Todd McFarlane One on One

Our author, Fernando Bueno, got the chance of lifetime, to sit down and interview Todd McFarlane:

Not everyone gets to live their dream and make a living of all things leisure-time like sports, comics, movies, and so on. One person has, however. Todd McFarlane, Spawn creator, founder of Image Comics and McFarlane toys, was kind enough to grant me an interview recently. We talked about his involvement in creating the Halo collectible action figures, his approach to work, and his view on video games.

Todd McFarlane

Fernando Bueno: Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with me, Todd.

Todd McFarlane: No problem.

FB: So tell us, how did you end up here?

TM: Well, I broke into the comic book industry out of college and sort of hit the ground running there. I worked my way up the ladder, working on some big characters like Batman, Spider-Man, and Hulk. From there I started my own comic company, Image Comics, at which point I pulled this comic character named Spawn out of my portfolio that I had since high school and made him sorta the flagship title of my studio. From there, I started to push Spawn up the mountain, if you will.

I decided that I needed to get into other things like TV, movies, toys, and video games. Sometimes I used other companies, and in the case of the toys, I couldn’t find any that would understand what I was trying to do artistically, so I started my own toy company. As time went by with the toy company, I decided that I couldn’t have all my eggs in one basket so I decided to make toys of other stuff. I mean, what happens if people don’t like Spawn after a while? So from there I was able to dive into doing all the sports figures, because, well, I’m a big sports geek. I went to college on a baseball scholarship, y’know. Anyhow, as we began growing the toy company, we started doing sports and comic book [characters], and [taking on] movie licenses, music licenses, and TV licenses. In fact, I think our first video game license might have been Metal Gear Solid 2 a few years ago. That did pretty well for us.

FB: McFarlane Toys has covered a lot of ground!

TM: To me it’s all pop culture. It’s moving the radar across the nation and trying to tap into that.

Choices

A few weeks ago I read something on the interwebs about some Hollywood analysts who were concerned about the release of Grand Theft Auto IV and its potential to siphon attention (and ticket sales) away from the Summer’s first blockbuster, Iron Man. Could a video game really pose that big of a threat to a major motion picture?

This isn’t the first time movie studios have wrung their hands over the release of a video game. The disappointing opening of last Fall’s Heartbreak Kid was partially blamed on the release of Halo 3. While I fail to see the connection there, this time the analysts’ concerns made a lot of sense. After all, both GTA IV and Iron Man were shooting for the same core demographic. Think of those guys waiting outside the Gamestop last Monday night. There’s a good chance you’d see the same crowd lining up for Iron Man on Thursday or Friday night. But would they dutifully show up and plunk down hard cash for tickets when the allure of Liberty City was still so fresh?

Apparently they did…or at least some of them. Iron Man did just fine, clearing more than $100 million(domestically) over the weekend. Could it have done better? Perhaps. Spiderman 3 is still the king of the openers, raking in over $150 million last year on the same weekend. Publicly, the studio will be pleased with Iron Man’s strong opening. But going forward, I’m sure many studios will pay more attention to future juggernaut video game releases.

So what did I do? I bought GTA IV on Tuesday and still managed to see Iron Man on Friday. While I’m not a huge fan of the Iron Man comics, I thought the movie was very good, thanks in large part to Robert Downey Jr. spot-on portrayal of Tony Stark. Really, this is probably the most faithful superhero casting ever…even edging out Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. As for GTA IV, I’m still savoring it. So how did you spend your weekend?