Todd McFarlane

Todd McFarlane (born March 16, 1961) is a Canadian comic book creator, best known for his work as the artist on The Amazing Spider-Man and as the creator, writer, and artist on the superhero horror-fantasy series Spawn, as well as being the current President and a co-founder of Image Comics.

Todd McFarlane was born on March 16, 1961, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to Bob and Sherlee McFarlane.

He is the second of three sons, which McFarlane says contributed to his competitive streak.

Bob worked in the printing business, which led him to take work where he could find it, and as a result, during McFarlane's childhood, the family lived in thirty different places from Alberta to California.

McFarlane began drawing as a hobby at an early age, and developed an interest in comics, acquiring as many as he could, and learning to draw from them.

He was a fan of comics creators such as John Byrne, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller and George Pérez, as well as the writing of Alan Moore.

(John Parker of ComicsAlliance has also noted the influence of Walt Simonson in McFarlane's work. ) McFarlane created the character Spawn when he was 16, and spent "countless hours" perfecting the appearance of each component of the character's visual design.

One day while in the twelfth grade at Calgary's William Aberhart High School, McFarlane, working as a groundskeeper for the Calgary Cardinals, was standing in the bleachers when a 13-year-old ninth grader sitting near him named Wanda Kolomyjec, who served as the team's bat girl, began flirting with him.

The two began dating, over the objections of Wanda's father, who thought she was too young for him, though in time McFarlane won him over.

Right after high school, McFarlane attended baseball tryouts at Gonzaga University.

Despite being a good fielder and fast, he was not a good hitter.

Moreover, he could not afford Gonzaga, so he attended Spokane Falls Community College for a year, his relationship with Wanda developing into a long-distance one.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, McFarlane became a comic-book superstar due to his high-selling work on Marvel Comics' Spider-Man franchise, on which he was the artist to draw the first full appearances of the character Venom.

In 1981 McFarlane began attending Eastern Washington University (EWU) on a baseball scholarship, studying as part of a self-designed program for graphics and art.

His practical goal was to join his father in the printing business in Calgary, Alberta, though his dream was always to be a comic book creator.

He worked part-time on campus as a janitor in the school's administration building, as his scholarship required an on-campus job, and also worked weekends at a comics shop called the Comic Rack, devoting a couple of hours late at night to practice his comics art.

He sought to play baseball professionally after graduation, but suffered a serious ankle injury in his junior year during a game with arch rivals Washington State University.

He subsequently focused on drawing, working at the comic book store to pay for the rest of his education, and living in a trailer park in Cheney, Washington with Wanda, who had moved to the area to be with him and attend EWU as well.

In 1984, a year after his injury, McFarlane's final chance to play for the big leagues came when he tried out with the Toronto Blue Jays' farm team in Medicine Hat, Alberta, but he ended up being ranked last on the roster, ending his professional baseball prospects.

McFarlane graduated with a bachelor's degree that same year.

He stayed in Spokane, Washington while Wanda finished her degree.

She also co-plotted and edited the pages on which McFarlane developed his own comics character, Spawn.

While still in college, McFarlane began sending 30–40 packages of submissions each month to comics editors, totaling over 700 submissions after a year and a half, most of which were in the form of pinups.

Half resulted in no response, while the other half resulted in rejection letters, though he received some constructive criticism from a few editors.

One of them, DC Comics' Sal Amendola, gave McFarlane a dummy script in order to gauge McFarlane's page-to-page storytelling ability.

Amendola's advice that McFarlane's submissions needed to focus on page-to-page stories rather than pinups led McFarlane to create a five-page Coyote sample that he initially sent to Uncanny X-Men editor Ann Nocenti at Marvel Comics, who passed it along to Archie Goodwin and Jo Duffy, the editors of the Marvel imprint Epic Comics, which published Coyote; these in turn passed it onto Coyote creator Steve Englehart, who contacted McFarlane in 1984 with an offer for Todd's first comic job: a backup story in Coyote #11.

McFarlane soon began drawing for both DC and Marvel, with his first major body of work being a two-year run (1985–1987) on DC's Infinity, Inc. In 1987, McFarlane illustrated the last three issues of Detective Comics' four-issue "Batman: Year Two" storyline.

From there, he moved to Marvel's Incredible Hulk, which he drew from 1987 to 1988, working with writer Peter David.

In 1988, McFarlane joined writer David Michelinie on Marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man, beginning with issue 298, drawing the preliminary sketch for that cover's image on the back of one of his Incredible Hulk pages.

McFarlane garnered notice for the more dynamic poses in which he depicted Spider-Man's aerial web-swinging, his enlarging of the eyes on the character's mask, and greater detail in which he rendered his artwork.

In particular was the elaborate detail he gave to Spider-Man's webbing.

The character's popularity in the 1990s also encouraged a trend in creator-owned comic-book properties.

In 1992, he helped form Image Comics, pulling the occult anti-hero character Spawn from his high-school portfolio and updating him for the 1990s.

As a filmmaker, he produced the 1997 film adaptation of Spawn starring Michael Jai White.

He will make his directorial debut with the reboot film, which will star Jamie Foxx.

After leaving inking duties on Spawn with issue No. 70 (February 1998), McFarlane has illustrated comic books less often, focusing on entrepreneurial efforts, such as McFarlane Toys and Todd McFarlane Entertainment, a film and animation studio.

In September 2006, it was announced that McFarlane would be the Art Director of the newly formed 38 Studios, formerly Green Monster Games, founded by major league baseball pitcher Curt Schilling.

McFarlane used to be a co-owner of the National Hockey League's Edmonton Oilers before selling his shares to Daryl Katz.

He is also a high-profile collector of record-breaking baseballs.

The debut issue sold 1.7 million copies, which as of 2007, remains a record for an independent comic book.