Books like Spawn Collection, Vol. 1

Spawn! Spawn! Spawn!I remember reading this exact collection about ten years ago. I really enjoyed it then and while time and experience have left me increasingly jaded, cynical, and uncompromisingly closed-minded there’s still a whole lot to find positive about Spawn in the here and now. While certainly not at the Olympian level of say Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns, Todd McFarlane’s nightmare world fantasy creation still has a lot going for it and definitely deserves the accolade: seminal. Sure, not all is glittering gold but varnish still feels fresh (almost) thirty years down the road.A lot of good can be said of character development so let’s start there. Much like my beloved Punisher (only Ennis/Aaron runs plz), even though we’re thrust into the sequentially illustrated world of the ostensibly otherworldly realm of the comic, Frank Castle and his hell-spawned counterpart both retain a particularly visceral high level of believability. Even from underneath the opaque cowl of this anti-anti hero, Al Simmons can be seen to exhibit a strong sense of verisimilitude via expertly drawn illustrations of his face. Eliciting sympathy (and hopefully a dash of empathy) we are able to connect to his fully human side as shades of betrayal, vengeance, anger, and a whole host of emotions riddle their way across the pages.Equally well developed characters which mostly feature ancillaries including: Simmons’ ex-wife Wanda, her new husband Terri, the bumbling detectives Sam and Twitch, and many more do a stupendous job to flesh out the world that McFarlane has built. Toss in a highly detailed reduplication of the New York cityscape and the story gets even more bodied. Only bogged down by verbose verbiage and duly (un-)necessary repetitions (“Hey! We gotta sell more comics,” they say) most everything clicks overall.The action is great. And the dialogue, while a little underwhelming at times, generally moves the story along at a solid pace. So even with the occasional pitfalls and minor detriments that haven’t quite held up so well, McFarlane has crafted a story that feels sturdily grown from extant sources as well as his own (surprisingly thoughtful) original concoctions.Did I mention that Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Neil Gaiman (well not this collection due to a little copyright snare) all showed up on this too? While not their best works, still intriguing contributions to the Spawn mythos have been made.Overall: still a worthy read almost three decades down the road.