Todd McFarlane has been promising a lot of good things on the horizon for his fan-favorite creation, Spawn. First, there was talk of finally making the long-rumored film sequel, and now he’s saying there might be a chance that we’ll see a follow-up to the Spawn/Batman crossover at some point down the line.
Published in 1994 when the popularity of Spawn was just beginning to boom, Spawn/Batman featured the combined superstar talents of writer Frank Miller and McFarlane himself on art.
It was a successful series that, because of Batman’s involvement, drew a lot of new readers to what was then a relatively new character.
According to McFarlane: “We had the first one Frank Miller and I did, that did pretty well. Then, years later, we announced another one that I was going to do and Greg Capullo was going to draw.” But that series never came about, and then McFarlane points out that Capullo eventually transitioned from superstar Spawn artist to superstar Batman artist, serving as arguably the most prominent Batman artist of the past few years.
McFarlane claims that another crossover could work because “I think that both of the characters visually fit with each other, and I think that there’s enough character differences that it’s not just the same guy in a different suit.”
A new crossover, if do-able, could be very beneficial to Spawn. The character has not had anything near the same kind of popularity from the early 2000s to the present that he saw during the 1990s. In that era, Spawn dominated the marketplace with toys, video games and even a board game, as well as an Emmy-nominated animated series and feature film.
I’m sure McFarlane and the remaining fans of Spawn would love to see the title hit that level of success again. Another crossover with Batman could be a logical way to try and jumpstart that success.
Given Batman’s recent crossover with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the crossover between the Justice League and the Power Rangers, anything’s possible.