Batman and Spawn haven't crossed paths in the comic books since two intercompany crossover titles between DC and Image Comics in 1994. While both of these classic stories are being compiled together and released by DC in November, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and longtime Spawn and Batman artist Greg Capullo are teaming up for a new crossover this December. Batman Spawn #1 has the Dark Knight and Hellspawn in Gotham City contending with the fearsome Court of Owls as the secret society targets Al Simmons to further their nefarious agenda.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, McFarlane and Capullo explained what makes now the right time for Spawn and Batman to meet again. The pair shared the personal appeal of Batman to each of them and how the two heroes will interact as they face a common threat in the upcoming series.
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5)
CBR: It's been a long time since we've seen Spawn and Batman mix it up. What made now the perfect time for them to cross paths again?
Greg Capullo: This is not the perfect time. The perfect time was in 2006 when Todd and I announced it in San Diego. That was the original perfect time. [laughs]
Todd McFarlane: I've been in comic books and toys for a long time, and I think people overthink stuff. We haven't evolved as human beings a lot, so the things that tickled the fancy of people 20 years ago will still tickle the fancy of people today. It just has to have the right components to it. On the comic book front, we remember the books that we collected when we were 15, 16, or whatever. We were caught up in the heyday of comic books being awesome, not because they were awesome at that moment but because we were involved in it so deeply [and] personally that it was awesome for us.
Whoever is now 16-17 is the new Greg and Todd, and the new event comes out, and the new Batman Spawn will be one of those events that they're collecting. You can come out with cool event projects all day as long as it's a quality product. Every day is a good day for a good movie, song, or comic; there's never a bad day if it's good.
Capullo: And this one will be very good! [laughs]
Todd, you've worked on Batman before in "Year Two," along with all of McFarlane Toys' Batman figures. Greg, you've been drawing Batman since at least 2011. What is the appeal of the Dark Knight to both of you as storytellers and artists?
Capullo: My mother had a drawing of Batman I did when I was a four-year-old influenced by the TV show. Batman is just part of our culture. He gets inside of your head at a very young age through cartoons, toys, and live-action. He's just the coolest character, that's why he's so beloved around the world. It's easy to like Batman. As an adult, being able to put into words what I find appealing about that character is that if anybody could have an excuse to be a complete and utter failure in life, it could've been Bruce Wayne. Seeing his parents get murdered could've been an easy excuse [for] why he could've become an addict or whatever.
Everybody in life has crossroads and opportunities, and the easiest road is to be the victim and go, "I'm this way because of this." But you always have the choice to become the victor and champion out those bad circumstances, and that's what Bruce Wayne did. In my own personal life, I can relate to that in some respects, and I think many people can, too. I think that's what he symbolizes, and he symbolizes that for me. To take something that's horrible, and instead of laying down and dying, he is self-determined to win. That indomitable spirit that he has, no matter what situation he's in or how hopeless it seems, he never ever has a give-up attitude. It's just to fight the whole through until the bitter end.
McFarlane: Visually, he's striking, with the cape flaring like wings; Superman doesn't quite do that. He's visually interesting to get into, and as artists, we're always looking for fun ways to draw things, and he's super fun to draw. On the story end of it for me, I somehow relate to a dude who just comes home from work and doesn't want to date girls [or] drive a sports car. He just wants to sit alone at home until it's two in the morning. He just waits until it's two in the morning because that's when it's the darkest, and then he turns and says, "Get me the costume. I'm going to go scare the shit out of them. I'm going to go out there and scare them." They're continually out there scaring us, trying to make us feel bad, with the bad guys putting their fucking evil on us. He just goes, "No, I'm going to put it back on them." It's cool, and I relate to that guy.
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5)
If Batman will strike fear into a superstitious and cowardly lot, Spawn will just put them in the ground, and neither hero is known for playing nice. How will they interact this time around?
McFarlane: They don't have to be the same. I'd say, in all my many conversations with Greg over the decades, that I think we've both a little bit of Bruce Wayne and Al Simmons in us. We try to be reasonable, solve problems, and get rid of the shit around us, but we'll only ask so many times. Batman goes, "I'll solve this and make sure they never do it again," and there are other times when the bully just needs to be punched back in the face. That's the only language they understand. I've gotten heated in conversations plenty of times, and Greg's got it in his blood because he's Italian -- his is authentic! [laughs]
It's fairly easy for us to show a guy [getting] emotional and [crossing] a line from time to time because we would. I would say, on some level, it's Al Simmons' Achilles' heel, that he can't control himself. He's not as mature and sophisticated a thinker as Bruce Wayne, and we're going to be touching on that in some of their conversations.
You mentioned first talking about this team-up in 2006. What didn't make it work then, and what makes it work now?
Capullo: Well, we stopped talking about it for a few years, but yeah. [laughs]
McFarlane: It somehow didn't get off the ground and didn't work. I would argue that it will work better now because, back then, that was pre-Greg as a Batman artist. I've said this before... Greg is the greatest Spawn artist in the run of the book, and I created him, so I think that I get a big vote in that. For many, Greg is the preeminent Batman artist, especially for a new group of collectors, and many would put him in the top three for sure. He's straddled two big characters, and they're the two characters that are going to be in this book, and they're drawn by the same dude.
If you asked me to lay out my perfect scenario for this, that's it. My list [for this] is Greg and then nobody. There are plenty of great artists, that's not a slight on anybody, but it wouldn't have had the impact that I think it'll have. It's why this book will matter because [of] Greg's mark on two characters drawn together, and he made his mark on one of those characters with me, and I'm involved with this, and I've done some stuff with Batman. It keeps going into this infinity loop of us doing it.
Capullo: I agree. Life's about timing. In 2006, it would've been fun and everything, but it wouldn't have had that cool factor that Todd mentioned. I did a decade or more on Spawn, and I did a decade or more on Batman, and now, all these years later, I'm able to do both in one comic and with the guy that I've had the most fun ever working together with, which is Todd. Every time I'm on a panel with Scott Snyder, his eyebrow just starts twitching like mad whenever I say that. [laughs] Back with Todd, it's so fun, comfortable, and easy, and it's like we never miss a beat. After all this time away from each other, we're back to doing what we were always doing.
When we were talking about this, in the beginning, about how we would get this done, Jonathan Glapion has been my inker on Batman forever, and Todd originally said that maybe Jonathan should ink the Batman stuff, and he'd ink the Spawn stuff. I said, "It's not what the fans are going to want. They're going to want what you and I used to always do, which is you write and ink, and I'll draw and bring that back." That, to me, is the winning formula, and he agreed, and it's why we're here. No other writers or inkers are coming in. It'll just be us doing what we've always done whenever we're together, and it feels great.
McFarlane: It's true. Greg and I had a method -- some would call it madness -- when we were working together, and when we jumped on this, we went back to that same method. The original concept to me was Spawn/Batman and Greg/Todd. We didn't really have the story yet, and it didn't matter because if you have those four components, you could've had them all watching daisies grow, and it would've been good because Greg is drawing it. The opening salvo to Greg was asking what he wanted to draw, and whatever he said, I was going to go with it.
Capullo: One of the first things I said was that we should use the Court of Owls, and I could hear him scratching it down on his little pad. [laughs]
McFarlane: If he had the Penguin or the Riddler, we would've done it, whatever he wanted to draw. My theory is that if the artist is drawing what they want and enjoying themselves, it will show on the page and ultimately be better for the reader because we're a visual medium, and it has to look awesome. I didn't care what Greg's answer was, and it was a hell of an answer because originally when we first took the idea [to DC], we took a little bit of the obvious -- though it still could've been cool -- with Spawn/Batman and Joker/Clown, the two jesters in our storyline.
Fast-forward and Greg has co-created dozens and dozens of new ideas for DC, the Court of Owls amongst them. If he had said the Joker, we would've done it, but I'm actually glad he didn't because I don't think there's any lack of Joker material out there. I would argue that there's an abundance of it. Marc Silvestri has his book coming out with Batman and the Joker, and it would've been two heavy events with Batman and the Joker. I thought that this modernizes the story a little bit because the Court of Owls is a newer concept within the mythology of Batman, and it was an idea that worked.
Once [Greg asked for them], I was like, "I better go read what this Court of Owls thing is about!" [laughs] I had no idea! I'm busy and have got my head down doing my own work. I can't worry about my competitors. When Greg told me that they're these characters who have been throughout time, with multiple generations, I was like, "You're saying they've been around for generations, and there are multiple iterations of them? That's just like Spawn! This is going to be easy to dovetail all this together." We've got a group in [Spawn] called the Court of Priests, so I'm going to hint somehow that it's just the Court. It's this universal force. It was easy, and I would argue it would be a little bit harder to figure out how to get them together with the Joker because you don't have these multigenerational mystical powers to go with it.
Capullo: If it's accepted as brilliant, then I had everything to do with it, and if it's a bomb, it was all Todd. [laughs]
McFarlane: Greg doesn't need a lot of info to draw stuff. He never has, and I don't know why anybody would want to give him a lot. The fewer words you give him, the more exciting and surprising he can be on paper, which is cool. There are times when there are specific things you need. When we were going through it, we're just like kids trying to have fun with this book. We hope that we tell a meaningful story in between it, but it's just going to be a cool book that I would've wanted to buy when I was a kid. It's that simple, and hopefully, people will talk about it decades later.
Greg, what was it about having this story involve the Court of Owls other than you introducing them at the start of your Batman run?
Capullo: I just thought it had a lot of potential to make an interesting story with Spawn and Batman here. As Todd pointed out, they've been around for 400 years, under Batman's nose, without his knowledge. That mystique alone makes it something that's very salable, and I knew that if I gave this element to Todd, he'd be able to come up with something cool. Right away, out of the gate, he's got me creating a more fierce and dangerous Talon. I knew that if I gave him something, he'd give me more fun material to work with, and he has.
I posted a little cartoon of Todd doing Batman Spawn, trying to cram all this stuff into a suitcase because that's how much plot Todd is trying to put into this thing. I've drawn 30 pages so far, and there's a lot of fun stuff in those 30 pages. I was talking to Todd the other day on the phone, and he said, after those pages, now's when the fun starts, and it's been nothing but fun already! People are in for a real treat, and everybody loves the Court of Owls. I think it's Scott Snyder's greatest contribution to the Batman mythos that we did together. To now carry forward with Spawn Batman, it's going to be a blast, and everybody's going to love it.
The last time Spawn got down with Batman, he was in New York City. How is he going to react to Gotham City and all its madness and gothic history?
McFarlane: We're now dealing with two characters who are seasoned vets. They've been through so many wars and tribulations that nothing should surprise them anymore. They just know that there's a constant deluge of shit always coming, and they're always trying to minimize the shit. That Spawn travels to a place called Gotham that is as messy, ugly, and broken as the world he came from, he goes, "Of course. This is what happens when you put evil in the hearts of men. They will figure out how to put the stink on anything." For him, it's another situation that is very easy for him to grasp. He's not surprised by it. These are some of the things that are going to come in the dialogue. Batman's going to say that he's got a rogues' gallery, and Spawn will say, "You want to see a rogues' gallery? I've been to Hell! You don't even know the tsunami that could come your way if this gets out of hand. At least most of the guys you're fighting are human. It only gets fucking harder, Bruce."
Some of those conversations are what makes them each a little bit different in their thinking and their humanity, without it being a psychiatric dissertation about both men -- I think I could write that, and it would be fun -- but just pointing out the differences as they get there. They both have to be motivated for reasons that, at least for them, have to make sense personally. Even if it's wrong, they can justify it for themselves. Spawn's going to shake his head and go, "I don't get it -- why you don't kill," and Batman will shake his head and go, "I don't understand why you always have to kill." Without getting heavy-handed with it, that's the demarcation between those two, and we'll touch on some of that without getting too distracted. The fun is just going to be watching Greg draw these two characters going out, having a hell of a romp with the bad guy.
Todd, you mentioned Greg Capullo is the greatest Spawn artist of all time. What moment did you make that realization, and how has it been seeing his art evolve for this book?
McFarlane: I like to take pride that I have a good eye, like a scout, for talent. I could see early in the game that Greg was a talent. Under no circumstances did I know that he would become a hall of fame-er, that he would get where he is now. I had no idea. If I was that clairvoyant, I'd be kicking them all out. Greg became one of those unicorns who I thought was going to go from being good to really damn good, but he blew past all of that. It wasn't any one issue, and as bizarre as this may sound, it wasn't even on his run while he was on Spawn. I've now had 200+ issues post-Greg to see everybody else's interpretations, and I've now got a lot of data in my head to say, given that I've seen all of those interpretations, if I could only go back and do one more issue of Spawn, and then I die, who would I do it with. The answer is always Greg.
Sometimes he's the most confident guy that I've ever met, to the point of being annoying, and other times he doubts himself, and it's always weird. For example, we were talking about doing a two-page spread and knew that the majority of that drawing was going to be Batman and Spawn. We already knew that. Greg was asking what we could do, and we talked about a couple of things, and we got to the classic pose of putting them on top of a building. He was like, "I've seen them on top of a building before," and I was like, "So have I, but what I haven't seen is Greg Capullo's Spawn and Batman at the top of a building on a two-page spread."
Capullo: I have to say, this isn't any lack of confidence. My frustration, as I continue down this game, is that I know that I'm good. I'm just trying to find something different, whatever little thing it can be. DC's always looking for something like that Star Wars poster, and I'm always working it over in my head how I can make it a little bit different. Todd's like, "Just give me the Star Wars poster because that's what the fans want," and I get that, and it's true, but it's just in my nature to try and come up with some other different angle. Sometimes I don't find it, and I have to revert to things like Batman on the building, but that's what keeps me driving and pushing. I never want to just sit back and write the same song again. That only works if you're AC/DC. [laughs]
McFarlane: Some of the things we talk about is what's going to be in the background because we know what's going to be in the foreground. It'll be our two guys and their big capes, and that takes up most of the volume. I would argue that those two guys on one page or a cover is difficult to compose because the capes get in the way. You almost need the two pages so that they can spread their wings and not lose the guy standing next to them. We talk about what else we can put in an image and if there's fun stuff, Easter eggs and teasers, that we can put in there that people might spot to get the internet buzzing.
That's the sausage-making of putting together stories and doing cool comic books and having people get excited. This is like our Woodstock -- for younger people, the creation of Image Comics is almost like folklore, but Greg and I were there, so we're bringing them along to have their party. We're going to tell a story that's meaningful, entertaining, and hits all marks. Under no circumstances am I going to do something that puts me next to Alan Moore -- I understand my skill set. What I think I can do is create 48 pages that will allow Greg Capullo to show off in a way that adds to the story and doesn't take away from the story. What better deal could I want, both from a writer's point-of-view and as an artist myself with a visual point-of-view? Greg is drawing some magnificent pages, but in my brain, the fun is still coming down the pipeline.
Helmed by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo, Batman Spawn #1 goes on sale Dec. 13 from DC Comics.