HBO's 3-Season Fantasy Masterpiece Delivers A Masterclass In Adapting A Comic Book
Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.
Todd McFarlane has been trying to get a new adaptation of his Spawn comics off the ground since 2015. After the crushing disappointment of the 1997 adaptation, McFarlane insisted on writing and directing the reboot himself, which is why it’s taken so long to get off the ground. Jamie Foxx has been cast to play the eponymous antihero Al Simmons, Jason Blum has been set as the producer, and McFarlane’s script has been rewritten into fighting shape by Brian Tucker, Scott Silver, Malcolm Spellman, and Matthew Mixon.
Now, the script is ready to go — with the fancy new title King Spawn — and it’s just waiting for all the pieces to come together. Foxx’s schedule needs to clear up, Blumhouse needs to find room in its schedule, and the stars have to align for Hollywood to see a Spawn movie as financially lucrative. After the unprecedented billion-dollar success of the R-rated Joker movie in 2019, Hollywood mobilized on the Spawn movie, but it never came to fruition, and now, the Joker sequel has set a precedent in the other direction.
We may never get to see McFarlane’s long-gestating Spawn movie, but we don’t have to put up with the 1997 film, either. Whether McFarlane gets his Spawn film off the ground or not, we did already get a perfect on-screen adaptation of this character in Spawn: The Animated Series.
Spawn: The Animated Series Is An Underrated HBO Gem
HBO’s Spawn animated series remains one of the best (and most underrated) comic book adaptations. The cartoon aired on HBO from 1997 to 1999, then reran on Cartoon Network’s Toonami programming block in Japan. Spawn was a key part of HBO’s brief push into adult-oriented animation. Gateway animes like Cowboy Bebop and One Piece had popularized Japanese animation in the West, and Spawn brought the dark, violent tropes of those stories into an American-made cartoon.
Spawn was the first of two adult animated shows (alongside Ralph Bakshi’s sci-fi anthology series Spicy City) to premiere on HBO in 1997. They were both produced under HBO’s short-lived animation division, but Spawn was a co-production with Todd McFarlane Entertainment. The Spawn series stars Keith David as the title character, with some veritable screen legends in tiny supporting roles: Ming-Na Wen, Robert Forster, James Hong, Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Unfortunately, when it hit the airwaves, it was overshadowed by the dreadful Spawn movie that came out in the summer of 1997. If the movie had been well-received, it would’ve given the animated series a huge boost — imagine if the first season of Batman: The Animated Series had been ready to go in the summer of 1989 — but it wasn’t. In fact, the Spawn movie was so poorly received (it’s truly one of the worst superhero movies ever made) that it soured the entire brand overnight.
Spawn: The Animated Series Is A Perfect Adaptation Of The Comic
The 1997 Spawn movie tried to sanitize everything that makes the comic stand out. Spawn is one of the darkest, weirdest superhero comics out there, but the movie tried to make those pieces fit into the framework of a safe, conventional superhero blockbuster, and it just didn’t work. Spawn: The Animated Series, on the other hand, let its freak flag fly, and captured what makes the comics so fun and unique.
The violence is a bit graphic in some spots, and the deliberately unresolved cliffhanger is a bit frustrating. But, on the whole, this series gets everything right: the dark tone, the moral complexity, stunning animation, strong voice performances, and a brilliant musical score. It beautifully channels the spirit of the Spawn comics, and it’s just a great horror cartoon in its own right. Visually, Spawn: The Animated Series has more in common with Heavy Metal than a standard superhero show.
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