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Born in Calgary, Alberta in Canada on March 16, 1961 Todd McFarlane has had a meteoritic rise to fame and fortune, all thanks to a comic book character.
McFarlane has been in the news a lot recently with several new ventures ranging from a new take on the Wizard of Oz classic, to the latest Microsoft MMO game Halo 3 and his new Studios 38 venture with ……… and ………. That has the gaming industry buzzing with speculation.
But who is he?
He spent his early childhood in Southern Californian but returned to Calgary at the age of 14.
During his high school years, like many teenage boys, he ejoyed reading comic books and bought as many as he could afford. A few of his favourite artists were John Byrne, George Perez, Marshall Rogers, Michael Golden, Art Adams and Walter Simonson.
Although he was a keen artist and spent a lot of his time reading and drawing comic book heroes his ultimate dream was to be a professional baseball player.
McFarlane’s passion for baseball continued through his high school and college years and he was awarded a baseball scholarship to Eastern University.
Despite the scholarship and in order to finance his education he worked as a janitor in a comic book shop. He was also recruited by a local Seattle Mariners scout to play on a semi-professional summer team at Kamloops, British Columbia. Here was here that he met and became inseperable friends with Al Simmons.
Unable to find any Major League teams willing to sign him or offer him a position when his baseball college eligibility expired he continued drawing comic book characters.
Determined to find work Todd began submitting his artwork to comic book editors across the USA and Canada and as a result amassed a collection of more than 700 rejection letters.
But still determined, and not one to give up Todd continued to submit his artwork until eventually he accepted an offer from Marvel/Epic comics in March of 1984 to pencil “Scorpio Rose” which was an 11 page back up story in the Coyote comic.
In July 1985 he married his high school sweetheart Wanda and they moved to Washington where Wanda completed a biology degree. The young couple then moved to a suburb of Vancouver in Canada.
Todd continued working with Marvel comics and also accepted some assignments from DC Comics including penciling several issues of The Incredible Hulk, the Batman title Detective as well as two issues of Batman: Year Two.
Todd McFarlanes dedication, hardwork, unique style and meticulous attention to detail and quality saw him rise to the top of Marvel’s artist roster.
His big break came with his pencils and covers for Amazing Spiderman that helped to take the title from its’ previous number 9 spot to number 1.
McFarlane enhanced Amazing Spidermanman with his unique style by transposing the characters body to spidery positions, adding spider looking eyes, and popularizing a new way of rendering webs.
As a result of his success on this title Marvel eventually gave McFarlane his own title he could solely write, pencil and ink, Spider-Man.
Spider-Man issue 1 shipped in September 1990 and became the biggest selling comic of all time with more than 2.5 million copies.
In 1991, when his first daughter was born, he took a six month hiatus to help care for her and frustrated with the mainstream publishing companies he began to make plans to form his own publishing company.
A few months later he and his family moved to Portlan in Oregon. Meanwhile he continued his plans to create a publishing company that would allow artists more creative freedom and control over their own creations. After speaking to several over prominent artists at Marvel he learned that many of them felt the same way.
After months of discussions and planning seven of Marvels hottest and most prominent artist announced their departure. These seven artists included Todd, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio and the group formed Comic Images, the parent company and publisher for each individuals own comic book company.
This meant that although they published together under the parent companies name each retained the control of their own characters including all licensing and merchandising rights.
It was only with the creation of Comic Images that Todd felt that he could finally publish his comic which he had created nearly 10 years before.
And so Spawn was born.
The first issue of Spawn, shipped in May 1992, sold 1.7 million copies making it the best selling independent comic to date Spawn has continued its’ success and still remains to be a top selling title in both the US and around the world. Spawn is now sold in 35 countries and is translated into 10 different languages.
As well as the main core Spawn comic book several other spin off titles have evolved from it including Sam, Twitch and Hellspawn.
With the characters continued success Todd began to draw the attention of several potential licensees including toy companies, movie studios and television producers.
Keen on the idea of seeing his character take form as a toy or figure McFarlane began to approach several toy companies with his proposals only to be disappointed by their unwillingness to grant him any control over the process.
As a result he decide to form McFarlane Toys in order to guarantee his fans a quality product that he personally had approved. With their intricate detail and excellent articulation Spawn action figures have become some of the most sought after toys on the market.
In 1997, after being perused by all the major studios, McFarlane signed with New Line Cinema to make a Spawn movie. Spawn the Movie opened in August 1997 and grossed $37 million in its first ten days and $50 million in its first 19 days.
In the same year HBO showed the first six half hour episodes of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, an animated series based on the comic book character. Another six original episodes was debuted in May 1998 with a third series of six shown in May 1999, with plans for a fourth series currently being discussed.
Season one was released on video in August 1997 and became HBO Home Video’s top selling original programming video of all time. McFarlane was rewarded with an Emmy award for the animated series and a Gold DiVi award for the Spawn motion picture DVD.
Not content with his comic book and budding toy and film empire in 1998 he bought a minority ownership in the Edmonton Oilers NHL hockey team and in 2001 he co-designed their third jersey which became the biggest selling third jersey in NHL history.
Todd has also turned his creativeness to music and has helped in the making of award winning videos for such groups as Korn and Pearl Jam. His animated video made with Eddie Vedder based on the Pearl Jam song Do the Evolution has won 40 International artistic awards and was nominated for “Best Short Form Music Video” in the 1999 Grammy Awards. He also produced the Freak on a Leash video for Korn which won a Grammy and two MTV awards.
In 1998 Todd McFarlane took his love for baseball to a new level when he purchased the Mark McGwire 70th home run baseball for a record $3 million. Not content with that he managed to collect another nine McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run balls from that seasons home run race.
Collectively known as The McFarlane Collection it has toured stadiums and special events across the country to raise money for charity and to date more than 2 million fans have seen the exhibit.
The late 1990’s saw McFarlane Toys evolve from an independent toy company to make quality toys based on the Spawn character and related characters into one of the worlds biggest and most highly regarded toy manufacturers. In fact McFarlanes have become the benchmark by which many other companies and toys are judged so high is their reputation, quality, detail and value.
This reputation for a quality and highly detailed product at a reasonable and affordable price has resulted in McFarlane Toys producing figures in all genres of film, music, gaming and sports.
By 2002 McFarlane had secured licenses for all four of the US Major League sports which realized a long dream of Todd’s.
Spawn and its related characters still remain the core business of McFarlane’s with series 32 to be produced in Dec, 2007 based on the The Adventures of Spawn which is a new take on the Spawn mythos based on a more “anime” style look.
McFarlane also continues to work on films with several projects in the works including a new Spawn movie, a new Land of Oz movie and a deal signed with Universal Pictures for a collaboration with horror icon Clive Barker based on the Clive Barker’s Tortured Souls line of figures which were a huge success for McFarlane’s Toys.
McFarlane, his wife Wanda and their three children still live in Arizona were he still maintains a happy, if often chaotic, balance between famil life and business.
Todd credits his success to a little talent, being in the right place at the right time, a lot of hard work, determination and perseverance.
To sum up Todd says:
“My ability to deliver a good product is my strength, I’d like to be remembered as a guy who turned out some quality comics and toys, while doing a few different things even if it wasn’t the easiest road to follow.”
Colin Dorman
McFarlane Toys are the fifth biggest manufacturer of Action Figures in the States and are generally considered the best! See why… here
Do you like Action Figures? Are you a collector? Want to find out more? Then read more here
Are you a Halo collector? Want to know more about Halo? See the Official Halo Action Figures and read reviews of Halo Merchandise.
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