Thespawnarmy

Review for Spawn #1

“Questions”

Story, Pencils and Inks: Todd McFarlane

Letters: Tom Orzechowski

Colors: Steve Oliff

Editor: Wanda Kolomyjec

Recap:

The book starts with the character of Spawn being introduced and we quickly start to get some flashbacks covering the death and funeral services for Lt. Colonel Al Simmons (Spawn) of the US Marine Corps.   And we also learn about Wanda Blake, widow of the late Al Simmons and we get all this information from what appears to be TV reporters.

After the reporter coverage we learn that Al remembers dying and that someone he knew and trusted turned on him but that the details are very fuzzy at this point in time.  We also quickly learn that Al apparently made some kind of deal with someone or something and that he came back for “her”.

Two detectives are introduced with them investigating a murder where a victim’s heart was removed.  The one detective is pretty fat and clearly enjoys food while the other detective is much smaller and leaner and is called “Twitch”.  The murder victim was a hitman and this is the third hitman found dead in a two day period.

Spawn’s big moment in this first issue comes when he saves a woman from being raped by several thugs in a street.  The street thugs start talking crap to Spawn and Spawn quickly calls one of the thugs “Fat Boy” and quickly defeats the thugs which not only shows that he is a force to be reckoned with but also proves that he has some heroic qualities.

After the big fight Al gets some memories back of his funeral and wife but he doesn’t piece together that the woman in his funeral flashback was his wife, Wanda.  He also starts to ponder the obvious which is how does he have memories of his own funeral?  Soon after the flashback sequence Al wakes up and we move to news coverage again discussing the hitman murders.

At this point Spawn takes off his hood and realizes how ugly and deformed he is but in a big revelation he pieces together that the woman from the funeral flashback was indeed his wife.

We move back to the detectives who are at their police precinct discussing their hitman death case.  With some witty dialogue one has to think early on that Twitch is a pretty funny guy as he suggests the fat detective must be dieting since he’s only had 13 doughnuts that day.

The issue closes with a demon or devil of some sort being shown.

My Thoughts:

This first issue was a strong introduction.  Some argue that Todd McFarlane tried to stuff too much in his early issues of Spawn but I think the exact opposite.  I have no problem with getting more story as long as you can follow it and the art tells the story properly with reasonable pacing.  In a nutshell I think it was a very serviceable story with good pacing and fantastic colors but I think the fat detectives name should have been revealed.  One thing that I really liked in this first issue was using the newscasters to help move the story along by giving us some outside insight.  I also find it very interesting that early on the Spawn series the book was edited by Todd’s wife, Wanda Kolomyjec.  As far as the art goes, it was a little “sketchy” but I mean that in a good way.  Obviously Todd is known for having a bit of a “sketchy” style and personally I really like that and it works fantastic for a darker character like Spawn.

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being dreadful and 10 being perfect I give this first issue a rating of 7.  First issues tend to have a lot of problems and this first issue avoided many of those problems proving to be rock solid.

Reviewed by: Nightcrawler