Spawn #1

Seven artists leave Marvel

By 1990 Todd McFarlane was the hottest artist in comics. Marvel gave him a new Spider-Man title to write and draw, and Spider-Man #1, cover-dated August 1990, sold 2.5 million copies, helped by variant covers aimed at collectors buying more than one. McFarlane, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee each broke Marvel sales records in those years, and each grew restless. McFarlane and Lee felt undervalued at a company that did not pay them when their art was reused on merchandise such as T-shirts.

Liefeld had a deal with Malibu Comics to publish a creator-owned book and began recruiting. He brought in Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino and McFarlane. McFarlane recruited Jim Lee at an auction in New York in December 1991, where Marc Silvestri, also in town, was invited too, and Lee brought in Whilce Portacio. The seven became the founding partners of Image Comics, a publisher where creators kept the copyrights to what they made, unlike the work-for-hire system at Marvel and DC.

The first books carried the Image name but were published through Malibu, which handled administration, production, distribution and marketing. Liefeld's Youngblood #1 came first, in April 1992, with pre-orders of 930,000 copies. McFarlane's Spawn #1 followed in May.

The ballplayer who drew

Todd McFarlane was born March 16, 1961, in Calgary, Alberta, the second of three sons. His father worked in the printing business, and the family lived in thirty places between Alberta and California while he was growing up. He taught himself to draw from the comics he collected, admiring John Byrne, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller and George Pérez.

Baseball came first. He attended Eastern Washington University on a baseball scholarship beginning in 1981, but a serious ankle injury in his junior year ended his hopes of playing professionally, and he turned to drawing, working in a comic shop to pay for school.

He created Spawn at 16, spending 'countless hours' perfecting each piece of the costume; a prototype drawing survives from 1977. In 1988 he joined writer David Michelinie on The Amazing Spider-Man with issue #298, where his dynamic web-swinging and enlarged mask eyes made him a star and where he drew the first full appearances of Venom. For Image he pulled Spawn out of his high school portfolio and updated him for the 1990s.

Inside the first issue

Al Simmons was a decorated Marine officer turned government assassin. When his boss, Jason Wynn, tired of his growing conscience, Simmons' friend and partner Chapel was hired to kill him, and Simmons was burned to death and sent to Hell. There he made a deal with the devil Malebolgia: he would serve as a Hellspawn in exchange for seeing his wife, Wanda, one more time. He came back to Earth with a badly burned body and only vague memories, and found that five years had passed and Wanda had married his best friend.

Spawn #1 introduced Simmons as Spawn along with Wanda Blake, Malebolgia, and the detectives Sam and Twitch. The 40-page, $1.95 issue included a pull-out Spawn poster and pin-ups by George Pérez and Dale Keown, and it carried only the second appearance of the Image 'i' logo.

The newsstand edition is the version this page tracks. Copies sent to newsstands and other mainstream outlets carry a standard UPC barcode in the lower left corner of the cover; the far more common direct edition was sold through comic shops. Collector guides describe the direct edition's corner marking differently, so compare a copy against a confirmed newsstand example. The grading census did not separate the two editions as of the published accounts in 2016 and 2021, so no reliable count of graded newsstand copies exists.

Watch for look-alikes. A copy can show a printing defect: a 'color error' copy graded CGC 9.8 Qualified sold at auction in 2021. A collector guide also describes a black-and-white Spawn #1 with a new McFarlane cover, issued in September 1997 as a retailer incentive at one copy for every 50 copies of Spawn #65 ordered. It is a later collectible, not the 1992 first issue.

The height of the boom

Spawn arrived at the peak of a speculator boom, when buyers hunted for the next hot first issue. The first issue sold 1.7 million copies; as of 2007 that remained a record for an independent comic book. A 2016 analysis that cited an industry sales researcher said only that total sales of Spawn #1 very likely topped a million, so the exact figure is less settled than the famous number suggests.

Image changed the business almost overnight. Within months Malibu held nearly 10 percent of the North American comics market thanks to Image, briefly topping DC. Image left Malibu in early 1993 to publish on its own. Its books were also famously late: every Image comic scheduled for the first quarter of 1993 shipped late, and Spawn #21 reached stores before #19 and #20.

Stung by criticism of his writing, McFarlane hired Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave Sim and Frank Miller to write issues #8 through #11. Gaiman's issue #9 introduced Angela, Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn, and their ownership became a legal fight: Gaiman sued in 2002, a jury ruled unanimously in his favor, the judgment was upheld on appeal in 2004, and the two settled in 2012, with Gaiman later selling Angela to Marvel.

The character spread fast. McFarlane founded a toy company in 1994 that sold more than 2.2 million Spawn figures in three months. A live-action film starring Michael Jai White, one of the first African American actors to play a major comic book superhero, opened August 1, 1997, and grossed $87.9 million worldwide against a $40 million to $45 million budget. The HBO animated series Todd McFarlane's Spawn won Emmy Awards in 1998 and 1999.

Why the barcode matters

With more than a million copies printed, a direct-edition Spawn #1 is one of the most common keys in the hobby, and the market treats it that way. A January 2021 account counted 8,747 copies at CGC 9.8 in the census, with direct and newsstand copies combined, and put direct-edition 9.8s at $120 to $160.

How scarce the newsstand edition is depends on whom you ask. A 2016 collector analysis described newsstand copies as 1 to 2 percent of Image's distribution, the source of the oft-repeated '1 in 100' label. A 2021 analysis called that misinformation, estimating that about 10 percent of 1992 copies, some 200,000, went to newsstands. Neither figure comes from Image, and this page does not settle it.

Prices have moved with that debate. In 2016, signed CGC 9.8 newsstand copies sold for $381 at auction and $525 at a fixed price, against $152.50 and $225 for comparable direct-edition copies. A newsstand 9.8 set a record of $1,226 in October 2020, a sale the 2021 analysis treated as an outlier, followed by sales of $900, $800, $695 and $850. In September 2026 newsstand CGC 9.8 copies sold online for $715 and $774.99.

The highest price found for any copy of the issue belongs to an oddity: a color error copy graded CGC 9.8 Qualified that sold at auction for $8,400 on August 26, 2021.

The longest run

Spawn's sales rose and fell. Pre-release attention for the 1997 film made it the top-selling comic of May 1997, but by May 2009 it had dropped below the top 100 titles sold to comic shops, and orders later fell below 12,000 copies, with issue #243. The approach to issue #300 brought a revival, and #300 made Spawn the longest-running independent comic series.

McFarlane wrote and drew Spawn #301, released October 2, 2019, passing Dave Sim's 300-issue Cerebus as the longest-running creator-owned comics series. Guinness World Records presented him with a certificate on October 5, 2019, at New York Comic Con.

McFarlane is president of Image Comics and runs McFarlane Toys and a film company. A reboot film, King Spawn, was announced in 2017 with McFarlane as director and Jamie Foxx cast in 2018; it remains in development. A King Spawn comic series launched in August 2021, the first of three new ongoing Spawn titles that year.

The numbers

Copies sold

1.7 million (widely reported); a 2016 analysis citing a sales researcher said only that sales very likely topped one million

Newsstand copies

Unknown; published estimates range from 1-2 percent of distribution (about 10,000 copies on a million) to about 10 percent (about 200,000)

CGC census, January 2021

8,747 copies at 9.8, direct and newsstand combined

Cover price and length

$1.95, 40 pages

Series milestone

Issue #301, October 2, 2019: longest-running creator-owned comics series

Timeline

1. Mar 16, 1961

   Todd McFarlane is born in Calgary, Alberta.

2. 1977

   A teenage McFarlane draws a prototype of Spawn.

3. 1988

   McFarlane begins drawing The Amazing Spider-Man with issue #298.

4. Aug 1990

   Spider-Man #1, written and drawn by McFarlane, sells 2.5 million copies.

5. Dec 1991

   McFarlane recruits Jim Lee to the group that becomes Image Comics.

6. Apr 1992

   Image's first book, Youngblood #1, is released with 930,000 pre-orders.

7. May 1992

   Spawn #1 is published and sells a reported 1.7 million copies.

8. 1993

   Image leaves Malibu Comics to publish independently; Neil Gaiman writes Spawn #9.

9. 1994

   McFarlane founds a toy company that sells more than 2.2 million Spawn figures in three months.

10. Aug 1, 1997

    The live-action Spawn film opens; it grosses $87.9 million worldwide.

11. Sep 1997

    A black-and-white Spawn #1 with a new cover is issued as a retailer incentive.

12. 2002

    Gaiman sues McFarlane over the characters from Spawn #9.

13. 2004

    An appeals court upholds the judgment for Gaiman.

14. 2012

    McFarlane and Gaiman settle; Gaiman receives full ownership of Angela.

15. 2016

    Signed CGC 9.8 newsstand copies sell for $381 at auction and $525 at a fixed price.

16. Oct 2, 2019

    Spawn #301 is released, making Spawn the longest-running creator-owned comics series.

17. Oct 5, 2019

    McFarlane receives a Guinness World Records certificate at New York Comic Con.

18. Oct 2020

    A newsstand CGC 9.8 sets a record at $1,226.

19. Jan 2021

    The CGC census counts 8,747 copies at 9.8, both editions combined.

20. Aug 26, 2021

    A color error copy graded CGC 9.8 Qualified sells at auction for $8,400.

The world in 1992

• Apr 6, 1992

  Microsoft releases Windows 3.1.

• Apr 29, 1992

  The acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King sets off the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

• May 16, 1992

  The space shuttle Endeavour lands safely after its maiden voyage.

• May 19, 1992

  Vice President Dan Quayle gives his 'Murphy Brown' speech in San Francisco.

• May 22, 1992

  Johnny Carson retires as host of The Tonight Show after 30 years.

• Jun 24, 1992

  The Supreme Court decides Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

• Jul 1992

  R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series is first published.

Price record

A realized private sale is a completed transaction outside an auction room. The amount is what changed hands on the date shown. Private sales are reported less consistently than auction results, so a single comparable carries less weight than a run of them.

By reference price, Spawn #1 is number 73 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (30 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• McFarlane created Spawn at 16; a prototype drawing survives from 1977.
• McFarlane recruited Jim Lee to Image at an auction in New York in December 1991.
• Spawn #21 shipped before issues #19 and #20 during Image's early deadline troubles.
• Neil Gaiman wrote Spawn #9 and won a lawsuit over the characters he created there; he later sold Angela to Marvel.
• Spawn's civilian name comes from a real Al Simmons, a former friend and employee of McFarlane's.
• The only difference between the common and the scarce Spawn #1 is a barcode on the cover.