HBO’s ‘Spawn’ Remains an All-Timer Comic Book Adaptation
Like many growing up in the ’90s, I was a huge Spawn kid. So were my friends. We read the comics religiously and passed them between each other to the point that nobody could really remember to whom which issue belonged. We played with the toys, which were everywhere. They were booming at the time. I had a Spawn action figure before I even really knew what Spawn was, and by the time I was a fan with my own pretty decent collection, I was still jealous of friends who seemed to have everything from the Spawnmobile to the Violator Monster Rig — things that notably appear absolutely nowhere in the comics themselves. We watched the movie, which for all its faults was absolutely mind-blowing back then, being a kid at that specific moment in time, to see those characters brought to life on the big screen. Of course, it had its merits, too. The production design and practical FX in that film rarely ever get their due. I even had the unfortunately lackluster video game for PlayStation, and my friends and I put in more hours on that game than most people would think possible. And then, on weekends, if we caught an episode coming on and managed to stay up late enough, we would watch the animated series.
After all these years, that is the thing that still fascinates me most about the HBO show. Spawn always had an edge to it, and leaned much further into that as it went along, pushing boundaries until it became an outright horror comic. But at first, it was kind of always geared towards kids. There was an edginess, a sense of “this ain’t your daddy’s comic book” but even that grit was marketed directly to kids and emblematic of almost every comic at the time, even at Marvel and DC. The early issues felt designed to be a kid’s first stepping stone into the world of edgy adult comics and it bridged that gap perfectly. The toys were obviously aimed at children, though much like the comics themselves, that focus lessened drastically over time.
The movie had an R-rated director’s cut once it hit home video, but it was at its core a PG-13 blockbuster just like any other superhero movie of its era. With all of that in mind it is absolutely fascinating to think that the one thing that was never intended for or marketed to children at all was the cartoon. Adult animation was nothing new at the time, of course, but it was for so-called “superhero” shows. Other edgy Image comics like Wild C.A.T.s and Savage Dragon had gotten the animated series treatment as well, but theirs aired on Saturday mornings. Spawn aired on premium cable, on HBO, at midnight.
Those things made all the difference, because it allowed for the animated Spawn to get away with things that neither the movie nor even the comics could. That’s not to say that the cartoon is only good because it’s edgy for the sake of being edgy, that’s not true at all. But it absolutely did benefit from that lack of restrictions. This series is the quintessential Spawn adaptation, In fact, it very well may be the quintessential Spawn story, period, and I do not say that as one of those “you only read Spawn for the art,” people. I read that comic religiously growing up and was very moved by the story, to the point that I found it hard to keep going past the hundredth issue because I felt and still feel that those first hundred issues tell such a cohesive, satisfactory story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
At the same time, it was a comic that absolutely evolved as it went, in some truly interesting ways. Spawn tells the story of Al Simmons, a soldier who was double crossed and sent to Hell, where he made a deal to lead the devil Malebogia’s army in the war against Heaven if he could see his wife one final time, only to be sent back to Earth five years later in the form of Spawn with no memory of who he was or the deal he had made. Like the comics, the show picks up after Spawn’s return to Earth, and we are led to piece the character’s backstory together alongside him.
The early issues were very much a harder-edged superhero comic, establishing villains like Violator, Overtkill and (at the time) Angela, not to mention monster-hero allies like Tremor and crime boss Tony Twist, a much sleazier and more inept version of the Kingpin. The middle batch of issues became almost more of a political thriller, as Jason Wynn rose to power and good people like Terry Fitzgerald and the cops Sam and Twitch were repeatedly caught in the crosshairs of elaborate cover ups and conspiracies. By the time the book hit its home stretch, headed toward the endgame of issue #100, it finally reached its true form as a full-blown horror comic. Spawn’s suit was barely visible at all anymore by that point. He was a scarlet silhouette, wrapped in his red cloak, everything else but his glowing green eyes in shadow. These are generalizations, of course, but that was absolutely the overall evolution of those first hundred issues of the story that defined their first, second, and third act.
The great thing about the Spawn animated series is that it was able to go back and retell some of the classic stories and moments from those early issues, while also infusing them with the sensibilities of where the comics were at the time the series was made. In the first season, Spawn fights Violator and Overtkill. Tony Twist and the mob are prominently featured in the story. It’s the only season where Spawn’s costume is really shown in full.
All of those action elements from the early issues of the comic are in play, but it but it brings in the mood and tone from the later issues as well. There’s a whole political plot revolving around child killer Billy Kincaid, here reimagined as the son of a United States senator who is paying to keep Billy’s murders completely covered up. Spawn is still very much depicted in shadow, more closely resembling the comics in the later issues, with his costume glimpsed sparingly. In the second and third seasons, his costume is barely visible at all. The fights with Violator and Overtkill are staged much more like horror films than their first encounters in the comics.
The Violator fight in particular is exceptional. They fight on the roof of an abandoned church, with the demon hissing and disappearing in the flash of Spawn’s gunfire, his clawed hands reaching up through the roof to grab Spawn’s ankles and pull him down into the church, a classic horror tactic. Violator even speaks in an unsettling telepathic whisper, broadcasting directly into Spawn’s mind. This scene is the only real showdown with Violator in the series, but it is so effective that it could not be replicated, so that’s probably for the better. Its narrative purpose is clear: this is Clown/VIolator showing what he could do to Spawn, what he could be, if he really wanted. It’s great as a one and done fight, with that in mind.
The animated depiction of Violator also manages to highlight Clown and Violator as drastically different sides of the same coin. Clown is basically all of humanity’s worst traits, unfiltered. He’s gross, vile, utterly lacking in empathy and almost oppressively crude. When he sheds that skin and becomes Violator, his natural state, there is absolutely nothing recognizably human at all, making it clear that Clown is not just a character Violator is playing whilst disguised in a human skin: it’s what he thinks of humanity, in general.
The second season of Spawn embodies the political thriller of the “second act” of the ’90s comics. Spawn’s history with Chapel, the sociopathic former friend and colleague who assassinated Al Simmons on the order of Jason Wynn, in more detail. Al’s former best friend Terry begins to uncover the truth about Wynn’s many, many crimes and coverups and suddenly finds himself with an enormous target painted on his back. All of that stuff is completely representative of that whole era of the comics.
As it neared the hundredth issue, the comic series became much more reliant on lore, digging into the history of Hellspawns and their purpose, what it would take to free them, all of those supernatural elements of Heaven and Hell were pushed to the forefront. That is exactly what the third season of the HBO series did. It’s an almost perfect correlation. Granted, it added a highly questionable plot line about Spawn having a baby with Wanda by assuming Terry’s form that was nowhere to be found in the comics, but the season as a whole was much more focused on the supernatural (it even included a vampire) and Spawn’s relationship to Heaven and Hell. While we never got to see Angela past a brief season one cameo, other angels bent on taking Spawn out are central to the plot, and there’s a nice reimagining of Medieval Spawn as well.
Given that each season was short enough to be edited down into a feature-length film, and each of them were, it’s a shame that we didn’t get more of this show. But what we did get was mostly perfect. Sure, I would have liked to see Jason Wynn become the Redeemer, I would have liked to see Tremor, or even to witness Spawn’s climactic showdown with Malebogia in Hell. But that’s not what this show was about. Spawn is incredibly, refreshingly small-scale for an animated comic book adaptation and largely because of that it is a legitimate tonal masterpiece. There are only a small handful of characters for whom I hear a specific actor’s voice whenever I read the comics. I hear Kevin Conroy’s voice when I read Batman. And I hear Keith David’s voice when I read Spawn because of his pitch-perfect vocal performance in this series.
This was a show that had Todd McFarlane himself introducing each episode like the Cryptkeeper, but what followed that intro was always tragic, superbly animated, often horrific and sometimes downright mean. It was a show that perfectly married the high stakes storytelling of the early issues of the comic with the urban gothic mood and EC comics sensibilities that developed later on, and in combining those things, it is as perfect Spawn storytelling as there could simply ever be. It honors and at times outshines the source material, and should be recognized as one of the greatest comic book adaptations we’ve ever seen.
