Comic Artist Profile: Todd McFarlane -- Sept. 22, 2010

Known best for the character Spawn, Todd McFarlane has found much success as an artist and entrepreneur in a relatively short amount of time.

Attending Eastern Washington University in the early 1980's, the Canadian born McFarlane hoped to have a profitable career in major league baseball. This proved not to be, suffering a major career ending injury during his junior year. McFarlane, studying graphic art, worked in a local comic book store in Spokane, Washington. It was often here that illustrations of many famous characters in the comic world would be sold as a means to make extra income. Later, McFarlane would the Alberta College of Art and Design continuing to hone his talent, as would soon become the well known name he is today.

McFarlane's first published work was in a 1984 backup story in Epic Comics' Coyote. During a two-year run at D.C.

Comics in the mid 80's, McFarlane illustrated the follow-up to Frank Miller's famous Year One storyline. Shortly thereafter McFarlane left D.C. to join Marvel illustrating characters such as the Incredible Hulk and Wolverine, before starting what is seen as one of the most popular runs of any artists or writers on the Amazing Spider-Man. Working with writer David Micheline in issue #298, the duo introduced a new nemesis for hero Peter Parker.

Eddie Brock, a competing photographer at the Daily Bugle was seen by many as an alternate version of Peter, a "what if" of sorts. During this storyline, Peter is seen largely wearing a new black suit that eventually reveals its alien origins. Rejecting it, Peter returns to his famous original suit while the alien symbiote attaches itself to a vengeful Brock. It was in this run that the now famous villain known as Venom would make his first appearance.

Over the years the character has proven to be so popular that various iterations, spinoffs and ripoffs ensued, some of which turned out to be fairly good.

McFarlane had other plans however, eventually leaving Marvel with a handful other writers and artists. The group set out to form their own independent comic company. Image comics, founded in the early 1990's housed various publishing

houses such as McFarlane's own Todd McFarlane Productions (later retitled as Todd McFarlane Entertainment). The initial issue of McFarlane's Spawn holds the record for 1.7 million initial copies sold, a first for an independent studio.

Over the years as his company has grown, he has had to let other artists and writers work on the Spawn book, and various other works of his. Giving new and upcoming artists a start just like he had many years ago. Producing items in various media such as toys, film, and television McFarlane has been able to make quite the name for himself in a relatively short amount of time. Much of this busy schedule takes a toll naturally, but he often still finds time for the random "guest illustrator" spot on any of the books his company currently produces. He often finds time to illustrate album covers such as the one for the "Follow the Leader" album for the band Korn.

Recently company has put out a new ongoing series about a new tortured superhero, Haunt. First announced in 2007, the ongoing collaboration co-created by McFarlane and Robert Kirkman launched on October 7, 2009. There isn't much word on how it's been doing as of yet. But as with much of what has been released through McFarlane's company, it's likely to have been met with some degree of success.