Spawn by Neal Adams

Neal Adams and — Spawn? A Strange, But True, 90s Publishing Story

Let’s take a trip back to the wild and woolly world of 1993, when Neal Adams and Todd McFarlane drew a Spawn comic book together.

Almost.

I have a couple of pages from that ill-fated project to show you, but let me give you the story of how we got there first.

Preview to a Crossover

I tripped across this curiosity in one of my longboxes recently:

Comics Debut #1 cover

This is “Comics Debut,” cover-dated June 1993. It’s a 98-cent comic-sized publication (printed on recycled paper!) from the same folks who bring you the weekly “Comic Shop News” newspaper.

It compiles seven previews of comics series that would release (mostly) their first issues in the coming months. This was a time before the internet. You couldn’t just view the jpegs online. You might see a page or a panel here or there in an ad in the back of the same publisher’s comic, or maybe in “The Comics Buyer’s Guide” or “Wizard,” but you didn’t see three pages of every new release like you do now.

“Comics Debut” only made it to issue #2. Maybe people didn’t want to pay for previews. Maybe publishers couldn’t supply previews far enough in advance or didn’t want to share a magazine with other companies. Maybe Cliff Biggers and Ward Beatty were too busy to make it work. 🤷‍♂️

The debut issue of “Comics Debut” includes the beginnings of such titles as Malibu’s Ultraverse’s “Freex”, Dark Horse’s “Aliens vs Predators: The Deadliest of the Species” (Chris Claremont and Butch Guice!), Michael Allred’s “Madman Adventures” (issue #3, curiously), and the Youngblood/Bloodshot crossover from the “Deathmate Prologue” issue.

The other preview that jumps out to me — and the very reason we’re here today — is the preview for “Valeria the She-Bat” #3.

Who? Yeah, I agree.

“Valeria the She-Bat” was a title from Continuity Comics, Neal Adams’ company that ran from 1984 – 1994. Its third issue promised to be the start of a crossover with Todd McFarlane’s “Spawn.”

It was solicited and everything. Comics Scoreboard, the “Previews” style magazine for comics distributor Heroes World, even mentioned it on their cover:

Heroes World's Comics Scoreboard magazine mentioned Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover.

“Comics Debut”, however, featured four pages from it.

And then it never happened.

The series skipped straight to issue #5. And if you were looking for issue #2, that’s another problem you’re going to have.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

Let’s take a closer look at that “Valeria the She-Bat” #3 preview and start our journey there.


“Final Film Not Available”

The art preview in “Comics Debut” is preceded by a page of text printed atop a swirly mess of colors that is the epitome of 90s publishing. Everyone was just learning to use digital publishing tools and so threw everything onto the page. Look at the mess “Marvel Age” turned into around the same time for another stellar example. “Wizard” and “Hero Illustrated” had their issues, as well, in this department.

Comics Debut introduced Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover

“Surely,” you’re thinking, “that’s just a bad scan. If you zoom in closer with a better scan, it’s perfectly legible, right?”

Text of the introduction in Comics Debut to Valeria the She-Bat and Spawn.

“Ah. Nope.”

That white blur box behind the text didn’t help as much as they thought.

Let me type it out for you, so there’s a chance you’ll be able to read it:

Neither one of them really belongs in our world. One appears to be a high fashion model, but she’s really a Hybrid, the result of experimentation gone wild. The other seems to be a human but is really the reincarnation of a man who died years before. Their worlds rarely cross — but when a demonic force arises that threatens them both, Valeria the She-Bat and Spawn join forces to do battle with the new threat.

That’s just the generic boilerplate stuff to establish the characters, so that’s fine.

Next, we get to the publishing details, and the questions start to arise:

Valeria the She-Bat #3 kicks off a two-issue crossover between Continuity’s Valeria the She-Bat and Image’s Spawn. Neal Adams is writing and illustrating the series, but he will be joined by Todd McFarlane, who will illustrate as much of the story’s Spawn segments as time allows.

You have to start worrying when you see phrases like “as time allows” when it comes to making comics during the early 1990s. There was never enough time. McFarlane was one of the few actually producing a monthly book with his character, so that goes double for him.

Would McFarlane have been inking over Neal Adams’ pencils, the way he would later work with Greg Capullo or had in the past inked Rob Liefeld’s “New Mutants” cover? Or would he have been drawing the Spawn pages, or the Spawn images on the relevant pages? It’s not clear.

Now, for the conclusion of the eye-bending text and the final hint that things might be about to go awry:

Two great comic artists, two great heroes, two great issues — and here’s the first sneak peak at this landmark storyline. Final film was not available at presstime, so Continuity has prepared this special preview for Comics Debut. Valeria the She-Bat #3 from Continuity, a $2.50 comic, is scheduled for late-July release.

For a magazine built on previews for books shipping in the next month or two, that is one curious asterisk:

“Final film was not available at presstime”

Taking into account all the deadline issues both Image Comics and Continuity Comics had at the time, this isn’t that shocking. If you thought Image’s original lateness issues were commonplace, you should read up on Continuity. Things got messy.

Brian Hibbs said of Continuity and its publishing program at the time, “Continuity’s books [Expletive Deleted]ing suck.”

Of the 7 previews in this issue of “Comics Debut”, only one didn’t mention a July release. Yet, all of the others had print-ready pages ready to preview.

Funny enough, that last preview without a publication date was for the “Deathmate” crossover between Image and Valiant, and we all remember how well that series ran off the rails… Still, that preview included five completed — colored and lettered — pages from Rob Liefeld featuring Prophet.

You could tell that “Valeria the She-Bat” #3 was already behind in the production schedule.

The Art of Valeria/Spawn

The Valeria/Spawn “special preview” runs five pages.

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover cover by Neal Adams, without Todd McFarlane

The first page looks like a final cover, fully inked (all by Adams) and colored, with plenty of room at the top for the title logo and publisher box. It’s a good job with Spawn — it looks like a McFarlane crouching pose, complete with a lengthy cape and chains in motion. It was used in a couple of ads for the distributors and as Continuity house ads.

The next two pages are inked and colored sequential pages, although they are unlettered.

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, page 1 of 4
Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, page 2 of 4

They feel very Spawn-ish. They’re practically style parodies of the kinds of pages McFarlane constructed in the earliest issues of “Spawn.” You get the profile shot of Spawn, the floating mask, the dramatic graveyard, and a costume with a huge billowing cape.

There’s also the profile shot of Spawn at the top of the second page that heads up some panels, and an extreme closeup of an eye at the bottom of the page. This is Adams studying McFarlane’s style for this crossover, for sure, though Adams’ own style from the time shows through strongly, as well.

The next two pages are only pencils and are filled with pseudo-military guys riding motorcycles and firing big automatic guns. The lettering is done directly on the boards for the sound effects, though I’m not sure I like “BLADA” as a sound effect for any kind of weapons fire.

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, pages 3 and 4 of 4

Spawn is only at the top of the first page here, so let’s do a closeup on that:

Neal Adams draws Spawn, from the Valerian She-Bat #3 preview

I wasn’t completely sure that McFarlane would have been a suitable inker for Adams’ work, but I think he could have produced good work here. Both artists have styles that are in your face and include large hands and faces. Adams’ pencils are very complete and filled with folds and textural details. McFarlane’s trademark inking style fits for those finishes well. (You can see lots of examples in The McSpidey Chronicles, where I’m reviewing every issue of his “The Amazing Spider-Man” run. End of plug.)

So, how did we get to this point? Let’s go back to the first issue now and fill in some gaps.

She-Bat Begins

I couldn’t write this article without seeing the original issues. All of them. A trip to eBay landed me a complete run of “Valeria the She-Bat” from Continuity Comics.

It wasn’t hard. There were only two issues.

Neal Adams acetate cover to Valeria the She-Bat #1

The first issue comes complete with a wraparound acetate cover. It’s hard to describe, but picture a plastic-feeling kind of paper that’s super lightweight and bright. It’s printed on only one side and it shines in the light well.

It’s also fairly thin, which is part of the reason why you can see the lettering from page one bleeding through She-Bat’s wing in this picture of the cover. I didn’t include the back cover because it’s mostly Valeria’s other wing. Nothing interesting there.

There were also variations — one with white a background on the acetate cover and two with foil titles. Those were all signed by Neal Adams as limited editions at the time. I couldn’t afford them if I could even find them.

The story starts off with a bit of a Batman homage, as a young girl is leaving some Robin Williams movie with her parents when the ground breaks below their feet and bat creatures straight out of hell emerge. The mother does not lose her pearl necklace, however. Valeria is there to save them.

Double page spread from Valeria the She-Bat #1

The She-Bat swoops in to defeat the other bats, but not before a two-page opening spread that reminds me of Todd McFarlane’s “Spider-Man” #1’s opening double-page splash.

Part of me started to wonder at this point if this was Adams throwing in the towel and saying, “If you can’t beat those Image kids, might as well join them. Give the kids what they want.”

Later, we’ll see more proof of that. Hang in there…

The rest of the issue is barely comprehensible, much like many upstart comic companies’ first issues were back then.

It’s an origin story, where we meet the Big Bad character who attempts to rape Valeria before her brother (the half-ape) comes to her rescue and destroys him. There are a lot of half-animal characters in this comic, as a matter of fact. It’s kind of the hook of the series. Another Continuity series, “The Hybrids”, was set up as the X-Men style team of the company.

The art is pure Neal Adams. This is a storyboard artist (or maybe a classic comic strip artist?) let loose on a comic book. People are very specifically drawn to look like they come out of central casting.

Valeria the She-Bat in her human super model form, alongside her half-simian brother
Valeria the Super Model and her brother with the Mark [sic] Silvestri fan club card. Did they Photoshop an earring on her?

The most important thing on every page is that you see every face fairly close up. Every expression must be seen. Everything is in the reader’s face, and every page is crammed to the gills. There are panels on these pages, but the art often spills out of them, around them, and through them without any regard to the page’s readability. Stuff just sticks out and across everywhere.

Lettering is needed to guide the eye through the page, but that often fails, too.

This book is a product of its time and learned most of the wrong lessons from what was going on with the Top Ten books.

With a two-part crossover starting in the third issue, it’s easy to assume that the second issue would wrap up this storyline, right?

Correct. It does. But Continuity never published it.

Here’s something that will frustrate any comics fan who is annoyed at the way crossovers kill comics series’ momentum:

What Happened to the Second Issue?

The second issue of the series did not see print as a standalone issue. I’ve found two different stories about what happened with this book, both of which may be correct.

The first I heard is that it was packaged with the last part of the company-wide crossover that was going on at Continuity at the time, “Deathwatch 2000.” (Tell me your comic was published in 1993 without telling me your comic was published in 1993.)

From what I can tell, that would be “CyberRad” v2 #3. That book never saw print, though.

The second possibility: In an interview with Neal Adams that we’ll get to next, he refers to the second issue as an incentive book/giveaway for retailers, which is a questionable publishing idea: Start a new series, publish issue #1, but don’t give fans the same access to issue #2, and then set up issue #3 to be your best selling book of all time.

No wonder why Hibbs hated this company so much.

Maybe the book was planned as a retailer exclusive, bundled in with the last part of a crossover (or published as a flip book like “Youngblood” #5 with “Brigade” #4) to help make sure orders go up for the end of the crossover?

If that issue never made it to print, then both theories could be right and the issue could still never exist.

Don’t worry, though, because we’ll see that issue eventually when it shows up in an unexpected place a year and a half later. Keep reading!

The trail on this story is quite labyrinthine. Let’s get to issues 3, 4, and 5 next!

Cancellation of a Crossover

Todd McFarlane pulled out of the crossover. Issues #3 and #4 were never published.

With the Spawn two-parter unexpectedly off the table, Neal Adams/Continuity Comics skipped straight ahead to issue #5. If you thought company-wide crossovers played havoc with your comics’ scheduling, imagine what a last-minute cancellation of an inter-company crossover would do!

HERO Illustrated issue 13 from July 1994

We turn to “Hero Illustrated” #13 from a year later to find out what happened. In an interview there, Neal Adams politely and politically explains it:

“We only had a handshake deal and he [Todd McFarlane] decided to pull the plug on it for… whatever reason he says. I didn’t quite understand his reasoning and I would rather not speculate. It’s his character, he has a right to say no. Unfortunately, that affected us and a lot of people who were interested in buying it.”

Neal Adams

Neal Adams, defender of creator ownership of comic book characters, doesn’t go after McFarlane here. I’m sure he was angry that this happened. Nobody would blame him if he was mad for losing this bag of guaranteed money for his company. When asked about it, though, he turns it into a bit of support for creator ownership of comics: “That’s Todd’s right. He can do that if he wants.”

Or was he just not sharing everything? I can’t find it now, but I did run across a reference someone made to a Todd McFarlane interview with a different story. McFarlane, that story goes, pulled the crossover because Image Comics had gotten in trouble for publishing so many late books. Image was trying to clean up its reputation. McFarlane didn’t think it would be a good idea to throw in with Continuity when they were arguably worse at publishing comics on schedule.

The timing would have been interesting, though. The scheduled release for “Valeria the She-Bat” would have been right after that string of “Spawn” issues written by Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Dave Sim. Following those four up with a collaboration with Neal Adams would have fit nicely.

A few months later, McFarlane would publish issues of “Spawn” out of order, mostly due to the way Diamond changed its returns window timeline. That’s a story for another time, but a funny coincidence.

“Valeria the She-Bat” #5

Valeria the She-Bat #5 wraparound cover by Neal Adams
Spoiler: That whole “My body!” thing doesn’t actually happen in this issue.

Issue #3 of “Valeria the She-Bat” had been solicited already and orders came in at 300,000 copies, Adams said. That’s nearly six times the usual amount for the series.

Rather than wait months to redo and then resolicit those issues, Adams opted to redraw existing pages and publish the results as issue #5.

He replaced Spawn on these pages with a new character named “Knighthawk.” (Again, tell me your comic is from 1993 without blah blah blah…)

It’s a very smart move. Why waste those pages? Throw some tracing paper over the Spawn parts, ink in some new costume details, and away you go!

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, page 1 of 4
The redrawn first page of Knighthawk #1 to replace Spawn with Knighthawk, by Neal Adams

You can see most of the design changes Adams did to Spawn to create Knighthawk in this first page. As a Hybrid type of character, he takes on the characteristics of a hawk. The cape becomes more wing-like, complete with something closer to the way the end of a wing has individual feathers that look almost like fingers. The mask doesn’t cover the mouth area and the pattern around the eyes turns into a hawk silhouette. There is also, of course, a hawk logo on his chest now. The chains are gone.

The lettering in the newspaper close-up and the colors are different. The original sample pages were likely rushed through to get to Comics Debut, so that’s not surprising. It was temporary work to get to the deadline.

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, page 2 of 4
The redrawn second page of Knighthawk #1 to replace Spawn with Knighthawk, by Neal Adams

The lettering for Knighthawk’s word balloons featured the same familiar double-walled balloons that Spawn used under the pen of Tom Orzechowski. Here, though, they are colored blue instead of steely gray.

I thought at first that Adams reinked only the Spawn figures of these pages, but it was definitely more than that. The final published page looks completely re-inked. On the second page, in particular, check out the linework on that Valeria figure or even in the closeup of her eyebrow. This is a brand new ink job. The “Comics Debut” pages lack a lot of the finer line work, like they were inked in a hurry with a marker just to get the preview out. The final pages have better detail and finer hatching.

If that was the case, then I would bet the “Comics Debut” ink job was done on a copy of the pencils (or on a lightboard) and the original art board could be redrawn and have final inks applied to it for the final issue.

Valeria the She-Bat/Spawn crossover art by Neal Adam, pages 3 and 4 of 4
The redrawn third page of Valerian the She-Bat #5 to replace Spawn with Knighthawk, by Neal Adams
The redrawn fourth page of Valeria the She-Bat #5 to replace Spawn with Knighthawk, by Neal Adams

The Publishing Plan

In the interview, Adams explains his publishing plan for the issue in a post-Spawn world:

“…if we had labelled it #3, we would have shipped 300,000 without Spawn. Rather than rip people off and put out a #3 without Spawn, we called it #5 and shipped it on the month that #5 was solicited for. That seemed like the logical thing to do, but people got upset. I don’t actually know why they got upset because it was the beginning of a story. The thing that came back to us was, we should have resolicited. On reflection, that would probably have been a smarter thing to do. You just never know. You pays your money and you takes your chances.”

The first issue had a cover date of May 1993, but didn’t come out until September.

The fifth issue has a cover date of November 1993 and came out on December 8, 1993.

With the cancellation of the crossover, you save a month on working on issue #4, issue #2 was completed in time for a crossover that never actually finished, and so it’s easy to rework #3 and call it #5. I’m sure, behind the scenes, it also helped fill the slot reserved at the printers.

To Adams’ point, it was a smart idea not to ship it as issue #3 without Spawn. I guess retrofitting it into the solicitation of issue #5 sped up the ability to publish the issue, even though it still came out 10 weeks late, according to HIbbs’ chart.

The question is, had retailers inflated orders on #5 thinking that lots of people would be sticking around after the Spawn crossover? If so, that would be a good reason to completely resolicit the fifth issue to give retailers the chance to lower their orders back down to something closer to what they would have ordered issue #2 at. Could Continuity have afforded to do that? I don’t know.

The issue starts a new story, as Valeria and Knighthawk meet in a cemetery being shot up by pseudo-miliary zombies who are looking to steal a body from its grave. The story is one big action sequence. A four-page post-script at the end sends Valeria and Knighthawk off together to find out where the body went and stop the ne’er-do-wells behind it all.

There was no issue #6, however. The story ends there forever.

In the end, the “Valeria the She-Bat” series published two non-consecutive issues that told half a story each.

Continuity Comics stopped publishing comics in 1994. They had followed the “Deathwatch 2000” crossover immediately with a “Rise of the Magic” crossover that also never finished. Finally, we have proof that crossovers can’t fix everything.

The Valeria the She-Bat Revival

In 1995, Acclaim Comics was busy publishing the Valiant Universe and titles like “Turok”, “X-O Manowar,” and “Bloodshot.”

They also started their own imprint for creator-owned comics called Windjammer. The lineup featured Mike Grell’s “Starslayer” and “Bar Sinister.”

Valeria the She-Bat #1 (Windjammer) cover
Valeria the She-Bat #2 (Windjammer) cover

It also included a couple of titles from Continuity Comics. That included an issue of “Samuree” and the return of “Valeria the She-Bat.” Windjammer reprinted two issues from the series. Care to guess which two?

It was the Continuity issues #1 and #2. That told one complete story.

At long last, you could finish the story started in “Valeria the She-Bat” #1! Hint: It involves taking an elevator down to hell to battle the demons and defeat the big bad boss devil-type character.

It was all very melodramatic but super visual.

Valeria rides into hell in the second issue at Windjammer

Neal Adams drew the entire issue with a team of five people on to ink him, including Bill Sienkiewicz.

The series ended there. Windjammer didn’t even reprint the fifth issue which featured the first appearance of Knighthawk.

This is doubly strange as they then started a Knighthawk series.

Knighthawk: The Series!

Knighthawk #1 cover
I love this Neal Adams cover.

This is where I realized what was going on. This series is Neal Adams poking fun at the comics of the day. This series is manic, crazy, senseless, bombastic, and splashy. It’s a commentary on the style people associated with the Image revolution as much as anything else — or, at least, what people think of when they think of the west coast crosshatching-happy style of art that is commonly associated with Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, or Marc Silvestri. (And, as you saw earlier, he did gratuitously namecheck Marc Silvestri in the past.)

The series lasted six issues under the Windjammer imprint. It’s broken into a four-part story and then a two-part story. It’s loud, visually overwhelming, often confusing, and machismo to the max.

But, damn, Neal Adams’ ink line is pretty.

In the first story, we meet Nighthawk, a superhero who can fly and whose wings are also a cape capable of deflecting all sorts of energies. Also, he carries two guns in holsters on the side of his lower legs that can spring into action and into his hands at any time. Honestly, it’s the coolest visual of the book. It’s like a John Woo Hong Kong action movie as a superhero book.

Knighthawk's spring-loaded guns
It’s a superconductor-powered gun launcher, not spring-loaded. Still, it’s cool.

In the first issue, he breaks up a service selling stolen children while having some kind of random flashback to his own history that won’t be explained for another four or five issues.

There are no credits in the first issue, but I believe Neal Adams did pencils and inks on this one by himself. There are a lot of great and memorable pages. But, again, it feels like it’s being done not in Adams’ own style, but Adams filtering his style through that early 90s flashiness. There are a lot of splash pages and double-page splashes in the first issue.

Double Page Splash from Knighthawk #1

And they are awesome. Nighthawk flying across the city leads to great images. Adams captures the weight of a character in every page. Knighthawk always feels “real” on the page between his dimensions and his mass. Bodies have depth and weight to them that a lot of artists just can’t do.

The rest of the issues are penciled by Ernesto Infante, though Neal Adams also scored an art credit alongside Infante in a couple of issues.

I should also note that it’s Peter Stone who handled the dialogue and gets “story” credit alongisde Adams’ “plot”s throughout all of the comics I’ve talked about in this article. Jade Moede is the letterer and colors come from a variety of places and people, including Paul Mounts, Dennis Calero and Atomic Paintbrush.

In this new series, Nighthawk is a doctor in a lab where everyone else is killed and Nemo is taken. Nemo, it turns out, is an android with only a third of its information. He’s a big hulking brute who can take down superpowered bird men bare-handed. So, yeah, the next three issues are about Nighthawk and Nemo fighting.

Things build nicely up to issue #4 where the battle moves into a military site and things get epic fast. Bodies crash through fighter jets. Rockets get knocked over and land on people. Train cars are thrown around. Punches are delivered with the weight of several anvils. It’s an impressive amount of orchestration and creative thinking. Sit back and enjoy the Michael Bay-ness of it all.

The two-parter that followed was a more direct commentary on superhero teams of the day. Specifically, it looks like Adams targeted CyberForce for this one. Just take a look at this team:

Knighthawk takes on CyberForce?

Cybernetically-enhanced, multiple arms, big guns, long pointy fingers, muscular-guy-with-gun, and then Hulk/Maul in the background, struggling to fit into frame. OK, so it’s more an Homage Studios roundup, but it feels more CyberForce than WildC.A.T.s to me.

They’re a super powerful but completely uncoordinated and stupid team that Knighthawk is recruited to whip into shape. Knighthawk agrees to it, but only to help break them up from within.

By this point, I had surrendered myself to the Continuity style and the style of the era. I found myself enjoying this two-parter unironically. There’s even more back story to tell between Knighthawk and his brother that comes out in the last issue.

The end of the series must have been sudden. There was no indication in the first five issues that this was a limited series. With the sixth issue, the cover box changed for the issue number to say “6 OF 6” instead of the previous format, which was “number X”.

To Sum It Up:


“Valeria the She-Bat” #1 was followed up by “Valeria the She-Bat” #5 before a reprint of “Valeria the She-Bat” #1 was followed by a new (or potentially the first?) printing of issue #2, but not the fifth issue which introduced the character that then starred in Windjammer’s six issue follow-up series, “Knighthawk.”

Sometimes, you have a clear and well-defined publishing plan that runs according to schedule. Other times, you wing it to survive and do the best you can. Neal Adams was definitely a battle time general in running Continuity at this time, scrambling to stay alive and keep the machine chugging along.

Post Script

I did a lot of eBay shopping for this article. I saw a lot of things. Many of them burned my eyes. But this one takes the cake.

I’ve defended CGC slabbing in the past, but I’m not going to defend someone’s decision to CGC slab all issues of Knighthawk.

eBay auction for Knighthawk series slabbed on sale

If you want to compound the mistake, you can pick up the set for $359.99 on eBay.

I’ll try not to judge, but I probably will.

Quietly.

Marvel’s Spawn Copycat

Neal Adams did what he could to save a work in progress when his partner pulled out of the production. He re-used the pages, creating a new character with some superficial similarities.

Marvel Comics, on the other hand, shamefully ripped off Spawn’s appearance to create “Nightwatch,” which is no relation to Continuity’s “Deathwatch 2000” or “Knighthawk,” but I don’t blame you for getting confused at this point.

It isn’t hard to imagine the machinations inside Marvel Editorial:

Still stinging from the departure of all the Image Comics founders and still annoyed that Marvel’s answer to Sandman in “Sleepwalker” not working out as well as hoped, another ingenious idea came out of the House of Ideas to make a character look as much like Spawn as legally allowed. Or, at least, as much as possible without triggering Todd McFarlane’s lawyers.

Ahem, I give you Nightwatch:

Nightwatch #1 cover by Ron Lim with an obvious Spawn copy

It’s so blatant that even his Wikipedia entry mentions it.

Marvel's Nightwatch has his own Wikipedia page that mentions the blatant Spawn ripoff that he is.
It’s so blatant that even the Wikipedia editors can’t deny it…

His series lasted 12 issues, only two of which are available on Comixology today. It’s the two-issue Venom story, naturally. Venom sells.

Hey, wait a second, Knighthawk had “NEMO” while Nightwatch had “VENOM.” Are my tired eyes reading too much into something here? Nightwatch #5 (the start of the Venom story) came out on June 28th. Knighthawk #1 was a May 4th release date. I would suspect Neal Adams would be commenting on Nightwatch’s Venom connection, but the timing doesn’t seem to work out. We’ll chalk that up to a funny coincidence.

Nightwatch would show up twenty years later first in a She-Hulk story, and then in the “Maximum Carnage” crossover, given his past involvement with Venom. (I looked at the preview pages on Comixology. Those were painful enough. I wasn’t about to pay money for the rest of them.)

He was also rumored to be the subject of a movie from Sony as part of their Spider-Man deal. Spike Lee’s name was in the rumor mill on that one, though he denied it when asked.

Maybe Todd McFarlane can convince Spike Lee to direct his “Spawn” movie that’s been in preproduction for so many years. We comics fans can laugh at the connection that nobody else would understand.


What do YOU think? (First time commenters' posts may be held for moderation.)

2 Comments

  1. I do remember CSN, I used to read it religiously in the early 90s as it was a free giveaway in the monthly package I was receiving from Mile High Comics back then, I found it more informative than Preview, alas one day it just went away.
    Continuity associates, as an antithesis to their name, had, shall we say an erratic publishing schedule, still gave us some gems like Skate-Man and Mr T. books, I vaguely remember Valeria, a sort of reverse Man-Bat, from the Deathwatch crossover. Yet it was always a delight to see new Adams artwork, albeit not always a win in the storytelling department.
    As you point out, those crazy covers, unrestrained art and unhinged coloring way beyond the capacity of cheap comics newsprint to render were part of the reasons I gave up on Comics at the time and went back to reading proper books without pictures in them for a while. Some indies like Terry Moore, the Hernandez brothers, Dave Sim etc brought me back later but that’s a story for another day.
    I never was a big fan of the Toddster, thought his art was just okay when inked by someone proper like Tony de Zuniga, his writing clearly wasn’t. Silvestri and Portacio were the real highlights of Image for me, as I also never understood why some people were so crazy about Jim Lee either, to me some of those guys lacked the basic foundations of what makes a good drawing. After years of Ditko, Kirby, Swan, Gil Kan, etc the 90s were a major letdown for me, especially after the big two started to emulate Image and put out a lot of utter garbage. Dark times.

  2. “Marvel’s answer to Sandman in Sleepwalker”

    …what?

    Was that an actual argument at the time?

    I loved that first year of Sleepwalker, just fun wacky superhero stuff. They lost me when he became addicted to rainbow crystal light and the art became terrible afterwards.
    But even being “dream realm” characters is a huge stretch in saying there’s anything even remotely similar between them.

    As far as Continuity goes, I never read any of it, and whatever I’d read about it in Comics Scene or whatever didn’t inspire me either. Neal Adams is one of those guys that has somehow never been on my radar as a kid mostly reading Marvel (well except at Montreal ComicCon where his table always took a whole aisle haha) altho I eventually saw his old Avengers and X-Men work.