March
1 More from McFarlane

The Batman/Spawn announcement dominated the news at the McFarlane panel, though there were some other interesting bits revealed about the comics publishing, toy and entertainment sides of his business.

Sports toys do well for McFarlane, and he has a long list of new figures coming — most interesting to me were the hockey toys, which will include Wayne Gretzky in his New York Rangers uniform and a figure of former coach and longtime CBC commentator Don Cherry. No word on whether he'll have loudmouth action or replaceable plaid jackets.

They're also doing some 3-D classic rock album covers, which allows them to do some kind of toy for bands that have been difficult to get likeness rights for action figures on. McFarlane repeated plans for the "Torso" movie, the new "Spawn" animation, and the live-action "Spawn" film he plans to finance, write, produce and direct himself by the end of the year for less than $10 million. The film was inspired by "Crash," which McFarlane says made a huge impact on him and shows you can make a successful film for less than $10 million. To work, the film and the animation will be darker and more urban than previous versions, with Spawn as the sole fantasy element in the picture. Sam and Twitch, the detectives spun out of Spawn and into their own comics series, has been pitched as a TV series, he says. McFarlane also will be directing a musicvideo for the band Disturbed.

McFarlane says plans are afoot to highlight certain film projects on Spawn.com with trailers and exclusive behind-the-scenes clips on various films. First such film will be "Pathfinder." Upcoming comics projects include "Spawn: Godslayer," by Brian Holguin and reproduced from the pencil art of Jay Anacleto. Collections of old Spawn issues will continue, as will the current manga series and new collections of Brian Michael Bendis' Sam and Twitch run and Ashley Wood's work on Hellspawn.

McFarlane had some fun stories to share at Friday's preview of his retrospective at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in SoHo. One of the more fun stories was the tale of Spider-Man #16, the last issue McFarlane drew for Marvel. In that issue (which was the sideways book that crossed-over with X-Force), the character Shatterstar was fighting Juggernaut, who's indestructible. McFarlane says he felt the sole weakness the character had was the openings in his helmet for his eyes, so Shatterstar's sword found its mark there. The original page (on display in the exhibit; the final is shown at right and you can click for a closer look) showed the sword in Juggernaut's eye with a good amount of bloody splatter. McFarlane says Marvel required the panel be altered because eye injuries violated the Comics Code, a holdover from the days of "you'll put your eye out!" The code allowed stabbing anywhere else on the body and it didn't matter if Juggernaut recovered from the injury a few pages later, the panel had to be change. The same kind of logic held that stabs were fine, but exit wounds were not, which is the reason why in Frank Miller's famous death of Elektra, the panel in which she's killed by Bullseye shows the knife going through her body but not piercing the back of her outfit. McFarlane walked from Marvel after that issue and went on to Image, Spawn and toys. The exhibit runs through May 1.