used to be a spaceman, the many lawsuits of Todd McFarlane, and the crushing realization that we could have had a Spawn movie starring Snoop Dogg.

Lucifer. Mephistopheles. Beelzebub. Auld Hornie. Satan. Nick. Clootie. Whatever you choose to call him, the devil has a long and storied (pun intended) history, from his humble beginnings as a nameless adversary in the book of Job to a tempter in the desert to the spokesmodel for canned ham. The prince of the power of the air has been at the center of stories for thousands of years, canonical, deuterocanonical, and extracanonical alike. His status as an instantly recognizable symbol and a royalty-free denizen of the public domain have made him an irresistible go-to in stories where an ultimate evil is needed, including in comics.

Costume design is one of the great strengths of the superhero genre, a way to establish distinctive visual shorthand for a character and reveal key details about concept, purpose, and personality. But which is the best superhero costume of all time? This month, we're asking you to decide, by voting up your favorites and voting down the rest. When we have your votes, we'll compile a list of the greatest super-costumes of all time. This week we're looking at some quintessential costume designs decade-by-decade. Today it's five costumes from the 1990s, the era of the Image artist, the bad girl, big knives, big guns, big shoulder pads, leather jackets and lots and lots of pockets. We've picked out just a few costumes to represent some of these trends.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

Click through to take a look at Tuesday's links.

Join us for a link reading fest of Monday proportions after the cut.

Marvel Comics, via The New York Times, announced this morning that Angela -- a character created by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane in the pages of Spawn, the rights to whom were contested between the two creators for years -- will be appearing in the Marvel Universe, making her Marvel debut in the pages of the publisher's current Age of Ultron series...

Clearly, Todd McFarlane likes spending time in court rooms. How else to explain the fact that, having finally reached a legal settlement with Neil Gaiman over the ownership of Spawn supporting character Angela, he's now suing a former employee who claims to be the inspiration for the original Spawn, Al Simmons...

Comic books have a history of attempting to tie-in with US Presidential Elections; in 2008, remember, Image Comics' Savage Dragon endorsed Barack Obama before the election, and Marvel Comics' Amazing Spider-Man hung out with him following his inauguration...

Three weeks ago, Image Comics shipped the 220th issue of Spawn, marking 20 years of continuous publication of the supernatural antihero series created by Todd McFarlane. To help commemorate the 20th anniversary of Spawn, ComicsAlliance is embarking on a venture that is every bit as ambitious: a four-part overview of the first "year" of its publication (Being an early Image book, Spawn s