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Message: [QUOTE="miguk, post: 66117, member: 1510"] [I]Spawn[/I] is a weird one when it comes to its legacy. It had some good to it, some bad, and some worse. The good: [LIST] [*]The comics industry stepped up its game with printing quality. They were already in the process of switching from analog to digital years beforehand (DC's [I]Doom Patrol[/I] was already digitally drawn before [I]Spawn[/I]), but there was a bigger push for glossy images after Image Comics got big. [*]Figurines got better. Most American action figures were garbage back then. It was more often than not cheap repurposed GI Joes, complete with weapons. (Anyone remember the [I]Street Fighter[/I] figures holding swords and guns?) McFarlane was probably the first company in the US to sell actual figurines instead of mere kids' toys. [*]McFarlane writing [I]Spawn[/I] meant McFarlane not writing [I]Spider-man[/I] or other Marvel series. And he took Rob Liefeld with him, allowing Marvel to turn Deadpool into a better character. [/LIST] The bad: [LIST] [*]Image pushed the idea that [I]artists[/I], not writers, were the backbone of the industry. They put out comics that were so artist-focused that we got several that were "pretty" (in a 90s dark-n'-edgy sense) but had nothing worth reading to go with it. [I]Spawn[/I] was so badly written, some fanmail printed in the back of comics asked McFarlane to hire a writer. (After he did, there was fanmail patting him on the back for finally relenting.) [*]As an aside, I've never liked McFarlane's art style. It's grimy and pessimistic, uglifying everything including the "pretty" stuff. And the cloying way he uses little girls with giant eyes to emo-bait readers makes me sick to my stomach. [*]The early issues wrote it into a hole. Remember the "timer" (or whatever that was)? It had to be written out in order for the series to continue. And the series seemed to hinge way more on its origin story than, say, [I]Batman[/I], to the point that tons of issues were just Al moping in an alley about how much life sucks. It's no wonder McFarlane came close to switching it over to a buddy cop series that just happened to have the mopey guy in a supporting role. [*]McFarlane's bad writing turned the series into mental health hate speech. It's one thing to do cartoony psychopaths like the Joker. McFarlane went above and beyond that, portraying [I]any mental health issue[/I] — from OCD to intellectual disabilities — as a "realistic" source of evil that needed to be stopped via [I]summary execution[/I]. It was utterly disturbing to see so much of abnormal psychology misrepresented just so that Spawn had an excuse to murder people who would have never realistically killed anyone and just needed medical help. [*]Despite improving some merch, it also created some really bad merch. I've never seen anyone insist that [I]Spawn[/I] video games are good. (Try playing [I]Spawn: In The Demon's Hand[/I] without getting a headache from the terrible camera.) [*]The [I]Spawn[/I] movie. [*]The only things I clearly remember from the TV series were a scene of Violator verbally edgelording while ripping his clown-flesh off, an intellectually disabled person being treated like a horror monster, and a scene of a guy rage-****ing a woman in the ***. I don't know which is the worst memory, but I'd rather not have any of them. [/LIST] The worse: [LIST] [*]Prices for comics skyrocketed (and never went back down) as a direct result of the artist-focused mindset. We stepped out of the era of comics being a working class hobby (issues costing less than gum) to comics being a middle class hobby (graphic novels costing more than hardcover novels). Part of that was the new costs from glossy prints, and part of that was the image of comics being collector's items. Spawn was at the forefront of the idea of new comics (rather than old) being valuable investments, and prices went up with that. And that led to... [*]The comics industry nearly died trying to chase the collecting/investment market. Marvel was so wrecked they nearly sold everything to Michael Jackson, and had to sell off the film rights to several series just to keep on going. That, of course, eventually resulted in the Disney buy-out, which hasn't worked perfectly. [*]The "dark n' edgy" nonsense never fully left the industry. We've had to endure [I]Ultimate Marvel[/I], DC's [I]New 52[/I], and Zack Snyder's films. And Image is still doing it, just with a "brighter" fascade. [*]And we're always on the verge of [I]Spawn[/I] getting big again, despite really never changing. McFarlane wants to make a new movie with him as a creative consultant. It might get out of development hell eventually. [/LIST] And honestly, I tried to list some more good to go with the rest of that, but I couldn't really think of anything more. [I]Spawn[/I] would be a footnote in the wave of "nerd cool" in the 90s if it hadn't gone full bull in porcelain shop on the industry. (See how other early Image series like [I]The Maxx[/I], [I]Witchblade[/I], and [I]Youngblood[/I] have been mostly forgotten.) Instead, we have a series that has a ton of nostalgia directed at it partially because it was just that much more visible than other series doing not much else different. And I know Spawn fans aren't going to like hearing me say all this. (For the sake of the forum, at the very least, don't go full Snyder acolyte on me for this, as [I]Spawn[/I] fans are quick to do.) But the question was "What are you all's thoughts", not "please leave your [I]Spawn[/I] praise here." [/QUOTE]

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