Spawning An Empire

Todd McFarlane is many things to many people. Russell Sheath meets the artist, entrepreneur, music video director, producer, and co-founder of Image Comics...

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Comics is an industry where the title “icon” is bestowed all too readily, but the true test is this: you can simply utter their first name and everyone knows who you are talking about. So there’s Stan, Jack, Frank, Alan... and there’s Todd. There is no doubt that Todd McFarlane is a comic book icon.

McFarlane’s story is well chronicled. A star athlete in college with a professional sports career ahead of him, the Canadianborn McFarlane abandoned baseball for his first major comics work in the early 80's, pencilling Infinity, Inc and Detective Comics for DC. McFarlane soon moved to Marvel and The Incredible Hulk, adding his own stamp to iconic characters and turning heads in the process. Developing a trademark “super-exaggerated” art style that caught the mood of the moment, the emerging artist’s popularity soared after he embarked on a character-redefining run on The Amazing Spider-Man.

McFarlane pencilled and wrote the adjective-less Spider-Man, a brand new title created to showcase his talents in 1990. With some canny (and ruthless) marketing, it sold in unprecedented numbers, but McFarlane began to grow frustrated at what he perceived as editorial interference, which eventually led him to seek independence for himself and his work, away from the growing corporate mentality of the big two publishers.

The birth of Image Comics has become something of a comic book legend. When, in 1991, Marvel’s seven top artists, at the height of their popularity, struck out to form their own company, McFarlane was often heralded as the ringleader of the group.