Ahhh, the 1990s, the core of the dark age of comic books. It may not be the most popular age among older fans and even some writers and artists at the time, but it is arguably one of the most important times in the medium. Since the 1960s, the world of comic books in America was dominated by the two usual companies, DC and Marvel. While Marvel were pretty much mopping the floor with their competition in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, DC did retaliate with many best-selling miniseries, such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. However, just after the time classics were delivered from both publishers, the direction of comics changed dramatically with the advent of Image Comics. Founded in 1992 by Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Erik Larson, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino, Image was seen to be the future of comic books. Successfully, Todd McFarlane created the horror character Spawn in May 1992, a character which gave Image huge popularity, to the point where DC came third in sales behind Image and Marvel (still the best-selling company at the time). Spawn was Al Simmons, a man who was killed and brought back to the life to fight crime (basically a rip off of the Spectre). Since the start, Image sold their comics because of the art, but as time went on, popular writers such as Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison found themselves working for the company. On the topic of Spawn, McFarlane intended to make the character gritty and dark, clearly influenced by Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Because of that and Spawn’s huge success, DC came to an agreement with Image. DC allowed image to publish a one-shot story in which Batman and Spawn meet, with Frank Miller writing and Todd McFarlane drawing it. So, Miller writing and McFarlane drawing it? What could go wrong?
Spawn/Batman was a one-off published in 1994. It was written by Frank Miller with
pencils and inks by Todd McFarlane. It was also published by Image Comics. I have read this story in its original issue.
THE STORY
On a cold night in Gotham City, Batman searches a warehouse after violently beating up the thugs protecting it. In the warehouse, Batman finds a huge pair of steel battle gloves when suddenly, a huge metallic robot appears with sharp spikes. As Batman fights the robot, he destroys part of its head to find somebody inside confused about where he is. Nonetheless, Batman continues to fight the robot to the point where he pulls the person out of the machine, but he is only a head. Then, Batman senses that it has set up a self-destruct sequence in the robot. Therefore, Batman throws the head far away from it. Meanwhile, Doctor Margaret Love, founder of a charity named Heal the World, wins an award for her work and pledges to help the planet. Later in the Batcave, Batman examines the head he recovered, remembering that it had a mid-Manhattan accent. Batman tells Alfred to put the head in ice and put the huge battle gloves in the vault, while he heads off to New York. While the news reports that he could be tackling criminals in New York, Batman hears about a bum named Al who has magic powers. Batman doesn’t believe it. Nearby, Al Simmons, also known as Spawn, patrols the streets of New York, finding two criminals trying to burn a tramp to death. But Spawn intervenes and burns them both to death, attracting the attention of Batman. Recognising that Spawn is Al, Batman kicks Spawn in the back with the aim of crippling him, but it doesn’t succeed, and Spawn retaliates. The two then fight aggressively and although Batman believes that he has won as he poisons Spawn with gas, Batman is critically injured to near-death. While Batman hides and recovers in a dark alley, Spawn searches the Heal New York building, finding a giant laser-firing robot. Spawn attacks it by using a huge metallic gun that is nearby. Afterwards, another head falls from the robot and it is Chuck, who Spawn recognises. Then, a monitor turns on with Doctor Margaret Love on it, who believes that she is speaking to her servants. She tells them that she is proud of their work and she tells them to prepare their bodies in order to become perfect servants of society, free of guilt, pain and choice. Meanwhile, Batman finds a bat-signal in New York and heads towards it and finds Margaret Love, who tells him that Spawn is a danger to her noble cause and that he must not get near her Heal the World ship for a fundraiser. Batman agrees to help her. In the alleys of New York, Spawn throws up from the gas he was infected with by Batman. Suddenly, Batman appears (continued)
again and the two fight, ending when the two of them are bleeding to near-death and when another giant robot appears, stabbing Batman through an artery in his arm. Spawn then intervenes, destroying the robot and then entering Batman’s body using his own spirit. Inside, Batman tells Spawn to leave his mind, but he refuses. While Spawn manages to heal Batman, Spawn learns of his origin while also proving to him that Margaret Love is evil. Batman believes him and after Spawn leaves his mind, the two head off to the Heal the World ship. On board, Margaret Love delivers a speech about the cruelty of hunger and slavery, before revealing a huge arsenal of war weaponry to those on board the ship, telling them that she will free the world. As Batman and Spawn head closer to the ship, they fight more of Love’s robots before they finally find her. Although Batman orders Spawn not to let her die from falling debris, Spawn doesn’t listen, and she dies. Suddenly, a nuke is launched from the ship, but Spawn manages to use his teleportation to move the nuke and cause it fall into the sea. In the end, Batman tells Spawn that he despises him and his life-ignoring methods of fighting crimes, but he tells him that they will meet again. Spawn then tells Batman that they saved the city together, but Batman doesn’t care as he throws a batarang at Spawn, which finds its self-lodged in Spawn’s face…
MY THOUGHTS
Well, this is the usual point in the review where I say something good about the story. In this case its rather challenging though, as any trace of a good engaging and enjoyable story seems to be completely absent. Still, I would have to say the best thing about the story is that it didn’t completely bore me. Sure, it sucks in nearly every department, but I wasn’t so much bored reading it, just a bit ticked off. Also, I do like Alfred’s character in the story. It is actually one of the only characters I think Miller writes above averagely due to his sarcasm. Buts that’s pretty much it for the positives. Oh, actually, I take it all back. The best thing about the story is the tribute to Jack Kirby at the end, who is a far better artist and writer than Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane combined…
Now, I’m not really sure if there is any debate around this story in terms of whether it takes place in Miller’s little own Dark Knight Universe. But to me it does, since Batman’s a prick and the story is awful. That’s all the criteria fulfilled! I guess a crossover between Batman and Spawn was inevitable, as Spawn was becoming an incredibly popular character among fans and Batman was… well… Batman. Therefore, we are given this travesty written by Miller and seemingly drawn by McFarlane’s fingernail. But lets face it, this one-off was done simply for a quick boost in sales, which is very apparent due to the lack of story and overuse of fight scenes. But before we get to the fights, lets start with this book’s rather shoddy opening. The problem with the very start of the story is there is no background or even reasoning
for why Batman would be finding a killer robot in Gotham. To some, it might be an appealing way to start the story with a sense of mystery and when done correctly, it came. But here, Miller seems to just introduce the robot for no particular reason other than having some violence. For a reader of the story that is a fan of Spawn and hasn’t read any Batman (there were certainly a few), there isn’t any introduction to his character or why he is present. Sure, everybody knows about Batman, but it would have been a good way to introduce the character. But with Spawn, its much worse as many Batman readers that didn’t read Spawn basically have no introduction to the character here. We don’t really know his whole origin, his backstory or anything about him. This doesn’t even feel mysterious, its just underdeveloped. Also, before we get to the meeting between the two heroes, can I just say that the reasoning for why Batman visits New York is ridiculous. Just because the head he found inside the robot is from New York, why would it mean that New York is the place to go? The guy could have ben from pretty much anywhere. His accent isn’t enough, and Batman is supposed to be a detective. In this story, he really isn’t much of one, but more on that later. The two meetings between Batman and Spawn are simply done for both padding and money. Two huge fight scenes full of twisted anatomy and grim captions make the finished art very profitable, something that Image is really all about. To them, the story doesn’t really matter, as long as there are a few good fight scenes involved that can make a lot of money when the artists decide to sell them afterwards. Anyway, the fights go on for way too long and there isn’t too much reason for the heroes to be fighting, at least in terms of the story anyway. About now we are introduced to the villain of the story, Doctor Margaret Love, who I would say is one of the most confused and underdeveloped villains I have ever seen. Seriously, why does she have this Heal the World charity when all she really wants to do is to make random people into perfect models of society? Why does she even really need to be present in public? It may have worked better if she was a villain who worked in the background, adding some mystery and depth to her, but you don’t get anything like that here. For some reason, there is a bizarre moment in the story when Doctor Love contacts Batman to try and get rid of Spawn. Surely, as Batman would work out as a detective, that Love is evil. That is one of the biggest problems with Miller’s Batman in general. He isn’t a detective; he is just an overweight psychopath who likes to use his fists to find the solution. There really isn’t respect for the original character or even the character in the mainstream comics at the time. In terms of Spawn’s character, I’m sort of indifferent to him. He’s basically a gorier version of the Spectre, who is so much more frightening in my opinion. If anything, Spawn’s character is fairly basic and that’s all I really have to say. I guess it doesn’t help that I’ve only read a handful of Spawn stories and I didn’t really like them, but still. Back to this mess, the way in which Batman discovers the truth makes him pretty redundant in the grand scheme of things. Spawn basically tells him using his mental powers and when you look at the story as a whole, Batman’s inclusion was very pointless in every way, apart from financially obviously. Finally, the solution and overall conclusion to the story is pretty muddled. For some reason, Love decides show everybody that she has a load of nuclear weapons and after she dies, one is launched at New York. Just, why? That came out of nowhere and it wasn’t even hinted at earlier, nor were we given a satisfactory reason why it happened. Predictably, the heroes (if you can call them that) save the day and the ending involves Batman being a complete hypocrite when confronting Spawn, calling his methods revolting and detestable. For some reason, Miller tries to end the story with Spawn having a batarang in the face. This is meant to be funny, or taken seriously? Some people like Grant Morrison see the humour in Miller’s work, but to me, I just see somebody who takes everything way too seriously and throws out all the fun that could be had in a story. And my god, can I call this a story? When you really look at it, there isn’t much story here at all. Miller seems to have just cobbled together a load of events and randomly tried to connect everything together. Let’s not kid ourselves here. This one-shot was done for money…
Just look at the art. I really don’t see how McFarlane can be praised for it. His sense of storytelling is completely absent, making some scenes incredibly confusing. His sense of anatomy and completely incorrect and twisted. His fascination with small little flicky lines is borderline-obsessive and makes pages look confusing. There is a complete overuse of splash pages of huge fight scenes as well, which were solery produced just so they could be sold for a high price. And that’s not even to mention some of the pin-ups at the back, one of which Miller himself is involved with. Other than that, the art is great…
VERDICT
Overall, its crap. What more is there to say?
Story: 1/10
Art: 2/10
Next Week: Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade (Written by Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello with art by John Romita Jr and Peter Steigerwald. Expected by 09/08/2020.
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