I think I may have been turned off to checking it out by the movie adaption, as well as MacFarlane's terrible taste in music.

But is there substance to the series apart from its artwork and general style?

Though, in retrospect, that might be because I was also a huge fan of Venom.

quote:

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Norim Stumpfighter was naked while typing this:
the animated series or the movies?

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The comic, or I guess the animated series if that's a good one.

I wanted to cry.

The only other exposure I've had to the charecter is Soul Caliber 2 though.

quote:

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Stiddy attempted to be funny by writing:
I guess the animated series if that's a good one.

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As far as PrimeTime dramatic animated series goes... MTV's Adaptation of "The Maxx" owned HBO's "Spawn" in the ass.

McFarlane is great in the concept and design department, but his characters fail and all his stories end up falling apart and becoming huge messes. They usually start out freaking badass, but then just end up a bunch of trash.

Spawn, like his stint on SpiderMan, suffer this syndrome. Pure awesomesauce begining... Then.. wtf, craptacular fiesta after that.

Spawn as a flat out awesome premise, origins and all... Then just goes nowhere ending up in a mess.

Deth is the resident comics guru though, I gave up on the series in the late 90's, so he probably has more input than that.

See...so long as McFarlane had to keep up with the other writers, there was a context for Spawn to function in. He had to keep up with other characters, especially because the character who ORIGINALLY killed him, Chapel, was a character owned by another Artist/owner (Rob Liefeld) and was for a long time showing up in his own series, as well as one of the flagship series from Image (Youngblood). When Image started to break down, references to other characters had to be retconned (Chapel, which was hinted at all through the early issues by Spawn's proclivity for sitting on Church chapels, had to become "Priest").

Then there was the under-use or mis-use of characters. The Angela character in particular actually suffered more when she got her own miniseries, and a pseudo-duplicate (Tiffany) showed up later. Violator likewise suffered.

When the live action movie came out, it was McFarlane spreading his multimedia wings. Unfortunately, they didn't unfurl properly. McFarlane does apparently intend to do a new live action movie ("the right way" he says). But the live action movie was horrible. The HBO series was pretty good, but it really only rehashed the early issues when the writing was good.

Most of the comic has degenerated into dramatic poses, which McFarlane's always been good at. Story stinks, especially as he tried to make it more complex (and only succeeded in making it more convoluted) and philosophical (now preachy and in a lot of ways anti-religious)