Todd McFarlane is an artist who has received quite a bit of criticism and ire for being a hack and a sell-out from many of my contemporaries and fellow students in college.Okay, here's the deal. Let's say you created a character and suddenly someone backed up to your house with a dump truck filled with money and gave you the opportunity to make millions on both your character as well as toys, would you turn it down?
And it's enough to not only pay all your bills but enough so you never have to worry about work again. EVER!! Would you suddenly say, "Go away! I have my convictions!!" and turn it down?
Good for you if you can do that. I surely couldn't!! And I don't blame McFarlane for doing the same when the opportunity arose.
With that said, I found myself flipping through my dusty old collection of his Spider-Man/Venom story arc and I found myself less than impressed with his art style at 34 than I was at 18. I remember thinking how dynamic his bendy-wendy version of Spider-Man was and how unique his style was.
Now, not so much.
And his artwork on Batman: Year Two was for the most part just awful. I say for the most part because he did have some really good panels and designs for Batman in parts of the story. But I think a lot of that had to do with a really bad inker. A terrible inker can ruin a fairly decent penciler.
Still, I would not be so bold to say McFarlane is a terrible artist. Surprisingly enough, I liked his artwork on Spawn/Batman which he did with Frank Miller way back in the dark days of Photoshop coloring and letter.
But I just don't find his style as pleasing as I did when I was a young kid.
However, you cannot criticize the quality of his toy line. He set the bar pretty damn high when he first put out his line of Action Figures. This was during a time when toys itself had gotten cheaper and lazier looking. The stuff he produced was amazing. And he continues to produce great stuff with his movie, comic and sports collectibles. And now there's a ton of collectibles on the market from other companies thanks to McFarlane.
I suppose it's easy for most of us to criticize someone who has reached success and is making his millions calling him a sell-out.
But just come back to me the day you get that phone call offering you millions and tell me you stuck by your artistic morals or not.
