rascal_father
18-06-2005, 06:55 AM
http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Spawn146.jpg
In speaking with The Arizona Republic (http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0614t-spawn-ON.html), Todd McFarlane talked a lot about comics for a change, discussing the popularity of graphic novels, what a graphic novel is and isn’t, as well as the future of Spawn, both as comics and as film.
In regards to the Spawn comic book, McFarlane said that he’s working to reassert himself back into the title. “I sort of let Spawn the comic book go on autopilot, and we've got issue 150 coming up (146 is on the stands now) and I want to shake things up here so I just had a two-hour conversation with somebody overseas who might come on board in a creative capacity in bringing on a new editor and sort of go in a different direction, I'm sort of saying, ‘Hey it's time to shake the dust off this guy a little bit, and get people excited about the comic book.’ Why? Because the book has been around 150 issues which is a tremendous number for an independent comic, and also we're currently working on the return of Spawn in animation form, and this summer I'll be writing the screenplay for a movie that I'll be directing that I hope I can get started in December or January.”
McFarlane also discussed his career as a creator, and his move to both go it on his own in comics (with Image) as well as diversify into toys and other businesses.
“[I]f I had just remained a comic book artist, my entire living and income would have been completely predicated on the outcome of the industry as a whole, given that the industry as a whole has shrunk dramatically since its heyday in the early 90s, through no fault of my own I'd be making a fraction of what I'm making (now). Even though I could argue that I'm a better artist today than I was back then, why, because I would of put myself at the mercy of that business and I sort of follow the careers of a lot of old-timers and its basically put me in the position to say don't do it, don't let any one thing determine how you're going to do it and how you're going to accomplish at the end of any one day.
"Why? Because I had close buddies who after 25 years of drawing comic books and making a good living they became obsolete and nobody liked their style anymore and they weren't getting a job and that's all they knew and all of a sudden they were just scraping to put food on the table. And you're going wow, there's no pension or retirement plans or anything like that, so you have to take care of yourself because nobody is going to take care of you, so all that's stuff opened my eyes and me go 'Todd make sure you've got other trapdoors to slide down and give yourself other opportunities.' And besides all that on an artistic level as a guy who's proud of his art, if all the eyeballs go away in one medium, to me it's just like as much as I love comic books and that's where I started if the most eyeballs were still in the comic book community I'd still be there, but I'm chasing eyeballs here, I'm showing my art off I don't want to be an elitist, I don't want to be a gallery showing artist that only has 27 people come, like what the hell is that? That's a tour I guess, I want everybody to see my stuff.”
In speaking with The Arizona Republic (http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0614t-spawn-ON.html), Todd McFarlane talked a lot about comics for a change, discussing the popularity of graphic novels, what a graphic novel is and isn’t, as well as the future of Spawn, both as comics and as film.
In regards to the Spawn comic book, McFarlane said that he’s working to reassert himself back into the title. “I sort of let Spawn the comic book go on autopilot, and we've got issue 150 coming up (146 is on the stands now) and I want to shake things up here so I just had a two-hour conversation with somebody overseas who might come on board in a creative capacity in bringing on a new editor and sort of go in a different direction, I'm sort of saying, ‘Hey it's time to shake the dust off this guy a little bit, and get people excited about the comic book.’ Why? Because the book has been around 150 issues which is a tremendous number for an independent comic, and also we're currently working on the return of Spawn in animation form, and this summer I'll be writing the screenplay for a movie that I'll be directing that I hope I can get started in December or January.”
McFarlane also discussed his career as a creator, and his move to both go it on his own in comics (with Image) as well as diversify into toys and other businesses.
“[I]f I had just remained a comic book artist, my entire living and income would have been completely predicated on the outcome of the industry as a whole, given that the industry as a whole has shrunk dramatically since its heyday in the early 90s, through no fault of my own I'd be making a fraction of what I'm making (now). Even though I could argue that I'm a better artist today than I was back then, why, because I would of put myself at the mercy of that business and I sort of follow the careers of a lot of old-timers and its basically put me in the position to say don't do it, don't let any one thing determine how you're going to do it and how you're going to accomplish at the end of any one day.
"Why? Because I had close buddies who after 25 years of drawing comic books and making a good living they became obsolete and nobody liked their style anymore and they weren't getting a job and that's all they knew and all of a sudden they were just scraping to put food on the table. And you're going wow, there's no pension or retirement plans or anything like that, so you have to take care of yourself because nobody is going to take care of you, so all that's stuff opened my eyes and me go 'Todd make sure you've got other trapdoors to slide down and give yourself other opportunities.' And besides all that on an artistic level as a guy who's proud of his art, if all the eyeballs go away in one medium, to me it's just like as much as I love comic books and that's where I started if the most eyeballs were still in the comic book community I'd still be there, but I'm chasing eyeballs here, I'm showing my art off I don't want to be an elitist, I don't want to be a gallery showing artist that only has 27 people come, like what the hell is that? That's a tour I guess, I want everybody to see my stuff.”