Spawn, Book 1 Paperback – January 1, 1998

Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld and their merry band of inkers and scribblers moved on from the publishing slaughterhouse of Marvel Comics to form their own brand of magic in Image. Soon, along with Marvel and DC, they became legion. Too many years had passed with artists treated badly, raped of thier work and paid a pittance for their scemes and visions. So says Frank Miller in the foreward to this first glimpse of the Spawn comic phenomenon.Enter Image Comics. Enter Todd McFarlane. Enter Spawn.The Empire is made.Spawn starts off where most comics had not before this time in early '92. Al Simmons, an ex-paramilitary assassin, hired gun, mercenary, etc.... wakes up and finds that he had died and gone to hell and sold his soul to come back to earth to see his wife. Weird. Yeah. Only Al (Spawn) finds out that five years have passed since he died and that his wife Wanda has remaried his best friend and they now have a child together (something Simmons could never do). Ouch. Life sucks. The Devil (Malebolgia) has screwed him bigtime! Enter The Violator, an entity and emissary of Malebolgia's, hiding his truly hideous demonic form behind the guise of a short, fat, disguting clown. Really weird.Spawn works on levels that Marvel and DC couldn't or wouldn't touch at the time. More adult in its themes. More skin. More violence. More vulgarity (without outright profanity). Issues illustrated and discussed in Spawn were darker and more relevant than anything that was going on in the big publishers comic collections. Corruption and greed, murder, rape and despair....What McFarlane did in the creation of Image and Spawn was giving the artists and writers back their pride and their rights to make a profit on their own creations and move away from the tired characters that Marvel had been toting around for decades. What he did with Spawn was create a anti-hero/vigilante Hellspawn kick-ass comic legend. Sure it got tired as it drug on, but the begining was fresh. Dark. Deep.Dig it.

Spawn isn't about being the typical super-hero to look up to. He is much more representative of a true person, and therefore much more realistic. We all have a darker side, and society teaches us to hide from it. Only if we pull it out into the light and examine it for what it is can we truely deal with it. That's what Spawn is. If we continue to hide our dark sides from everyone, including ourselves they will build up and take us over eventually. Super-heroes such as Superman make it seem like if you even have an impure thought, let alone commit an act that isn't the right thing to do, then you must be evil. Ppl then compare themselves to these characters. Some ppl feel guilty for not measuring up to these standards. I think that is also one of the major problems of many major religions.

Spawn got old, pretty quickly, but was ok at the start. I was never a fan of McFarlane, so probably part of the problem right there. It does have going for it the fact that that Spawn is not your corn fed white boy, mid-American billionaire playboy, or other such type of character, however. Even if they did burn the crap out of him in hell.

If you're going to read any Spawn, read this and nothing else. The very very beginning shows promise -- if the art is cleaned up a little and the coloring made less garish, then this could have become interesting. Needless to say it didn't. It breaks my heart to see people talking such great thing about Spawn like it's great literature. Go read A CONTRACT WITH GOD, WATCHMEN, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, MAUS, DAVID BORING, JIMMY CORRIGAN THE SMARTEST KID ON EARTH, and most importantly UNDERSTANDING COMICS. Then get your money away from Todd McFarlane's new clothes and read some real comics literature.

I like the book and it was in fine condition. It also showed up when it was supposed to which is always nice. check out crimson orchid band! [...]

I thought that the book entitled "Spawn" was a very good book. It combined all the necessary tools you need to make it a good book. It combined action, suspense, and drama all into one. Overall, of course, it had some funny moments and some sick parts that I didn't care for. But never the less, I still enjoyed the book immensely. The author is Rob MacGregor and he has written other books before that are good, also. In the book Spawn, the author tells about how he was sent to hell and returned again to earth to destroy Jason Wynn who is trying to kill off the world. But if Spawn doesn't kill Jason then the world will cease to exist.

spawn rules and thats that. Im one of his biggest fans. And Todd Mcfarlane is brillant. He has a great figure company. Bottom line buy this book and every other book you find because he rocks!

Great condition and a good price ;-)