How to Make Iconic Art, Reinvent Spider-Man, and Meet Every Deadline | Todd McFarlane

Todd McFarlane traces his path from a Canadian college baseball player who sent 700 art samples and racked up over 300 rejection letters to becoming Marvel's top-selling artist on Amazing Spider-Man. He explains the constant clashes with editors over the Comics Code and storytelling rules, which culminated in his resignation and the 1992 founding of Image Comics alongside six other star creators who walked out of Marvel together. He recounts how Venom emerged as a 'happy accident' from his desire to get Spider-Man out of the black costume, and how his rebellious 'spaghetti webbing' style became the industry's new standard. Throughout, McFarlane shares business philosophy on fighting status quo, the value of meeting deadlines, and unconventional negotiating tactics built around his 'camel bladder.'

• His solo Spider-Man book set a Guinness World Record for most sales by a single creator, and he holds the corporate and non-corporate record for a single issue by a single person.
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• The 'straw that broke the camel's back' was an absurd Comics Code dispute over stabbing The Juggernaut in the eye; he resigned days before becoming a father for the first time.
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• Image Comics began as a conversation between McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and Erik Larsen about doing their own books, then grew to seven creators including Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri.
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• By the time the seven founders walked into Marvel, they collectively accounted for 44 of the top 50 best-selling comics that year out of roughly 6,000 titles.
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• Venom was a 'happy accident' born from McFarlane's plan to strip Spider-Man's black alien costume and put it on a new villain so he could draw the classic red-and-blue suit.
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• Everything Marvel told him not to do on Spider-Man is now mandatory: aspiring artists at Marvel must draw Spider-Man in the Todd McFarlane style.
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• Marvel's stock dropped the day after the Image founders quit, and CNN reported on the walkout.
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• McFarlane attended college on a Pac-10 baseball scholarship and was one of only two players on his 25-man team to graduate with a degree in four years.
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• He sent roughly 700 samples to every editor at every company over four years, bypassing the single submission editor, and got his first job three weeks before graduating.
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• He cites Frank Miller as the best storyteller in the industry, arguing storytelling matters more than flashy linework.
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• Living on a remote Canadian island pre-internet, he sometimes ran down the airport tarmac to throw his pages onto a prop plane to Vancouver to meet deadlines.
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• His current biggest book, Batman/Spawn, was going to print Monday with only 8 of 48 pages written on the Friday of the interview.
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• Spawn is the longest-running creator-owned comic book at issue 335, over 30 years, and Image has been the number-three publisher for 30 consecutive years.
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• He was inspired to protect his characters after reading how Jack 'King' Kirby, co-creator of Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Spider-Man's costume, got the short end of the stick.
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• His 'camel bladder' is a negotiating weapon: he signed autographs from 7am to midnight without moving, and outlasts opponents in hot, stuffy negotiation rooms until their bladders force concessions.
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• His first Marvel job was an obscure backup feature in Steve Englehart's Coyote; he got a steady DC book (Infinity, Inc.) only because another artist died from an allergic reaction to unpasteurized milk.
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• Editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco accidentally named McFarlane's signature 'spaghetti webbing' while angrily ordering him to stop drawing it.
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