• Holy cow, that's awesome. Spawn's been kickin' butt since Hine started the book, and having him as the villain is ballsome.

• I haven't read Spawn in YEARS, but I'll still stand up for it. The early issues were extemely well written and drawn, and this is common in most of the Image titles, WildCATS, etc. Yes, Marvel is good at what they do but their fans seem to gravitate mainly to their crappiest titles. X-Men, puhlease.

• I thought Al Simmons was the guy from KISS...

• Awesome. Comic book companies are now following the lead of pro wrestling (like when WCW turned Hogan heel waaaay back in the day, and made bundles of cash as a result). Always thought Spawn would be cooler as a villain anyway.

• You left out the only thing that was interesting to me. Each creator is drawing their own characters throughout the story. It's a strangely mainstream comics jam. I think Erik Larsen does layouts, each does their own pencils and inks, and then Mcfarlane comes in to do backgrounds and clean up. Pretty clever. Too bad they all draw the same anyway. I miss the Maxx.

• I guess the above ad is significant to the Image/Spawn fanboys, but to everyone else, it's meaningless. Honestly, when I read that "Al Simmons Returns" blurb, I thought they meant some revered writer/artist was coming back for a stint.

• Hold on, didn't this crossover happen already, with the same plot point, too? It was also written by Alan Moore, even.

• <i>dont lie, you all liked spawn too</i> Um no, not really; so speak for yourself. After years as a rabid fanboy, I finally burned out on *all* these superpowered idiots running around in their underwear about the time Claremont finally left the X-men franchise, and that was fully a decade before Image was even formed. And, while I don't want every comic to look like it was written by Art Spiegelman either, there is just so much more you can do with this graphic art medium than use it as a lame depiction of the WWF. Show me something new that hasn't already been done with superheroes. Then you might convince me the whole genre isn't anything more than a rehash of the same decades-old crap. This move is just more of the same. *yawn*

• I love all the people rushing to defend the house that poor anatomy built. Spawn was a pretty shitty comic that depended on speculators buying multiple copies. These days it's just an ad for action figures that aren't posable and come pre-broken. For all of you defending them,I have a one word reply. LIEFELD. There's no response to that,really. You can list a bunch of titles with "indie cred" all day long,but LIEFELD. Like it or not,no matter how far Image distances themselves from their "image" (pun intended) the majority of comics fans are going to remember them as that 90's company that put out a shitload of XTREME NINETIES I HAVE BIG GUN garbage. It's funny that one of you mentioned "slamming a dew" since I can easily picture Todd or Rob chugging a couple Red Bulls before they sit down to draw some guns n' titties for their new CROSSOVER WITH A 'TUDE BRO! Will this series have chromium covers?

• Simmons killed himself by obliterating his own head with green Hell powers or something. jumper11: Spawn was given teeth under Brian Holguin's run when Todd had little to do with the series

• "They are publishing Invincible and The Walking Dead. Two of the best titles out there. For fucks sake." Damn right. Kirkman is the savior of Image as far as I'm concerned.

• Al Simmons blew his brains out with a pistol, not a shotgun. And he was alive at the time, not dead.

• i think this is cool. dont lie, you all liked spawn too

• For the unlearned (or out of the loop, or maybe just don't pay attention to the business end of comics), Dark Horse and Image are constantly bouncing back and forth between 3rd and 4th position as publishers. But Dark Horse is not doing so hot lately if the Diamond Summit presentations are any indication. They have few strong properties of their own, take away the countless Buffyverse and Star Wars and Alien/Predator franchises and the benefits of all their combined merchandise to keep them afloat. IDW and other publishers like BOOM are following suit when possible. Image has all original titles all the time. They do not pay their artists page rates or cut deals. In the end, Image itself only takes around ten percent of the money the book makes and this is all they need to keep their company running. It may seem like a strange idea but Image is resilient and flexible. They are not going to go away. They publish new original titles constantly in almost every genre you can think of. Making blanket statements as to the quality of the output of the company as a whole is, frankly, only telling of your short-sightedness and biased (or ignorant) disposition. Like your other publishers all you want (remember where Bendis, Fraction and Hickman made big impressions?), but don't be in such a hurry to point out how little you understand about the comic book industry.

• Obvious troll is obvious. Hey guys, you know whats cool?! Like, going into a discussion about Image Comics or something, and just like, saying that they're floundering or drowning or going out of business or desperate! Yeah! Even though, you know, you probably don't know anything about the books they publish or the fact that the creators own and get all the money the books make! Whoo! Fuck Image! All their books suck and are shitty! But I wouldn't know! Cause I don't read them! But they're all the same! Probably! I'm gonna go slam a Dew and please don't make rag on the comics publisher I like with more or less completely made up observations and ill-informed judgements while I'm gone!

• It's called a "desperate measure". Hey. Marvel turned Iron Man into a major villain. And DC did it with Hal Jordan/Green Lantern. The difference is people GIVE A SHIT about Iron Man and Green Lantern. Todd's toy company is 90% underwater and the founders of Image are right there with him (except for Jim Lee who took a big paycheck from Time/Warner). This is them trying to be relevant. That's why they got Kirkman. To give it some legitimacy. Bit it's still a turd wrapped in a piece of crap... like all their Image books. They're dead, Jim. Stick a fork in them and go read some Dark Horse comics!

• Remember when Spawn was something we cared about? What was that, 1996?

• Is it just me,or is anyone else starting to actually feel a little nolstalgic for nineties bullshit? I mean,yeah,Spawn was pretty stupid in retrospect,but I have a feeling Secret Invasion or Civil War or whatever is going to seem pretty damn stupid in a few years.

• Hal Jordan has been there and done that.

• Now Spawn has teeth. A black and white symbiote with teeth... big white eyes... seems like something a dude named Mcfarlane drew years ago!

• Anyone that thinks Image is going down is simply dumb. Like Some people on here have said Invincible and Walking Dead are amazing. Wolfman is good (it comes out monthly now but issue 25 will be its last. Other good series such as Chew and Firebreather are good as well. Hell Chew is selling out everywhere every issue, Issues 1 and too had 5 printings. And if you check out trade paperback sales Walking Dead was number one in August and Invincible was number 3. Sorry I'm just a big Image fan and a big Robert Kirkman fan. http://www.slycomics.com/

• Well, Marvel made every last single one of it's Heroes evil at least once . . DC did something like this with Superman once too. Also, Green Lantern becoming Parallax and more or less destroying the entire universes i think . .

• &#64;Dan Mac Beat me to it. Turning Hal Jordan into a world conquering villain sounds about the same as this.

• my first thought was onslaught as well.

• I'm no Spawn expert - I read the first 10 or so issues - but it seems like it was always implied that Al Simmons Spawn would eventually turn, lead the armies of hell and such. Makes sense to me that he would eventually become a villain.

• &#64;Doombot: Bomb Queen is the shit, you back the hell offa her. Jimmie Robinson writes/draws a fun read.

• Hu... interesting. I have the first 80 or so Spawns... lost interest however long ago that was (what, 15ish years). But to make him the big baddie might be interesting. I haven't collected comics much in a long time but that one might be worth picking up the first few to see how it looks...

• "I also would love the idea of Superman going bad and taking on the Justice League. DC and Marvel could take a clue from Image." Um, maybe I'm an old fogey but doesn't anyone remember when Professor X went ape shit and turned into Onslaught? That was some serious bad-assery on Marvel's part.

• It could be an interesting plot point, turning there most recognizable hero into the main villain. I haven't read Spawn since around issue 14 or so, but when I first read about Al Simmons (supposedly) dying and a new Spawn taking over the title, right then and there I thought, "It's too sudden and too neat...they have something in mind." Guess I was right.

• If he comes back and kills Bomb Queen for good, All will be well

• This is actually pretty huge since Image has always been on the basis that the creators own their own work (the impetus for the Image label and the attraction that it would be the owners, not corporate suits, that would own the creations) and also led to problems when there were crossovers (Spawn/WildC.A.T.S.), references(Chapel being the one that killed Al Simmons, which soon had to be retconned), and new characters introduced by other creators (Neil Gaiman created Cogliostro, and therefore belong to him, but was in the Spawn universe). The fact that they can get their ducks in a row to do a company wide cross-over is exciting.

• Yeah, I couldn't give ashit about Spawn, but Image has been publishing quality titles for years. Superheroes are really only a minor part of its output, and few of those titles have anything to do with the characters or style created at the companies inception (save this crossover). Aside from the excellent Walking Dead, you've got Ministry of Space, Girls, Barry Ween, Phonogram, Casanova, Fear Agent, Fell, Amazing Joy Buzzards, Rocketo, Red Star, Elephantmen, Chew and Proof, all of which are critically acclaimed non-superhero titles. And for that crowd you've still got Powers (now at Marvel), Godland, Ultra, Jack Staff, Invincible and Noble Causes, all of which take place outside of the original Image Universe and are great.

• This sounds excellent. I haven't read Spawn since back in the day when McFarlane was still penciling. I love that they would have him succumb to the evil. I also would love the idea of Superman going bad and taking on the Justice League. DC and Marvel could take a clue from Image.

• I take it a huge lot of you have no fucking idea what you are talking about when you claim that Image sucks. They are publishing Invincible and The Walking Dead. Two of the best titles out there. For fucks sake.

• From a sales standpoint, Image is in the top 4 publishers. Kirkman has been pushing for Image to have its own "universe" like Marvel and DC. But there seems to be a rift between readers, those that don't read Image still think of it as "Spawn sucks" or all style and no-substance. In the last decade, Image has done a lot, mostly thanks to Kirkman. Walking Dead is amazing, Invincible is probably one of, if not the, best superhero comics out there. Astounding Wolf-Man isn't bad (though comes out far too irregularly) and Dynamo5 is a great superhero series. It's about time the pieces are coming together. Oh, and Al Simmons killed himself with his hellspawn power and then Jim Downing became the new Spawn.

• <i>...I admire Image's balls in taking their first and best-known hero and transforming him into the biggest villain of their universe</i> Yeah, not at all like Hal Jordan in Emerald Twilight. Well, before DC decided to retrofix Parallax into an alien life form (facepalm).

• DC did do that. superman prime in infinite crisis

• I think this is more like if DC turned Hal Jordan or J'onn J'onzz evil. Oh, wait.

• Never read Spawn, but I find this a interesting info. As for Image sucking, I love Walking Dead, Invincible, (early) Brit, Chew is nice too, and Haunt is interesting for now, despite being a Spider-Man knockoff design-wise... Anyway, I wouldn't say that Image sucks... For me, IDW is worse, aside from occasional Silent Hill comics I'm not interested at their comics at all...

• &#64;Jxn: He's a comic book character. Every comic book character worth mentioning has died, come back, died, come back and died again thousands of times over the years. Technically they're all zombies anyhow.

• This really is a desperate move by Image to regain it's glory from whence they first started. But I agree that it is way to late as well. They are never going to run with the big boys of DC or Marvel. Hell, Darkhorse or IDW is a bigger comic book entity than Image is right now. Image had it's day. Now nobody cares. My local comic shop carries a few Image titles, but even he admits they aren't big sellers. He carries them strictly for the few people who request them.

• Didn't they do this back in the 90's..Wildcats/Spawn miniseries had an alternate future where Spawn defeats Malebolgia and used his newfound powers to conquer the world to become the Ipsissimus (sp?)...future Wildcats had to go back in time to get the help of Spawn to defeat his future self...

• Despite most of Images comics being complete and utter shit, there's been some decent ones to come out. Most of them however, are not superhero comics. And this one certainly won't do anything for them...Spawn has and always will suck.

• It's like going All-in in a poker tourney with a handful of chips left. You'd think this is a big move, but it is way to late to have impact. When I heard this, I didn't first think, "Wow, Spawn is back ..." I thought "What is the solvency of Image like?" This seems like a floundering last gasp to me.

• How does a dead guy kill himself? Just asking.

TotalComments: 45