McFarlane’s Maniacs

Over at Now Playing Magazine, the site had a chance to sit down and have a chat with the man behind Spawn, Todd McFarlane, to discuss toys, toys, and more Spawn (got ya!)

First up was the topic of the figures McFarlane Toys is currently working on based on the TV series ‘Lost’, and how the deal to do the figures came to fruition. “It’s been in the works for a long time,” says McFarlane. “What took probably the longest time was getting to the point where we could actually say it out loud. But we knew with the deadlines that we had, and when we wanted to get the product out, that we were just gonna have to work through contracts on the fly and then just make the formal announcement whenever it was appropriate for ABC to give us that okay. So, we’ve been at it artistically for easily three, almost four months now.”

The next topic of discussion was McFarlane’s aquisition of Miracleman, which has been in a rights battle for some time with Neil Gaiman, who was the last writer to work on the comic. Todd claims that he now owns the character, and that he and Neil have ironed out their differences, and are now in the process of trying to develop the character for the present audience. Speaking of comics, when asked whether he would get back into the area that put his name on the map, Todd stated that while he doesn’t have any plans to do anything regular for the present time, he is working on the Spawn/Batman crossover set to hit later this summer.

Lastly, the topic of one of McFarlane Toys’ flagship lines of figures in Movie Maniacs came up, with Todd being asked if there were any plans to revisit the series, which has been in decline ever since the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR-themed wave. “It went a little bit dormant for us because I thought that we were sort of getting past the A list and into the A- and into the B. I mean the longer you go, you start dipping lower, if you will. Some of them that you put on the B, C lists are cool visually, so you could sell them. But, if you just say you’re going put a gun to your head and say, “We’re gonna put six out every year or every six months,” I mean, you start burning through the good ones.”

As for plans to revisit the series (which has now been copied and in some ways surpassed by companys like NECA), McFarlane says that “a couple of cool things” have comeout in the last couple of years that he’d be interested in visiting. To read the entire article, head on over here.