There aren’t many comic crossovers that are truly famous, but Batman/Spawn is one of them. The two heroes have already crossed paths twice in history, and they’re doing it one more time on December 14 with Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo’s Batman/Spawn one-shot. Just as famous as peanut butter and jelly (and nearly as good of a combo), the two heroes are meant for each other visually and thematically.
As far as the story, not much is known just yet — save for it being extra-sized and with Capullo on art and McFarlane handling the inking and writing. Although the story is steeped in mystery, we have seen visuals depicting Batman’s entire rogues gallery, a Joker wearing his face like a mask, and Violator children rushing to him. Likely, Joker needs a whooping, and Capullo and McFarlane are the only ones to adequately deliver it.
I sat down with McFarlane and Capullo earlier this week to get a better sense of why this one-shot needed to happen now as well Capullo’s take on this specific version of Batman. We also discussed their collaboration, whether we’ll get some toys out of the one-shot, and other tidbits. Given McFarlane is sure this will be a comic folks will want CGC graded, retailers should note they have until Sunday, October 23rd to put in their orders.
This is an edited version of the interview. If you’d like to hear even more — including getting a convo around McFarlane’s toy empire and a chat about Violator — make sure to subscribe to the AIPT Comics podcast. The episode will air in the coming weeks.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: One question on a lot of people’s minds is why now?
Greg Capullo: Take it away, Mr. McFarlane!
Todd McFarlane: Why not? The piece of comic book collecting is to keep your blood racing and be enthused with the hobby that you’ve chosen. One of the ways that have proven to be a tried and true method is to, from time to time, have exciting event books come out. And stories. I think this admirably falls into one of those categories that people go like, “Man, I collect superheroes, I like Batman, I like Spawn. I like Greg, I like Todd, they’re gonna get together. I like the Court of Owls!” This is low-hanging fruit if you’re a comic book, superhero comic book collector, right?
Just like, let’s remember what it was like to collect. And these are the kinds of books that we would have collected and would have been first in line to go get.
AIPT: What can you tell us about the character work you’re doing for Bruce Wayne and Al Simmons?
TM: Without getting heavy-handed, because I don’t want this to be some talking head book, although I think, it would be an interesting issue to just have these two gentlemen debate life. I think they see the world different. There are similarities between them. I think I think it’s too easy to say that they’re the same guy because they got long capes, and they come out at night, and they’re brooding.
What’s sort of more interesting is once you get past the similarities, which I think serve them both well, what are the differences? And do the differences matter? And sort of the point, like anything if you have a difference of opinion in your religion and or politics or what sports teams you like, compared to me, if it keeps you happy, what do I care? That’s your life? So Al Simmons has his life, and Bruce Wayne has his. They have their methods of doing stuff, and up to this point, both have worked admirably well for both of them. Just get evil and stop it in its track.
AIPT: Just like you guys do in your daily lives.
TM: <laughs> No we draw.
GC: <laughs> That’s my wife’s duty. To keep me in line.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: Greg, you’ve drawn Batman for many years. When you started drawing Batman full time what were you most excited about drawing when you were drawing that book with Scott Snyder?
GC: The first drawing that I know of that I did, because my mother showed it to me, was a drawing I did of Batman and Robin when I was four years old. It’s been in my blood pretty much my entire life. So when the opportunity came to draw Batman, it was a no-brainer.
I’ll tell you a funny aside though, I always wanted to be a colorful superhero, capes, tights, that kind of artist. But the first break I got was Gore Shriek and then Todd recruited me and I did Spawn which is a dark book and then went even darker with Kirkman’s Haunt. At the time I married my wife with two kids, and the youngest was six, and I can’t share my work with them, with all the entrails everywhere. So I decided I’m gonna go mainstream back to the comic book big two, and see what they give me. And they hooked me up with Scott Snyder, legendary horror writer! I just can’t escape it. It’s a yoke around my neck. I thought it would be just kind of fun, fun superhero stuff. But it ended up being pretty dark stuff with Scott at the helm, but it’s all good man. It just was the greatest experience.
AIPT: Now that you’ve been drawing Batman for so long, what are you finding the most enjoyable to draw now?
GC: First off the more familiar with a character, obviously, the easier it is to just be free with your drawing. Apart from that, not being on the monthly Batman thing. It still looks a lot like Batman, but I feel a little loose. If I want to make the cape a little bit longer, to my liking I’ll do that. I’m going more by those kinds of instincts that feel right for the book that I’m working on. Working with my old friend partner, Tom McFarlane is one of the things that makes it so much fun. We had a lot of fun together for all the years that we worked together and it feels like we’re back in that place doing what we did back then. So very, very cool.
Courtesy of Greg Capullo.
AIPT: I gotta say, I love the purple Cape design that you did, Greg, that was fantastic.
GC: Oh, thanks. You know, it got killed so early. I was pretty disappointed about that. I put a lot of thought into that design. A lot of people want the yellow oval back. Can’t do that. So did the outline around the bat. I want to give a nod to the purple gloves. So I did purple lining of the cape. I tried to give a nod to all these eras. I put all this thought into it and they killed it right away, sons of bitches. I tried to take everything that Scott and I did and encompass it with one costume.
AIPT: What costume are you going with in this one-shot?
GC: More of a traditional. I asked DC, do you have a preferred costume? And so he’s got the trunks, and he’s got your standard issue, yellow belt, and everything looks pretty much the way they’re drawn Batman these days. I do my own thing a little bit with the cowl. I don’t like to put too much personality on it, sort of like my signature.
TM: The thing that I think I’m hoping will be kind of cool for the readers and exciting for the readers is that both those characters, if you’re familiar with Greg’s work on both those characters, both will seem familiar. Greg had to think about there being two big audiences out there. The Spawn audience liked the look of Spawn. When Greg did Batman, he rightfully so came up with another way of visually depicting a guy with a cape who walks around at night. It’s too easy to fall into the same trap.
When looking at the pages, when I get them from Greg, I look at Spawn and I go “Man, the Spawn fans will not be disappointed.” And then I look at the Batman drawings and I go, “The Batman fans will not be disappointed,” because they will both be comfortable because that’s the look that they’re used to.
Greg had a fairly kind of daunting task a little bit to basically blend these two styles, put them on the same page, and not make it look like they’re not compatible. Or on the other hand, which is a lot of artists would fall into the trap that they actually look the same minus the color. They look too similar. Right? It’s got to work on a lot of levels, and one of them is just on the visual part of it, you’re gonna get your cake and eat it too.
Two characters, one artist, but never do you see a big event and the one artist happens to have made his mark on those two characters. It’s fairly unique in its presentation. Because you got one artist that’s really good at one character or what people are comfortable with it, but here they get Greg getting to do his A game on both characters which is fascinating.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: I think you’ve said multiple times that Greg is the greatest Spawn artist ever.
TM: Right.
GC: That is right! <laughs}
AIPT: Greg, are you sick of hearing that?
TM: When I say it, I’m not saying it for Greg’s ego. When I think about a poster of Spawn, it has way, way more influences on what Greg did than what any other artists, including myself, did. To me, Greg made the biggest visual impact that is still lasting, obviously today. For new Batman collectors who weren’t exposed to a lot of Batman artists in the last 40 or 50 years, Greg is their Batman artist. Greg basically has both of these audiences on the page, and hopefully, they won’t be disappointed.
For people who are Marvel addicts, it’s still comic book stuff, right? I mean, what is geeky, cool, fun comic book? The Avengers and Wolverine are your two favorites? It’s hard for me to imagine you’re gonna go. “No, I’m not going to take a look at this book.”
GC: I just want to add this, every time Todd says that I’m the best Spawn artist ever to do Spawn, even despite it being his creation. I always say it’s only because I had more practice. Todd, what did he do like 15 issues? How many issues did I do? Like 40? I don’t even remember. So it’s only because I had more practice than he had.
AIPT: Practice makes perfect.
GC: That’s it!
Jim Lee’s cover to ‘Batman/Spawn’ #1.
Courtesy DC Comics
AIPT: If I were an artist as good as you, Greg, I would be so excited about this book, in part because working with Todd, you’re probably going to get an action figure popping out of this one shot, right? Is there any action figure potential for new creations or anything like that?
GC: I created a new Talon. And I thought “hey, this, this is gonna look good as a toy.” So yeah, I tried to do some that I thought were cool in the comic, but that would make a cool toy too. Then there’s another spoiler-y one, which I can’t say, which I think could make a pretty cool toy as well. There are two strong potentials, yeah.
TM: Besides the event book, I think it’d be kind of fun if one of the characters that are in here busts out that you go, “Oh, man, where’s his origin story!” The one that’s going to get the most expensive when you grade it, and it says the origin story is going to be this book. Not going to be in a Spawn book or in a Batman book. It’s going to be this crossover book.
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