Imagine setting Elita-1 to be the Prime just for her arc to be about "she's not worthy" and framing that to be "break the status quo". It's still repackaged misogynistic writing that made itself to be "progressive" toward female characters.
I'm sorry but so far, the fucking narrative still made Optimus Prime, a male character, a worthy Prime and unless Kirkman can prove himself to not be a weirdo toward female characters to actually make Elita Prime later became worthy of the Prime title, I still don't view Elita Prime or even Arcee Magnus as some true break throughs in Transformers stories.
Today in 2005, Michonne made her first appearance, with her sword and chained zombies in tow, in The Walking Dead #19 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard!
Mistigram: though we mostly focus on releasing science fiction-themed art in May, due to the interests of its mastermind, @kirkman, who provided most of its showpieces, there was quite a bit of it in the IGNITE01 collection of multimedia #AtariST #IGS (#InstantGraphicsAndSound) works we shared last year on New Year's Eve. Because scientific progress goes "boink", this one is a tribute to Bill Watterson's beloved #CalvinAndHobbes comic strip.
Holy multiverse, Batman! This early (1993) issue of McFarlane’s Spawn penned by Cerebus creator Dave Sim is nuts! Kind of a fun read in the context of the upcoming Spawn “universe” that McFarlane/Image is launching in the post-issue-#300 landscape. This ish has a lot to say about artists’ ownership of intellectual properties and the hope that Spawn represented in the face of the Big 2′s mechanization of their corner of the industry. (Also, a lot of great, eerie art).
Spawn was coming up on its first full year of publication when this issue hit the newsstands, and McFarlane was celebrating by having some guest writers hop on for a one-off. Gaiman had introduced an angelic huntress Angela in the prior issue (#9) and Frank Miller would write a surely hard-boiled ish #11 after this. But here, Dave Sim in the form of his Cerebus aardvark was to be Spawn’s Vergil through an afterlife of meta-textuality of authorship and the capital-i Industry.
There’s this weird Plato’s Cave-esque metaphor where the creators of famed superheroes from throughout time are held prisoner at the mercy of the Industry because they Sold Out. Or something. It’s sympathetic of course-- as we know, people like Bill Finger (Batman!) had no say in the way that they were left without credit, not to mention control, and an actual finger(s) is pointed at Marvel and DC for controlling and withholding the fate and marketing of properties that shouldn’t belong to them in the first place.
I haven’t read any Cerebus so I can’t speak to that, but I assume this meta, noir tone is commonplace in that book. Spawn up to this point--even in the nightmarishly lucid fantasy romp of Gaiman’s issue-- has been dark, brooding and violent, but not exactly intellectual. A surrealist issue of commentary like this might make us question whether we are to read all of Spawn’s edge-lord grim-dark as actually deep metaphor.
Then again, there’s still some Megadeth-style cheese. Even though the artists, creators and heroes-- which have inspired and paved the way for Spawn and McFarlane-- are all imprisoned, they are still able to blast Spawn full of their magical fourth-world Creativity energy.
There’s enough detail and intention to warrant reading into this metaphor somewhat, and a lot of heart behind the heavier-handed moments too.
It’s a little off-the-rails for me at the very end when some point is made that his daughter who isn’t actually his daughter is proof that Spawn isn’t sold-out. But uh, sure. And here we are a year or so short of three decades later and Spawn is about to have a big push. I would use the term “come-back” but that honestly isn’t right. Indeed, Spawn enjoyed their big 300th issue a year and a half ago and even then it didn’t seem so much a surprise they made the big 300 and more just a confirmation that Spawn was more than just a 90s trend after all.
Thus the issue takes on more resonance in this context than if, say, Spawn had been acquired by DC or Marvel at some point. Ironically maybe, this very issue would never be truly “acquired” by McFarlane himself, given the appearance of Sim’s aardvark. In fact, Sim sold re-drawn versions of this issue just last year (I’ll leave speculation about McFarlane ironically being stingy himself re the ownership of the parts of Spawn’s mythos that other writers like Gaiman brought to the table to others...).
And to be clear, I’m not saying that anyone is out here hyping all 300 issues and 3 decades of Spawn. It was never about telling the most well-written stories. But Spawn and Image Comics as a whole, and everything McFarlane, Jim Lee and Liefeld were trying to do back in the day during their big shift away from the Big 2 is still pretty endearing, and Spawn is emblematic of that pathos. Of course, the creation of Image ended up being less a departure from the Big 2, and instead re-insisted on the importance and autonomy of the Artist and Creator, so that these artists could eventually return to the Big 2 if/when they wanted. It amounted to a bit of a scolding in the end-- if not an important and due one that should continue to be heeded.
Skip ahead a couple decades and a half and Image and Spawn have both stuck around. Hell, Invincible is currently airing on Amazon Prime, an Image property, created by the guy who also launched a little zombie universe that you might have heard of through the very same publisher! Alas Image opened doors for great creators like Rob Kirkman and by so doing became one of the Big’s itself in a way, and I guess that was always the idea.
And so now Spawn is launching a couple extra books for the first time in a while. Just because it can maybe? In the very first issues of Spawn, McFarlane was insisting on Image Comics as its own universe. The Young Bloods and Savage Dragon all kicking around on the same planet. While Grifter has wound up in the clutches of Gotham recently though (a new trophy for DC colonialism), perhaps Spawn itself has always been enough to sustain his own universe-- no forced, nonsensical Walking Dead or Invincible cameos needed.
And by surviving into the 2020s, Spawn can prove that it was more than just the launch-pad for a franchise of (admittedly excellent) toys. And if naysayers say that a little too much of the 90s itself, hanging like an albatross on Spawn’s shoulder, would be an issue, well, they’re not wrong. The dude still evokes hair metal and speed-metal/thrash alike. Al Simmons reeks of cliche anti-hero power-fantasy and edgy, adolescent machismo, not to mention the actual whiff of molten slices of pizza at scuzzy after-school arcades, amid endless flashing neon screens of side-scrolling beat-em-up’s. [early ‘90′s].
But doesn’t the entire genre have the ghost of the Golden and Silver age haunting its every step? The Old Gods still loom so large, and likely always will. Our current stable of mainstream heroism pulls from the 30s through the 60s basically. Fantasies and fables of the Greatest and Lost Generations through to the Boomers. So, with that being the case, then I suppose Spawn can be the first classic “Bronze age" anti-hero main-stay, a gen-x product if there ever was one. And if you ask me, he made the Hall of Fame in record time.
I see Kirkman has a new comic series out. And for me, it’s a flat out no. I’ll never read any of Kirkman’s works again. Not after what he did to the Walking Dead story, characters, and it’s fans, ending it in a punk-ass ‘toss this shit in the garbage’ manner. It was insulting to long-term readers. I don’t get people who are like ‘oh it’s ok, it had to end sometime.’ Yeah bro, but it didn’t have to end like that. Sure, my Negan lived at the end but this is coming from the same guy that would’ve just killed him for no fucking reason and only the fucking artist saved him. (Thanks, Charlie) Rick died for no reason too, just to maintain the ‘promise’ Kirkface made of him not surviving to the end. Nah, I feel way too burned by this writer to invest in any more of their works. And I believe in a writer writing their story as they see fit, but as a reader it doesn’t mean I have to continue reading.
