Todd McFarlane's Spawn has seen more success in the past year than it has in a while, showing that there's a lot of success and relevancy to be had out of the '90s icon. This success has also seen a litany of new spinoff titles launched, including a team book called The Scorched. While it might seem like a mere sales renaissance for a character from a bygone area, there's much more to this than just Spawn.

'90s nostalgia in general in gaining speed, especially in comic books. This trend is seeing more characters from the era regaining prominence, and this is likely more than just a gimmick. It instead reflects a moving away from a similar zeitgeist in the 2000s, and it's just getting started.

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The Success of Spawn and The Scorched Revitalizes the '90s

For much of the 2010s, Spawn was seen as a character whose best days were long behind him. Having sunken on the sales charts eons earlier, the character and his book would only briefly get bits of relevance again whenever creator Todd McFarlane returned to the comic book for some sort of anniversary issue. This hype surrounded the 300th issue, but this time it actually stuck.

Spawn sales are currently through the roof, making what was once a '90s Image Comics relic into a commercial success once again. The same goes for its spinoff titles, which include King SpawnSpawn's UniverseGunslinger Spawn and now The Scorched. The latter has an actual team of hellspawns facing insurmountable threats, giving McFarlane his version of the Justice League, the Avengers and the X-Men. In fact, one of the covers for the book homages the the iconic X-Men #1 from his friend and fellow Image Comics founder Jim Lee. McFarlane has hinted that this is only one of many such covers, most of which will likely draw from the art of the 1990s. The expanded Spawn universe allows those who grew up with the character to experience a shared superhero world that's darker and grittier than the typical Marvel and DC fare, filled with blood, guts, and chains. This is all definitely nostalgic, but Image is not the only publisher getting in on the action.

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'90s Nostalgia Is Alive Throughout the Comic Book Industry

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'90s nostalgia is a big thing throughout all of the comic book industry, especially Marvel and DC. At the House of Ideas, the X-Men are once again the top dogs of their shared universe, all while being somewhat removed from the happenings of other books. This reflects what was going on both at the tail-end of Chris Claremont's iconic run on the title, along with the rest of the '90s' biggest stories, such as Age of Apocalypse. The same goes for Spider-Man, who also has several spinoff books, one of which stars a certain symbiote lethal protector. Venom and Carnage are as ubiquitous as they were back in the proverbial day, and it's fitting that they were both co-created by Image founders. This has left some of the other Marvel families of books, including the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, feeling like also-rans.

The same goes for DC Comics, although it's to a somewhat lesser extent. For one, Wally West is the main Flash again, recreating a status quo that many fans have demanded ever since Barry Allen's return ousted the former Kid Flash from the limelight. Superman has had a sort of "death," resulting in his being replaced by his son as the protector of Earth. Likewise, characters like Bane and even the Azrael Batman are appearing in more and more books, as are Jim Lee's Wildstorm characters. DC has also brought about the long-awaited revival of Milestone Entertainment, a company that released what was arguably some of the best books of the 1990s. DC's Black Label imprint has also seen several great titles published, with many of them being analogous to their iconic Elseworlds imprint that saw prominence three decades ago.

Many of these things would indeed seem to be based in nostalgia, namely a type which is the reverse of what was occurring around 20 years ago. The 2000s saw a rise in Silver Age nostalgia, with Hal Jordan and Barry Allen being revitalized, while Aquaman was retconned to once again having his more familiar Silver Age origin story. Now, instead of yearning for characters and concepts from that period of comics, creators are pulling from their own childhoods, many of which were definitely inspired by the era of an undead Al Simmons and his hellish chains.

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