Spawn

[Forever Knight]

Nice. It'll make a nice Birthday gift for me along with the Geoff Johns GL Vol 1 Omnibus & JL: Throne of Atlantis Blu-ray!.

[Forever Knight]

#250 tomorrow!

[HellsRider]

Yep. Also posting the remaining covers for 250 so folks know what to look out for. We've seen Todd's, Capullo's, and Skottie's and here are the rest.

Jock - we've actually seen this one, but just didn't know it.



Sean Murphy - Looks really nice!



Philip Tan - a nice use of 250 on the cover.



Also know that sketch covers for Jock's, Capullo's, and Skottie's covers will also be available.

[Forever Knight]

That last one looks incredible.

[HellsRider]

Just a heads up, all 250 issues of Spawn are now available digitally!

[HellsRider]

So got all the covers. While I like Jock's, as the only wrappable cover I feel like more could have been done with it. Sean Murphy's really nice with little details like Sam & Twitch near the cop car or Malebolgia, Violator, and Overt-kill in the diner. Tan's really interesting and probably the most appropriate out of all the covers with some symbiote stuff in the background and the 250 made up of worms and such. Capullo's is a good old fashion Spawn cover, Todd's is really disappointing since Tan makes a better use of 250 on the cover and expected more from him, and Skottie is a nice little humor cover though would have liked a Kudranski cover instead to end it all.

Read through the issue and initial impression and gif response:



This is terrible. Really really terrible. More thoughts as I digest this.

[Forever Knight]

How bad can it be?

[Rajikaru]

Not worth 6 variant covers, I can tell you that. 225 and 250 have to be the most worst anniversary issues of all time in the Spawn run.

Bring on 251 and fresh direction!

[HellsRider]

How bad can it be?

I could write entire pages worth of how bad this is issue is, but I'll boil down 59 pages worth of story in three sentences. The infestation plot with the numbers are 5,7,1 which some combination of those numbers represent the time Jim woke up, the department number Al was in, ties into patient 47, the fingerprints plot with Sam & Twitch, among other disparate plot points that Todd pulls out of his ass to answer without any build up. Jim and the symbiote continue their struggle which is so boring. Issue ends with the Symbiote, Jim, and all of the infestation gone like nothing ever happened and Al coming back because the numbers also mean L I V. The end.

Remember this is supposed to end the Jim Downing story and it does a terrible job at it. How is it that this is Spawn's biggest issue ever and Todd basically triples down on the filler like never before? We don't need constant reminders about how bad the infestation is or following up with the mayor or news channels who has time for that for multiple pages and makes for a terrible, slow, and dull opening. What about Haunt? What about all the heavenly forces? What about Cog? Remember the Lesson that Jim is supposed to teach everyone back in 200 that Al mentioned? Nothing on that. What about Bludd? What about the CIA? What about Clown and Hel? Oh they get one page and one page only that amounts to nothing. How does Jim know not to trust Susan out of the blue? Why are their so many narration boxes that either amount to nothing or just lazily wrap up a character? How is it that now we discover that the police have connected the fact that Jim heals people and they either died or disappeared? Could that not have been a great plot point to work over that can involve Jim's celebrity, Curse (before he was offed), and Haunt?

Art-wise its a mess too. As the issue progresses the art, specifically the color palette, gets brighter and brighter to make the transition to the final page which is done by Jonboy Meyers. The problem is that Kudranski's art works better with darkness and lighting taken into account so by introducing a far more colorful palette that doesn't do those things the art comes off dull and in many instances either unfinished (the one page that contains Clown you can barely tell its him) or feel like Todd stepped in several times which makes no sense given the delays. Their is one splash page I will give credit though which involves Spawn/Jim crashing into a building. Its done very well with the panel structure, but other than that the art doesn't work here and I'm still not convinced that Jonboy is the right person to be on Spawn but we'll see how the one shot turns out.

Todd's mentioned when Wood was on that he can use as much or as little of the 250 issues of Spawn as he wants and I would believe the same is extended to Jenkins so its unclear where Jenkins is taking the book since we haven't heard anything about his direction so its up in the air if we'll see some characters again or plot points revisited some of which can't because Jim and his uniqueness are gone now and goes his celebrity storyline, the Vatican storyline, all the forces looking to use Jim as a conduit to either Hell or Heaven, Hel becoming more powerful which didn't last long, and more. It would have been nice and actually crucial if their was a small interview with Jenkins about his direction at the end of this issue especially since he supposedly has a two year plan already.

The biggest offense of all is that Jim's entire story amounts to nothing. Their is no final take away or lasting legacy that we can remember Jim by. All in all, the Jim Downing experiment was a failure and like the infestation plot should be swiped under the rug like it never happened.

[Rajikaru]

I can get behind sweeping the last 50+ issues under the rug. After Hine left, the past five years on the book sucked.

Still not digging Venom-mouth Spawn....

[Jack00]

Well, I sure as shit i'm glad this issue is over because it sucked. Like 2/3 of the comic was explaining how bugs were invading NY ? Jeez we get it already. And may I point we still don't have any answers as to why Al killed himself ? "Maybe he was just tired of both" That's it ? really ??? And who/how/why is Jim got into all this ??? Fuck this guy, he sucked since the very first panel he appeared in. Also I've never been a fan of Kudranski, that guy can't draw backgrounds worth a damn but this was just awful.
Anywho, only good thing is that we can look forward to a whole new direction for Spawn, pretty sure anyone can do better than what we had for the last 2 years (or has it been 3 years now? ).

[ViewtifulJC]

This book showed up on Comixology, and I looked up Spawn #200 preview pages randomly

holy hell the writing...the art....its like some early 90s superhero comic

like yo, people still make comics like this unironically in the 21st century????

[HellsRider]

Well, I sure as shit i'm glad this issue is over because it sucked. Like 2/3 of the comic was explaining how bugs were invading NY ? Jeez we get it already. And may I point we still don't have any answers as to why Al killed himself ? "Maybe he was just tired of both" That's it ? really ??? And who/how/why is Jim got into all this ??? Fuck this guy, he sucked since the very first panel he appeared in. Also I've never been a fan of Kudranski, that guy can't draw backgrounds worth a damn but this was just awful.
Anywho, only good thing is that we can look forward to a whole new direction for Spawn, pretty sure anyone can do better than what we had for the last 2 years (or has it been 3 years now? ).

Well we've had Jim since 185 and that came out in 2008 so about 7 years now.

I think what disgusted me a bit with the bugs and Jim/Spawn fighting each other, was Todd's use of comparing to 9/11 multiple times to sell the threat of this. Like really? That is length you have to go to sell a threat by constantly mentioning 9/11? Give me a break. And the numbers were like a bad Stephen King novel.

As to why Jim was involved at all (outside of a marketing reason) in storyline in issue 200, their was a conversation that Jim and Al had before Al offed himself and Jim awoke from his coma. In that conversation, Jim was a part of the Legion and Al freed the Legion but Jim stayed. Al freed them because he wanted the Legion's freedom so all the souls can find their own meaning. Jim stayed because he felt that if another soul came to the sanctuary, that Al, Jim, and the Legion were in, that that soul would be in complete isolation and he couldn't let that happen (nevermind the fact that its impossible for a new soul not related to the Legion to be there making Jim's decision entirely stupid and just a means for which the story to continue).

[Forever Knight]

Haven't read it yet but I am not enjoying reading the sentence "Sweeping under the rug".... That better not be the case. I hope you guys are just overeacting or something otherwise I'll snap.

I'm gonna go into this thinking AL IS BACK and that'll hopefully help.

[TheObsessor]

I actually really liked Jim starting out, and Endgame was actually really readable (I don't know if readable can be considered a compliment....), but his arc lasted SO long. Plus he basically ended up just whining all the time, same as Al always did. They had a shot at writing a main character that wasn't a completely unrelatable, unsympathetic moron, and they failed.
And as for what figures they need to make, I really want a decent Freak figure, and PLEASE make one of Suture. They need to bring her back.