2021 was a great year for Todd McFarlane's Spawn franchise. He expanded the Spawn universe by launching four new comic series: Spawn's Universe, King Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn and The Scorched. In January of this year -- Sean Lewis, Stephen Segovia and Paulo Siqueira's The Scorched #1 sold over 270,000 copies to become the bestselling new team comic book in thirty years. Now, in anticipation of the release of The Scorched #6 -- McFarlane recently unveiled his variant cover for the new issue, the fourth and final of a series of four connecting covers that pay homage to Jim Lee's iconic 1991 X-Men #1 cover.
CBR spoke with McFarlane about his ambitious tribute to Jim Lee and his experience creating connecting covers for the first time in his career. He went on to discuss his opinions on homage covers in general and hinted at some upcoming announcements about the Spawn movie.
CBR: What made Scorched - particularly these four issues - the right title for a Jim Lee homage?
Todd McFarlane: It's the only team book I have. I've never had a team book before that and the homage is based on X-Men which is a group book. I've done other homage covers but usually its single character stuff. Jim is a former partner at Image and he did those cool X-Men covers. At first, I was only going to do the one, and then it came out cool and a couple of people in the office asked when I was going to do the others. So I had already put myself in a corner. I've never done connecting covers period, nonetheless four of them.
Ulises Arreola's colors really help to tie the piece together. How much direction did you give him?
First, he asked if we wanted to go with super simple colors. But what the '90s colors did was make it simplistic and a clean read, so I said "as long as it's a clean read it's ok."
Would you consider making more connecting covers in the future?
I think in theory, connecting covers are fun. But I don't remember them being a thing when I was collecting. So I don't have a big affinity for them. You could argue that wrap-around covers are connecting covers. But even they don't do anything for me because half the art is on the back. To me it should be two different covers, but what are you going to do with that? if you frame both of them, they'll be separated by the frames. I don't know that there are any connecting covers that resonated over time. If you put a gun to my head and said "hey, give me you're five favorite connecting covers," I don't think I could.
When you unveiled the cover for The Scorched #6, you mentioned wanting to "tip your hat to Jim's enormous impact" on the comics industry. As two of the founding members of Image, you two have plenty of history together. Could you talk a little about how Jim's work has impacted you specifically?
I was lucky that I came up in that era when there was a new wave of us coming up and looking at some of the prior generations like John Romita, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and Steve Ditko and Curt Swan over at DC -- the old guard if you will. Then the next wave, John Byrne and George Perez, Art Adams and Michael Golden. They showed us that you can do cool anatomy. Neal Adams was the guy who moved it from the old guard to the new group of people. His impact was so big. He took it from cartoons to anatomy. We were just part of that.
Jim and Whilce Portacio and Greg Capullo -- everybody from that generation was probably looking at the same five or six artists. But what Jim [Lee] brought to the table that I didn't is that he was drawing beautiful people. I was jealous every time I looked at it. he was able to do detail, beautiful people and dynamic storytelling. You put all that together and people will pay attention. I was more flashy but I couldn't draw nearly as well as he could. He was my peer but I was jealous of him.
Over the years, plenty of artists have paid homage to your covers too. Having been on both sides of the process, what makes a good homage/tribute cover?
I think it's if you're actually picking a character that suits what you're doing. I could do a Spawn cover paying tribute to a Batman cover because they are both dark creatures of the night who wear capes. I can make that transition. But without a cape, I don't know if it works. I wouldn't put Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson in a gymnastic pose.
Are there any other artists or even specific covers that you'd like to pay tribute to with a cover?
I don't really plan them in advance that much. Just every now and then, I'll see an image and I'll think it'd be cool to do. I'm sure there are covers that are out there. but the covers that are interesting to me may not resonate with others. If you want to do stuff that the current readership understands you need to do books that have some historical impact -- that we all remember. We all remember the cover to The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen or Spider-Man #1.
How did working on a connected piece, especially one of this scale, impact your art process?
The overall thought in the back of my mind with a big piece is that I actually have to take all of that art and put it all together. That's what I would want up on my wall. Like, if you look at the three connecting covers Brett Booth drew for King Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn and The Scorched -- those three are screaming to be put together into a poster. It looks massive. This cover here, sort of screams the same thing.
How can I put the four of them together in a meaningful way?
Much like Claremont and Lee's X-Men #1, The Scorched #1 set sales records. Does having such a successful issue #1 put any extra pressure on you and the creative team or change the way you all approach the series?
Yes and no. You get out of the gate big and you want to keep as much of that momentum as possible. But I've talked to plenty of creative people and in theory, the easiest book to launch is a #1. We've seen it hundreds of times where there's a rush to #1. That's easy and it works for us. We did it four times last year. They all set some kind of record. I knew we were going to have some success, building off of the Spawn mythology. The bigger question is can you make the book relevant at issue #6 and at issue #12. When I talk to other creators, I tell them that the fun, the challenge the joy isn't getting the first book out; it's issue #12 -- if issue #12 is going and people are still talking about it and your sales are still solid. Can you find a sales floor that is strong enough that you can say "I can now count on those sales."
The next piece is what can we do from time to time to bump those sales up. What if you brought that popular cover artist on to get a pop or what if I rotate a character out of the team or change artists on the interiors? You'll get a pop. But you can't do that every month because it isn't sustainable, especially if you think you're going to be going for years with your title.
Sometimes it happens by accident. We just had one on Spawn #327. I did the Haunt in the Spidey crouch. I didn't do that to get the press out. I did it because it was something fast that I could draw because I had to crank out a cover in a day, so I thought, "what if I put him in a crouch and put a bunch of goo behind him?" It was a way to meet my deadline, but Image called me to bump the book a week so that retailers could order more. The book came out and sales went up around 110 percent because of the cover. It's the same story inside. It's weird to me. it defies logic it doesn't even make sense to me, but cool. You don't get too accustomed or comfortable with bumps. You take it as gravy on your potatoes -- but make sure you enjoy potatoes.
What can you tell fans about what the future has in store for Scorched and the rest of the Spawn franchise?
We have a couple of tricks up our sleeves that we will be unveiling this year. Hopefully at San Diego Comic-Con, so stay tuned on that.
We have a lot of momentum with Spawn #300 and last year's Year of Spawn. And the big push is still going to be a meaningful news release about something happening on the movie. That is what everybody should be waiting for. Folks are buying all four of those books at about the same rate which is interesting. What happens if something big gets announced? All of that's being heavily worked on behind doors at full throttle. To me the big thing for this year and the next is being able to drop the movie news. I feel as confident about it as at any point since I've started the process in Hollywood. it would be a shock if that news doesn't come out this year.
The Scorched #6 is due out on Wednesday, June 1.