Todd McFarlane is a popular Canadian screenwritercomics and artist. He is also known as a producer and designer of various toys. His main achievement is the creation of the superhero of Spawn, as well as work on the Spider-Man. Thanks to them, MacFarlane became known at the turn of the 80's and 90's. Then he began to work at the company Marvel. Today, his superhero comic books are popular all over the world.
Todd MacFarlane was born in 1961. He was born in the city of Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta.
At the beginning of his career, he actively worked onthe creation of comics. The first work, which he managed to publish, was an additional story in the "Coyote". After some time he was noticed and invited to draw for the company Marvel.
His first serious project was the comic "The Incredible Hulk", which he painted in 1987 and 1988.
1988 was the defining year in Todd's careerMcFarlane. Together with his colleague screenwriter David Michelini, he began work on the comic "Amazing Spider-Man." This story has become one of the most popular in the following decades.
In parallel, the hero of our article created and villain Venom, an alien creature of a virtually liquid form, which periodically resists the Spider-Man.
It was during this period that Todd McFarlane becamesuperstar. This allowed him in 1990 to make a statement that he was ready to start his own project. He called it simply "Spider-Man". The full edition of Todd MacFarlane today is a real rarity.
The first issue was sold in an incredibletwo and a half million copies. A certain role in this was played by the fact that the first issue was published under several different covers. This encouraged collectors and fans to buy all the variations, despite the fact that there was a story under the cover that they had already read.
In the first 16 issues, othercharacters of popular comics. For example, Ghost Rider and Wolverine. After the 16th edition, the series was interrupted due to the fact that McFarlane had a conflict with Danny Fingeret, who became his new editor.
In the conflict, severalartists. As a result, six leading employees left Marvel. Together they founded their own, so-called umbrella company, in which each of them owned a separate publishing house.
The studio, in which the hero of our article worked,released a comic called "Spawn." Todd MacFarlane's books sold more than a million and a half copies. Until now, he remains the first in the number of independent comics.
The "Spawn" series by Todd MacFarlane was published in1992. At first he was in it both a screenwriter and an artist. Later, he attracted to the collaboration of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Dave Sim. He began to actively illustrate their scenarios.
With 21 series, McFarlane returns toindependent work. But in the beginning of the 26th issue a new artist appears, Greg Capullo. Todd himself at this time concentrates on the scenarios. This distribution of responsibilities is maintained up to the 70th issue.
Over time, the text of the comic began to be written by third-party authors. MacFarlane just watched how the main story develops. At the same time, the series remained very popular.
In 2006, the comic was transformed and began to appear under the name "Spawn and Batman". MacFarlane was a screenwriter in this project, and Capullo was an artist. Their creative tandem worked very well.
Starting with the 191 release, the hero of our article returns to the duties of the writer.
His own comic book companynamed Todd McFarlane Productions. She was engaged in the production of spin-off "Spawn". But she did not specialize exclusively in comics, trying to learn how to earn in other areas. For example, selling T-shirts with superheroes. Over time, McFarlane devotes more and more attention to such third-party projects. It is interesting to the consumer and brings good profit.
In 1994, he created a company thatlaunches a line of detailed figures of Spawn. It has redrawn the entire industry, which was previously focused exclusively on children and adolescents. Macfarlane's products also interested adults.
Also, the company began to produce figurinesfamous players of the four most popular sports in America. This is baseball, football, hockey and basketball. Over time, the characters of popular films appeared - "Matrix", "Terminator", "Shrek". And even collectible figurines of rock musicians - Jim Hendrix, Jim Morrison.
In 1996, MacFarlane creates a film studio that produces the film "Spawn." Mark Dippa becomes the director. The main roles were played by John Leguizamo, Michael J. White and Martin Sheen.
Another achievement of the film studio was the animated series "Spawn Todd McFarlane", which won two Emmy awards.
Many note that Spider-Man Todd MacFarlane, like many other comics of the author, is painted in a unique original style.
MacFarlane was inspired by the Japanese manga. Therefore, for him peculiar uncharacteristic arrangement of panels, too frequent use of close-ups, as well as high detail of all that is happening.
There were also many critics of his style, who noted that the artist does not know the human anatomy badly, which is very noticeable. And the order of the arrangement of the panels is not always clear.
Over time, MacFarlane has a large number of imitators. It was his approach to creating comic books that largely determined the development of this genre for many years.
