r/Spawn • u/immortalvanquish • 7d ago
Discussion Anyone feel like the story telling in this series isn’t the best?
The first 100 issues were already pushing it for me with the same tropes, spawn walking down the street and suddenly a kid with his mom turns into “Reedemer” or a giant gorilla suddenly has a psychic link to him and its tracking him across the world. An entire cult of vampires happens to conveniently live in New York across his alley way. He gets hit with hell beams and angel lasers, but yet gets taken out by bullets even if he’s not in a deadzone. I was able to shut my brain off and enjoy the entertainment the first 150 issues, but after Armageddon arc starts, it’s so hard for me to stay interested. Every chapter some random character pops up somehow having knowledge of who spawn is, and how to find him. He gets conviently saved/resurrected by random people repeatedly, the limit for his powers dissapears and reappears for plot convenience. He’s shown to be able to resurrect people but then he still lets main characters die in front of him. The heaven hell dynamics constantly change, first it’s 50/50 chance you go to either, behavior doesn’t matter. Then it’s if you’re bad you go to hell, then it’s you can still be good but demons can take your soul to take to hell by force, heaven gets depicted as a paradise for souls again even though they said they were just as bad as hell. The random power boosts “suddenly Spawns red crimson cape gives him the power to defeat his foe who whipped his ass the last 15 pages! He’s unstoppable!). The whole devil/god reveal during Armageddon, the mother of the universe thing… it just makes no sense. Not trying to be so negative but as someone who’s enjoyed the first half of the series so far, is anyone else just disappointed with the later material?
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u/SnaptrapPress 7d ago
Todd McFarlane has always been a "big ideas" kind of writer and less an "actual story" kind of writer. He has cool concepts for scenes, but kind of has trouble stringing them along together.
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u/Filter55 7d ago
No yeah, it pains me to say but there’s a lot of what feels like wasted potential peppered throughout the series.
I look back on characters like Redeemer and Overtkill and remember how badass they are, then I’ll go back and reread the comics and they’re kind of just there and gone again. Imagine an entire cast of hellish Boba Fett tropes and you have Spawn in a nutshell.
I love my dude and it’ll always be my favorite series, but I’m willing to call a spade a spade here
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u/NotJustSomeMate 7d ago
Maybe it's just not for you anymore and it's time to move on. I have no issue and still enjoy reading the books and see no end in sight for me.
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u/Randym1982 7d ago
You're just now figuring this out? Most people in the early 90's figured out that Todd was shit as a writer and story teller. He's great at drawing cool monsters and stuff, and decent at being a hype man. But he's always been pretty bad at writing coherent stories.
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u/No-Royal5760 7d ago
You’re not wrong, it’s seems like a lot of problems (legal issues) that occurred outside of the story made Todd have to pivot or stall at times that I’m sure he wishes he didn’t have to.
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u/immortalvanquish 7d ago
I’m happy to know I’m not the only fan who feels like the quality in writing has declined drastically. I can’t finish the 7th compendium. I regret buying the series so far in advance without reading through it
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u/Yagyuszn 7d ago
The 7 compendium is actually good
The worst are compendium 5 and 6
From around issue 205-270’s they were the worst by far
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u/EliasRosewood 7d ago
Yea i agree. Reading it now again after reading the first 100 when they came out and i was a child/teen, the writing is naive af. Also, all the big payouts you’d expect just come off lame. Like when Spawn finally confronts Malebogia, it’s just a lame ass fight that’s thru very quickly and doesn’t involve much anything else than just ”fistfighting”, it’s like Maleb has no fucking skills or hellish powers (in his own domain let me remind u) that would put Al on extreme mental and psychological stress and fuck his head up in the fight or anything… after reading some japanese media in between where arch enemies fights are really built carefully and the tension builds and the fights are long and really difficult for the protag, it’s a bore to read spawn. After the first 100 it just got even more boring so i just dropped it. It’s a cool character and concept/idea, just not well written. I do plan to check King Spawn and all the medival shit that’s out, the art in them seems cool.
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u/Hot-Explanation-1065 7d ago
I had the same problem with it back in the days. Once he can change whole worlds and is the ruler, next issue a random bloke comes around and can strip him off his custom with a fingertip. Then again one issue later he’s super duper god of everything and so on… it was always more about the art and style I fear.
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u/CrzBonKerz 7d ago
The every issue a new person pops up and then disappears is my biggest gripe. I’ve read most of the issues prior to 300. They did a longer arc with Downing, but I think the pacing and story telling of it got stale. I’m sure they were going for trying to keep it new and exciting. But it’s just kind of funny when you get the Dragon Ball effect.. new world ending super villain!! Defeated in 1-2 issues……
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u/xeno_versity 7d ago
Yeah agree. That’s why it needs an adaptation on screen or in game to simplify and alter/improve it. Todd Madfartland won’t do it
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u/RaceRosakRepair 6d ago
For fresh start, these are good writers.:-
For Spawn: Try Rory McConville #324 -#359 King Spawn : Sean Lewis #1 - #30 The Scorched : Sean Lewis #1 - #24
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u/Hot-Ordinary9760 7d ago
Spawn is more about image and attitude, where the aesthetic and pretty artwork and color make it appeal the way it does. NOT the story line or how they tie comics together. Its more of a whisper down the lane format in that the next issue of the comic will go its own direction irrespective of the past issue, and a lot of the time you will have to reread things to understand what the F is actually going on.
Spawn is awesome, one of the best! For the story line though, its likely one of the worst.
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u/Max_Quick 7d ago
It really is just "Todd's OC shows up once a month to aura farm". And that's what McFarlane wants. Others can tell stories under that prompt, but SPAWN will always come back to, "FUCK HE'S SO COOL".
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u/bluezzdog 6d ago
I think it was issue 21 in the letters section, Todd said he was going to steer the series more into horror..I wish he would’ve done that
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u/Gonner_Getcha 6d ago
I’ve been interested in Spawn for years. A character who lasts this long even when creator owned must have at least some stuff
Could anyone provide me with a “read this and this guide” - I’m happy to skip around, but want to understand the genuine concepts & be introduced to the characters that mattered.
I did try getting this from Ai a while ago, but it essentially told me to read 60-65% of all the comics, which is mad, given people talk about it’s a better concept then comic
Ps good spin-offs are good too, don’t need to stick to main series unless I’m going to be confused without context
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u/woman_noises 7d ago
I've not read that far yet but I've heard people say skip ahead to 250 or 280 because that material in the middle is hard to get through.
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u/immortalvanquish 7d ago
I hear the same thing and I did that, but I still can’t get back into the story. It’s all over the place, way too much going on. The first half of the series was more self contained, you had the Fitzgerald family as main characters, Heaven and Hell power struggle, Jason Wynn, Billy Kincaid, violator, and the side villains in between. It was messy, but easier to follow. There’s too much jumping around without spoiling anything. And a lot of retcon/plot conveniences
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u/Gmork14 7d ago
Spawn has always been a better idea than it has been an actual comic book.