If you’re a fan of the site’s podcast then I’m sure that you’ve heard an episode of the CBMFP Toolbox in which Kevin and I “fix” a character. Here’s the deal, we all know that characters that have been around forever end up with a lot of baggage and that’s what were here to take care of. Sometimes we’ll give you a crazy storyline that would put that character up against odds that they’ve never seen before and other times we’ll just rebuild the character from the ground up and ignore their entire past. Hell it could end up being something as simple as killing a supporting character; we’ll see how it goes in this new weekly feature. Today I’m going to take a crack at Spawn. The thing about Spawn is that I really like the series and character, but in its 230+ issues it’s become just as bad as pre-reboot DC and current the Marvel U. Spawn is carrying a lot of baggage and has had more retcons than I can count. Remember the time that God and Satan were Wanda’s twins and they kept stabbing each other with sharp objects and then basically Spawn killed them to seal off Heaven and Hell… yeah that’s what I’m talking about.
The problem here is that you can’t just reboot the series. It’s not exactly old enough and only the core fans have been following it for the entirety of its run. If you take it back to the beginning you’ll just be delivering the same story that most people already know: Al Simmons becomes a Hellspawn in order to see his wife again, etc, etc. Well if you can’t reboot it and there’s too much baggage to really do anything with it the way it is other than stay the course… what do you do? Now what I’m about to say is going to piss a lot of people off or at the very least get some eye rolls.
Make it a comedy.
Yeah that’s right, a comedy. The thing about Spawn is that the series is always serious. When there is a joke it’s usually very demented and dark, but otherwise the series is 100% serious all of the time. You can argue that Clown provides comedic relief, but again… it’s twisted humor. It’s not like Spawn is running down the street and stubs his toe and calls off the chase and hobbles off pissed off because of his toe.
Now with this idea you don’t have to reboot the series, but that is an option. Think about the possibilities with starting over in the world of Spawn and returning Al Simmons to the role of Hellspawn, but now he’s a clumsy idiot. Instead of being a skilled warrior, maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity and they grabbed the wrong Al Simmons. Once Hell discovers the error they send the Hellspawn to kill the Al Simmons they wanted, but wrong-Simmons gets his ass kicked. The problem is they can’t void his contract until they have a replacement for the suit because the suit will become useless and they don’t want that. When wrong-Al Simmons discovers this he goes on the run from Hell.
At this point you can introduce the angels and Heaven as he’s likely to run into them. It turns out that even though he’s a bumbling idiot, he’s pretty good at deflecting angels and so he just ends up pissing them off more with his antics.
Just imagine him hanging out in dumpster alley and whiny about having to eat worms and maggots for dinner. The entire time he’s just talking about eating a cronut or some shit and trying to make the suit turn into nice clothing so he can walk in public. Really if you need a better visual picture Quantum & Woody plus Deadpool, but in the world of Spawn. This time around though, Clown is the straight-man. He must be because that’s the only way that he’s funny. Spawn can constantly ask him why he’s called “Clown” and each time he just sighs and waits for him to leave.
I’m telling you, if you want new readership the best thing to do with Spawn is take it in the opposite direction. Make it funny and develop an entirely new line of toys and merchandise for the character… after building an audience. As a Spawn fan I would definite read a series like this… and I would totally write it as well if approached. What do you think? Would you buy a comedic Spawn series or do you have a different way to fix Spawn?
Thanks for reading and stop by next week to see what’s new in the Comic Bastards Toolbox.