I just recently got the large hardcover book THE ART OF TODD MCFARLANE: THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS. It was expensive, but worth it, IMO. It’s a great look into the career of McFarlane and the development of his artwork over the years. I was sort of a backward fan of Todd McFarlane, in that I pretty much quite comic-books when he was first making his mark, so I missed his original run on Spider-Man. It was the formation of IMAGE COMICS that brought me back to the fold, and after reading SPAWN #1, I became a fan, and began looking up and buying the back issues of McFarlane’s Spider-Man. Looking through his art, it made me wonder about what a Spider-Man/Spawn crossover could be.

While it’s true that the SPAWN comic-book has lost most of its original popularity, what once was the #1 selling title in the country was #83 in Dec., I think this is a crossover that many fans would still be interested in, provided that McFarlane himself was doing the interior art. If not him, I think it would have to be some other artist who was really big. Years ago, Joe Quesada was really interested in doing this crossover, and challenged McFarlane, saying he would draw one for Marvel, and McFarlane could draw one for Image, to see which one was best. While I think Quesada is a fantastic artist, and his return to interior artwork would also inspire fan-excitement for the book, I think McFarlane would be the biggest news, due to his experience with both characters.

Likewise, for the writer, I think Brian Michael Bendis is the obvious choice. I’m not that big of a fan of his, I find much of his work to be a bit too decompressed, but he happens to be one of, if not THE, biggest names in the business right now, and used to write for Todd McFarlane, and has written the Ultimate version of Spider-Man for many years now. So I’m sure he could craft a decent story (I’d be buying it for the art, anyway).

As for the story, I think the natural villain would be VENOM, due to it being a symbiotic costume, like Spawn’s. Perhaps Spawn’s enemy THE CLOWN seeks him out, and convinces Venom to commit some crimes while impersonating Spawn, which causes Spider-Man to attempt to hunt down Spawn and bring him to justice, and the two heroes fight until the realize that they’ve been set-up and then go after the villains.

Unfortunately, it seems pretty clear that Todd McFarlane has lost all interest in ever drawing Spider-Man again, the odds of him even drawing Spawn on a regular basis are rare, so I doubt this would happen. But what if?