#639: Todd McFarlane, Legendary Comic Book Artist — How to Make Iconic Art, Reinvent Spider-Man, Live Life on Your Own Terms, and Meet Every Deadline

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Todd McFarlane (@Todd_McFarlane) is an
Emmy- and Grammy-winning director/producer and creator of one of
the world’s best-selling comic books, Spawn. He is best
known to many comic book fans for his work as the artist
on The Amazing Spider-Man, for which he co-created Marvel’s
top villain, Venom.


Todd is the CEO of Todd McFarlane Productions, McFarlane Toys
(one of the US’s top action-figure manufacturers), and McFarlane
Films. He is also a co-founder of Image Comics, which
debuted Spawn in 1992, selling 1.7 million copies of
the first issue. In 1997, Spawn was made into
an Emmy Award-winning animated series on HBO and
a live-action feature film that grossed over $100
million. In 2019, Todd made history with Spawn #301,
earning the Guinness World Record for longest-running
creator-owned superhero comic book series.


Please enjoy!


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[06:40] Baseball.


[12:04] Rejection letters.


[15:57] Compelling storytelling and meeting deadlines.


[19:04] Deadlines pre-Internet vs. deadlines today.


[23:25] How industry status quo led to the founding of Image
Comic Books.


[35:51] The Comics Code and the last straw.


[42:14] The Marvel Dream Team exodus.


[1:00:35] How is Todd’s camel bladder a competitive advantage?


[1:06:23] Career bouncing and double-shifting as a penciler and
inker.


[1:24:36] The happy accident of Venom.


[1:35:28] De-Rockwelling the company icon and inventing
“spaghetti webbing.”


[1:38:53] Bucking the status quo to become the status quo.


[1:42:34] Parting thoughts and a promise for round two.


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