Todd McFarlane's Spawn, also known as Spawn: The Animated Series or simply Spawn, is an American adult animated superhero horror television series that aired on HBO from 1997 through 1999 and reran on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block in Japan. It is the first of two adult animated series (alongside Spicy City) to have premiered on HBO in 1997. Both were produced by their short-lived animation division, with Todd McFarlane's Spawn being a co-production with Todd McFarlane Entertainment.
It has also been released on DVD as a film series. The show is based on the character Spawn from Image Comics, and won an Emmy Award in 1999 for Outstanding Animation Program (Longer Than One Hour).
Plot The series revolves around the story of former Marine Force Recon Lieutenant Colonel Al Simmons, who worked as a government assassin in covert black ops. He was betrayed and killed by a man whom he believed to be his close friend (the man, later to be revealed as Chapel, burned him alive with a flamethrower during a mission). Upon his death, Simmons vowed revenge on Chapel and hoped that he would one day return to his beloved wife Wanda.
Because of his life as an assassin, Simmons' soul goes to Hell. In order to accomplish his vow, he makes a pact with the devil Malebolgia (who was the overlord on the eighth plane of Hell). The pact was a simple one: Simmons would become a soldier in Malebolgia's army (known as a "Hellspawn" or "Spawn" for short) in return for the ability to walk the earth once again in order to see Wanda. However, Simmons was tricked by Malebolgia: his body was not returned to him and he is returned to Earth five years after his death. He had been given a different body which was a festering, pungently cadaverous, maggot-ridden walking corpse that had a massive living red cape attached to it. Because his new body had been rotten for some time and was in an advanced state of decay, his face had become heavily malformed, to the point that he barely appeared human, which led to Simmons donning a mask in order to cover its grotesque appearance.
Upon his return to "life", Spawn seeks out Wanda, who had apparently got over the grief of having lost Al and married another man, Al's best friend Terry Fitzgerald with whom she had had a daughter, Cyan. Terry, a respectable man, works as an analyst for a man named Jason Wynn. Wynn is a powerbroker in the CIA and secretly a black market arms dealer, amongst other things (such as the head of secret government organizations within the NSA and National Security Council). Wynn is revealed to be the man responsible for the death of Al Simmons due to a disagreement that the two had between each other concerning their "work". Jason's actions would also prove dangerous to the lives of Terry, Wanda, and their daughter as well. Realizing that he is no longer the man in Wanda's life, Al swears to protect her and her new family.
The series depicts Spawn nesting in the dark alleyways, killing any who invade his newfound territory. Rejecting these actions as unworthy of Spawn's time and power, Malebolgia then dispatches another of his minions (a demonic creature known as the Violator that assumes the form of a short, overweight clown) to try to persuade Spawn to commit acts of violence and savagery in the name of Hell.
Spawn struggles to fight the lure of evil, as well as seeking to escape being hunted by not only the forces of Hell, but by assailants from Heaven, who have a need to destroy the Hellspawns in order to cripple the forces of Hell so that they do not gain an edge in the escalating war between the two spiritual hosts. As the war intensifies, the line between the forces of good and evil become increasingly blurry. Spawn finds help along the way in the form of a disheveled old man named Cogliostro who was once a Hellspawn that overcame the demonic powers resting within, amongst a number of other characters.
In the last episodes of the series, Spawn learns how to shapeshift and, appearing as Terry, has sex with Wanda, impregnating her. It is revealed that there is a prophecy that the child of a Hellspawn will play the deciding factor in Armageddon, and may be the real reason Spawn was allowed to return to Earth.
Episodes
Todd McFarlane's Spawn
Todd McFarlane's Spawn 2
Todd McFarlane's Spawn 3: The Ultimate Battle
Voice cast
Production Early development When HBO first approached McFarlane to do an animated series, he had already had several discussions with networks. These other networks were interested in doing a Spawn animated series since they had seen that Spawn was the number one comic book series in the United States at that time. McFarlane said that since the comic had started selling more than kid-friendly titles such as Spider-Man, the network executives thought that the show would be able to work as a Saturday-morning cartoon. McFarlane recalled in 1997, "I know when I had the conversations with them, they hadn't actually seen the product. Because if they had and had done their homework, then they would see there's no way this guy is meant to be translated onto something that is for an audience that's under the age of 12." Regarding his initial meeting with HBO executives for the project, McFarlane recalled, "I wanted to ask one question... can I say the word, "fuck?" If they let me do that, there's 100 other things I could get away with, too." McFarlane was more direct in his meeting with HBO since he was tired of having the same types of conversations with network executives.McFarlane, Todd. Audio commentary for Todd McFarlane's Spawn (1997). He further remarked in 1997 that, "people have such a stereotype about animation — they immediately think cartoons and Disney. They're not used to seeing Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather and Seven all in one cartoon, but that's what they're getting." McFarlane believed that since HBO was a cable network, the audience would mostly be over 16 and a "young college crowd", which aligned well with the core demographic Spawn was aimed at.
Development of the first season After greenlighting the show, HBO granted it a six million dollar budget for the six episode first season. McFarlane had approached his deal with HBO the same way he dealt with work in the comics industry, insisting on creative control and a sizable share of profits generated by his vision. Work on the series occurred in Los Angeles, although McFarlane lived in Phoenix at the time. McFarlane stated in a 2021 interview: "I was flying into Century City every week while we were doing that, for three years." The series was the first project of HBO Animation, a newly created division of HBO which was intended to focus on adult animation during its first few years, before eventually branching out into more family-friendly entertainment. They co-produced the series with Todd McFarlane Entertainment, and both company logos appear in the end credits. While work on the first season was occurring, HBO Animation also started simultaneously producing Spicy City, an anthology series by Ralph Bakshi, one of the pioneers of adult animation. HBO Animation was led by Catherine Winder, and in an interview from when the first season was in production, Winder claimed HBO decided to choose Spawn as their first animated project since they were drawn to the visuals and the storyline of the comics. She said that "it's very sophisticated and dramatic and there's a wonderful love story underlying the whole property", adding that the show they were creating was "something you've never seen before in animated programming." She noted in this interview that the show could be comparable to Japanese anime, but still considered it to be distinct from that style. According to McFarlane, one of his objectives was to break away from the traditional mold of American animation, and to bring sensibilities from other countries, including not just Japanese anime, but also European animation. In 1997, McFarlane that the show's heavy usage of black colors and dark shadows was missing from many American cartoons, and he also considered the show's adult-oriented nature to be similar to anime.
The score and opening sequence theme was handled by Shirley Walker, who had earlier composed background music for the Warner Bros. Animation series Batman: The Animated Series. Other former production crew from Batman: The Animated Series also worked on the show, including director Frank Paur (who was involved with the third season) and producer/director Eric Radomski. Warner Bros. Animation (and its namesake live-action television and film studios) were divisions of Time Warner, as was HBO. Radomski was the one who approached Walker to compose for the show, and he had long wanted to pursue darker, more adult-oriented animation, saying "knowing that HBO was definitely interested in pushing their shows to an R-rating was music to my ears." He believed that he could build on the success and audience he had found producing Batman: The Animated Series, which had a mature tone despite airing as a Saturday-morning cartoon. After leaving Batman: The Animated Series, he had started working on the comedic Saturday-morning cartoon Freakazoid!, which was also produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and said he was "very anxious" to get out of the studio. Radomski and his crew of animators were hired roughly four months into the production of Spawn, and the hiring came after HBO and McFarlane had issues with a Californian off-site animation studio. Radomski said the work of this studio "wasn't up to Todd's standards". HBO decided to bring the animation work in-house rather than subcontracting it to another Californian studio, which is what they were originally doing during the first four months of development.
Prior to taking on the project, Radomski had never heard of Spawn. Further, most of the scripts for the first season had already been written before he arrived, with the head writer for these episodes being Spawn comic collaborator Alan B. McElroy. Catherine Winder gave Radomski some of the early Spawn comics to get him acquainted with the story, and he found McFarlane's writing in them to be "kind of sophomoric". Radomski also felt that some of the foul language and violence from the scripts for the first season were "gratuitous and unnecessarily repetitive", but he supported the overall level of sophistication and maturity in the end product. Throughout the production, Radomski said he and others tried to convey to McFarlane how important it was to focus on drama-based elements of the story, with Radomski believing that McFarlane emphasized action over this in the comics. Radomski said, "we wanted to get to the romance story; it's a guy who lost his life, wants to get back to his wife and he's got a kid. Can't ask for better drama than that. It was continually an education process to say, 'Look, Spawn doesn't get mad and put his fist through the wall, he takes a moment here and there.' That was really important to convey to Todd." Radomski had served as an executive producer on Batman: The Animated Series, despite also being an animator, and he would continue to serve this duel role on Spawn. At that time, it was uncommon for animators to have creative influence over the shows they were working on. While Batman: The Animated Series featured traditional movie orchestra-type music, Radomski requested that Shirley Walker give the series a more organic and subtle electronic soundtrack, with only minimal usage of orchestral sounds. J. Peter Robinson composed the score for the third and final season.