Well, Kevin Smith’s TV credits had to be leading somewhere, if not a Mallrats or Buckaroo Banzai series. Now, the recent Supergirl director has in mind to develop Spawn creator Todd McFarlane’s Sam and Twitch for a TV adaptation at BBC-America; both directing and writing.
Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with decades of comics behind, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know!
This week we're celebrating Image Comics' 25th anniversary, and after taking a look at the history of cartoons based on Image-published comics, today we're looking at the comics themselves.
Everyone loves trivia about their favorite animated features and series, but with over 100 years of animation history 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 names in cartoons in this continuing video series. You think you know cartoons? Well, here’s a few things you might not know!
2017 marks the 25th anniversary of Image Comics, so this week we're taking a look at the history of cartoons based on comics from America's largest independent comics publisher!
Todd McFarlane's Spawn was one of the four core titles published by Image Comics at its foundation 25 years ago, along with Youngblood, Savage Dragon, and WildCATS. Back then, when I still thought I was a cishet white guy, Spawn hit like an atomic bomb, one where the mushroom cloud formed the visage of Eddie from an Iron Maiden album cover. Everything about the character was focused like a laser on appealing to a #teen who is sure angry at something --- the chains, the skulls, the spikes, the glowing eyes, the rubbery monsters and dark inks, all fused with the sleek lines and bright colors of the superheroic aesthetic.
There’s something about the evil doppelganger that’s irresistible in superhero comics, and among a crowded room of Bizarros, Reverse Flashes and Sabretooths, one dark mirror of a villain stands out as the most iconic; the sinister symbiote known as Venom, which made its first full appearance in comics on this day in 1988.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics.
This week the bats are out of the belfry as we look at five of Batman’s greatest team-ups!
Ask anyone who was alive and reading comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s to name a Spider-Man artist, and nine times out of 10, you'll always get the same name: Todd McFarlane.
Plenty of artists in the 1970s and '80s did great work on the character, and the black costume put a new coat of paint on him, but nobody since John Romita transformed the character like McFarlane did. The character was still instantly recognizable as Spider-Man, but lots of the details changed to pull the character into the 1990s, and all the while, there was an undeniable, unmistakable energy to the art.
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada (go Flames go) on this day in 1961, comics superstar and business mogul Todd McFarlane initially wanted to play baseball for a living, but an injury caused him to focus on his art. When looking for professional work, he sent out seven hundred different submissions before finally breaking into the business with his first professional gig: a backup story in Steve Englehart’s Coyote, published in 1984.
At the dawn of 1992, comic books were booming. Tim Burton's Batman had kicked off a new wave of big-budget film adaptations. Superhero products could be found in nearly every aisle of every department store and supermarket. New comic shops were springing up in shopping centers and malls, publishers were seeing their highest sales figures in years, and new companies were making names for themselves as serious players. And Marvel Comics was the unquestioned big fish in the pool, with their stock booming in the six short months since they'd gone public, and an unparalleled creative stable.
But big changes were afoot. In December of 1991, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and Jim Lee, Marvel's three biggest artists, informed publisher Terry Stewart that the company's policies toward talent were unfair, that creators were not being appropriately rewarded for their work, and that they were leaving, effective immediately. In the month thereafter, they joined forces with a few more like-minded artists from Marvel's top-selling titles, worked out a deal with small publisher Malibu Comics for production and distribution, and decided on the title for their new company --- recycling a name that Liefeld had originally intended for an aborted self-publishing venture. On February 1st, 1992, a press release was sent out announcing the formation of Image Comics.