I'm Josh Liston from on the Bubble.
Podcast, an oral history of television fandom.
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Just like the show you're checking out now. Shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other awesome, geeky shows@Gunageeknetwork.com. and welcome to Play comics, where once again, we're here looking at a video game based on a comic and how well it represents that source material. Today, I am so happy because I still have not read enough spawn, but I have some guests here who can kind of take care of that. I've got Pierce and George from spawnography.
What's up, Chris? Thanks so much for having us. This is George, by the way.
Hey, Chris. Thanks so much for having us. This is Pierce.
Basically, we can say that I have read the spawn issues for all of the episodes that you have released episodes for.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah.
That means you're in for a kind of fun one, I guess. Next.
Yeah, I think we've got some good ones coming up. We're going to cover Batman and Spawn. We're going to cover some pretty cool issues that are coming up. And it's been a fun process of digging into those issues ourselves.
I know we don't need to worry too much about the history of Spawn, but we don't want to completely ignore it either, because the other Spawn episodes have gotten deep into the weeds of Todd McFarlane grabbing all of his closest friends and going to start image.
I think the thing that's most interesting about Spawn as a comic, though, is that you're seeing the evolution of Todd McFarlane, both as a businessman and a comics creator. So Spahn is past all that. Once he's settled with all that, he's already creating Spawn, and he's taking elements from other comics he's already created. Like, you can see visual elements that he brought out in Spider man and even in his Infinity incorporated run. And in a way, he's kind of always been drawing spawn since he created him when he was, like, 16. So now when you actually talk about what the issues are, we're learning more about comics along with Todd, and in that it's kind of interesting to analyze the way they're made, also how they spin out into things like video games. So I'm excited to get into that today, too.
Yeah, I think one of the things that's really crucial about Todd as a creator is that once he removes himself from the big two is that he looks at what they did and he goes, I can do it too. And video games are very much a part of that. Movie is obviously very much a part of that as well, unfortunately. I mean, action figures as well. And so, to varying degrees of success, of course. But the fact that he's able to do it is kind of crazy. And I think that that's what a lot of our show is about, is examining this thing that is, weirdly, an artifact of the nineties that continues until today through force of will. And Todd's force of Will is pretty strong. So, really fun.
Do you think that Todd could ever let spawn die?
Well, you haven't gotten to that. Yeah. How do you mean it?
I was thinking as a concept, but I also enjoyed the ambiguity of delivery.
Fair enough. Well, as a character, in different ways a few times, but as a concept, I think as long as there's a Todd, there's going to be a spawn. In kind of the way that as long as there's been a todd, there has been a spawn.
And I think also even further than that, I think that the plan for spawn is, even when I die, there is still a spawn. These characters outlive you, and they get beyond you. And especially for a creator who was pretty controlling in the early issues. And so the episodes that you've listened to so far that we've released so far, where he's writing, he's drawing, he's the editor, basically. His or his wife's the editor. And they're super, super, super small. The stories are very, very, very small, despite the concept being very big. Juxtapose that with today, where there are multiple titles in the spawn universe, and he asks, he can't write them all, so it kind of gets bigger than him. And I think he. If you could give spawn a great ending, I think that he would allow it to die as a concept. I don't think that he's satisfied with anything that anybody's ever pitched. And I don't think that he knows how it really ends.
And I think even if he attempted to do that, because it's almost. What's happened before is the end of the concept he had moving into new concepts, I think he'd probably find a way to bring it back, if only because he got bored not doing it.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Everything I have heard about Todd McFarlane is, I want to have fun being a big kid. And, I mean, I love that. I feel like I'm like that. It seems like you two are both like that with a lot of things. And, you know, when you've got something that you love like that, you know, keep doing it.
Yeah, we've kind of landed on him as the ultimate art jock because he, like, you know, baseball and sports in general is something that you definitely grow out of in a certain way. Like, once you get too old, you just can't perform to a certain level. Art and comics especially are a similar thing. You're popular for a certain amount of time, and then you're not. And the thing that's interesting about Todd, because he's been a businessman in addition to being an artist, in addition to being a fan, because I think that's the other thing, too, is he's maintained his fandom of his own thing in a way that I don't think that some creators find their creations to be a bit of a curse. It's so fun to see him creating new things or having a hand in creating new things on.
And he's kind of, with the addition of so many other creators and comics to the line, he's sort of moving into his coach Todd phase in a lot of ways. Todd as a guy, as a creator, and definitely as a businessman, has had his ups and downs, both in terms of creativity and, I think, his understanding of his place in the business. But right now especially, he's kind of had a renaissance in the last few years, especially teaming up with DC on all their toys, really pushing the McFarland toys side of the business in a hard way, and expanding the Spawn line, where he's had a lot of a renaissance, especially around 300, 350, these milestone issues that shows that, like Pierce said, you know, Todd's in it for the long haul because he loves doing it. I've seen him literally jumping on tables, yelling about Spawn within the last few years at conventions not that long ago. So it is that he loves it, and I think he's loved it his whole life, and he's loved the concept of it his whole life. And most of all, I think he loves comics, like he frankly just does. And he loves making them and seeing them made.
What is it that really drew you two into Spawn as a character?
So, for me, I started reading Spawn during the pandemic because I've been a comic book critic professionally for, I guess, at this point now, it's like 1213 years. And Spawn was always a weird blind spot. It's something we get into in our first episode quite a bit. But Spawn was one of those comics that I knew about it. It existed. I'm 35 years old. It has existed for my entire life. Basically my entire cognizant life. And I know that it was a big deal when it first came out, and I knew there was a movie and I never watched it, and I knew there was an HBO show, but I, and I watched an episode of that because, like, my friends had an episode of it, like, on tape when I was twelve or whatever, and it was like, oh, my God. Got, like, an r rated thing to watch. And we're twelve and we're not allowed to watch this or whatever. Somebody's older brother gave it to them, that kind of thing. And then once I was, like, a professional critic, and I'd read a ton of comics, and I was, like, reading comics to write about them, I was like, I don't know what the hell's going on with spawn number 272. Why am I going to jump in on this here? Is it even good? And the general consensus was like, it kind of exists during the pandemic. I was like, you know what? Let me reengage with this. And I watched the animated series, and I was like, wait, this is good. Are the comics good? And I started a hash text pornography. That was me for a few weeks, just reviewing every single issue. And I had some reading order that I was going off of, and I lost steam because I started reading too many of the stuff that doesn't matter at all. And it pulled me too far away from the main narrative. And I was like, I can't read Garth Ennis writing medieval spawn witchblade. This is just killing me. But it got in my head, like, wait, there's something here. The stuff that Todd writes specifically, and also seeing how this was a bit of an incubator for a lot of talent at that time would have been, I guess, right after the Scott Snyder Greg Capullo Batman run. And I remember when Capullo got added on to the new 52 Batman run, and I was like, or like, announced as the artist for it, and I was like, oh, they got the spawn guy. I guess that makes sense. But I never dove back into that stuff. And so I guess part of my fascination is I wanted to dive back into it. And there's already a million podcasts about every other comic book superhero, so there's, and I love talking to my friend George about comics. So it was fun for us to dive into something that for both of us, is not totally uncharted territory, but still something a little bit new that we get to have a little bit of critical eye to. I think that in also a way we get to say, like, hey, you're missing out. This is, this. There's something here. That's what got me there.
Yeah. In a modern sense. The what got me into it, really, and rereading it and doing spawnography was Pierce inviting me to do the podcast and kind of honestly selling me on it a little bit the way they said, like, hey, there's something here beyond just the comics that we were aware of but didn't necessarily read and have been aware of and haven't necessarily been reading. As a kid, I loved Spawn, at least as a concept. I didn't read a lot of the comics, but I did collect a lot of the toys. It's just the exact right age to be growing into the more adult collector style. Like McFarlane, spawn toys as they were coming out on shelves, and I just got so into those that I kind of became aware of, and a fan of spawn lore through that. And now, again, I said it earlier, but what's fascinating to me now is connecting the knowledge that I have of the background of Spawn and of who Todd McFarlane is and what's gone on in the history of Spawn outside of the comic to what's going on in the comic. And seeing how the comic itself relates to a creator is really growing into himself and growing into what he's capable of in the medium. That's what I think is cool about it. Also, Spawn looks cool.
Both of you are just making me feel really bad about waiting so long to finally read Spawn.
That's not the point, though. We want people to be excited about it. Yeah, like, we just want people to, like, give it a chance.
I am excited about it. Don't worry.
Yeah, I honestly, I highly recommend the omnibus that have come out. Interestingly enough, the COVID of Spawn omnibus number one is taken from spawn number 95, which is not included in the omnibus, but it is also the COVID of the Dreamcast release of Spawn in the Demon's hand.
Well, when you've got that kind of segue, you can't walk away from it. So we're going to drop some promos for a few other shows, and then we'll come back to talk about that very game.
Hey, it's Daniel Falco here, and I'm an editor on Transphoria, a trans and non binary comic book anthology. Our 90 page graphic novel launched on Kickstarter for Pride Month, and it contains 19 new short stories from over 30 different writers and artists. We know there's an expansive spectrum of identities and stories to be told and endless potential for what queer writers can accomplish. That's why we brought these teams together, because we value representation for the marginalized and unseen. Everyone's experiences are different, so our anthology includes a lot of identities and a lot of genres. You'll see autobiographies, romances, science fiction, horror, comedy, and a lot more. And we're excited to get these voices out there and show the different stuff and experiences from everyone we've worked with.
Video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun, whatever fun is to you. I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us. Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming.
Those are some great shows to check out. But first, let's finish up with this one. So, Pearson George, I kind of have one very, very serious question. We have to get knocked out of the way here first. What the hell have I dragged you into with this one?
Honestly? So Pierce said they played it a little bit. I watched some videos, I read a whole lot. I never had a dreamcast, so I have to qualify that by saying never had access to the game in the past. This, for me, now is like a white whale of a game that I would actually love to play in its original arcade format specifically. So, for me, you've dragged me into kind of a, like, little bit of a rabbit hole of what this game maybe could have been and probably is in my mind, which doesn't really reflect the actual reality of it. So I'm actually excited to talk about this a little bit.
Yeah, I was also not a Dreamcast kid growing up, but I adept at emulating, so I was able to kind of get a. Get a hold of this one. You can bleep that out if that's necessary so I don't get arrested.
Do you want it taken out? That's more of a question of that, because I've.
This is definitely the kind of game that for my friends that did have a dreamcast. I mean, the big dreamcast game for a really long time was Marvel versus Capcom two. Right? However, had we known that this would existed, I don't know that we would have played another, another game at all. And I don't think it would have mattered that we didn't know who most of the characters were because we weren't reading Spawn at like, I guess this comes out, what, 20 01, 20 02, 20 00 so I was like 13 or 2000.
Oh, you make me feel so young. Yes. October of 2000.
This game is, yeah, so, I mean, this game is just so, I would have been eleven. Yeah, I would have been Halcyon. Wouldn't been my birthday. Yeah, I mean, it's, George and I chatted a little before we got on here, and I was like, oh, this is just offline Fortnite but with only spawn characters, which it's kind of also crazy that Spawn is not in Fortnite yet, but considering everybody else who's in Fortnite but would buy, would buy that.
That might be pay for the Ninja Turtles. I did pay for the Ninja Turtles.
I, you know, I haven't played Fortnite in, like, five years, but maybe I'll get back into it. But this game is, you know, so it's a four player, like, shooter kind of third person brawler. It's a very arcade game. And at an arcade, I would have definitely sunk a few bucks into it and then been like, no, this sucks. But I think it's cool. It's cool that how many characters? It has like, 37 playable characters. Yeah. I don't know anybody who would spend enough time to unlock them all. There's no code to unlock them all as far as I have uncovered. And so that means you just have to keep playing. Story mode. Oof, that's brutal.
I might have done the grind. I love a grind. And a repetitive game. That's something I've learned about myself. Like, there are a few of those live service, repetitive games that you have to just play over and over with, like, slight variations that I get addicted to. And I would have been like, oh, that's Redeemer. That's, you know, Sygor. That's overkill. I actually really like the overkill model in this game. Basically what the game is, is you just go in and you go into a 3d, like, kind of arena area where you fight a bunch of minions and you fight a boss. There's no story, there's no lead up. You just do boss fights over and over, which makes a lot of sense as an arcade game. But I can see how a lot of the reviews of people actually playing it found it to be kind of interminable. I might have been addicted to it for at least a few weeks when I was a kid, because it is a lot like just bashing your action figures together. And in a way, that's sort of what Spawn is like a lot of the time. It's really just sort of spawn having a fight with someone and maybe a rematch or two, and that's kind of the substance of the story. So I see how they got there with Spahn and especially his, like, extended world of characters and, you know, kind of the action figure line being made into a game in a way.
Like we said, this game was released in October of 2000, produced, published, developed, everything by Capcom, makers of the wonderful Marvel versus Capcom series. I mean, I think that's all you need to know about that. As far as games on the show that we've looked at, based on image, comic properties, it's basically been spawned teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you want to count them. I know some people who wouldn't want to count them since that's not where they started. Danger girl and scud the disposable assassin. I mean, that's most of what we've had from image here. It's nice to see them having another entry here on the episode.
Listen, I do think that if we're going by, like, best image comics, video game adaptations, weirdly, even though it's not very good, I think that Super Nintendo Spawn might still be the best one for overall everything. But this game. I mean, this game is weird because, yeah, every episode, every level is fight a bunch of minions, fight a boss, but playing with your friends is all right. You're spawn, I'm tremor, you're violator, you're twitch. Figure it out.
You can get all five of the Fleabiac brothers in there.
That's true.
This game is just so weird.
Oh, it is super weird. And also, it weirdly gets to the point where by 2000, also the continuity of Spawn is extremely weird. And you're including characters in the what? There's 37 playable characters, something like that. You're including characters. You're just like, who is this? Why are they.
Yeah, it's a lot. And I think that I will say this game, if it nails one thing about Spawn, it nails it kind of on the vibes, which is spawn shooting big guns at people. And then once in a while, a guy with a giant sword shows up, or a more different cyborg. This time it's a gorilla, and spawn shoots more guns at him. And so far, especially in the early issues of Spawn, that we've covered. That's been a lot of what goes on. So there is sort of an urge to kind of give it a little bit of a pass on vibes, if nothing else. And it's got that kick ass theme song by Pierce. Told me the name of the band and the song. I care what it was. But I did watch that intro several times, just like, oh, hell yeah, this rules. I should rip this.
The intro is the coolest part of the game, and it's. The intro is the coolest part of the game, and it is the song rip it up by Crankshaft, who are, like, a nineties alternative band from Vancouver who have two songs on the soundtrack. I forget what the name of the other one is, but from Canada, you.
Gotta wonder if they were pals of Todd McFarlane. You can't rule that out.
Maybe. Maybe you can't rule it out. But they play Lollapalooza. They open for Sonic youth. You know, they were cool, I guess.
All right.
And I definitely think that's cool. So take that as a win.
Here's the thing. I think, inherently, things surrounding spawn, our rule of cool spawn is, like, rule of cool made manifest spawn. You can't, like, nobody thinks spawn looks lame. And subsequently kind of random things randomly, like, associated with spawn. Get that as well, where you're like, that is also cool. Todd also did the artwork for corn.
Yeah. Boy, that was a big hit in my high school days.
Like, there. There's. There's something, though, about spawn that is extremely stuck in the late nineties, early two thousands, like, new metal scene that this game is also kind of stuck in.
Yeah, you could hear corn playing in the arcade where you're playing the cabinet of spawn in the demon's hands.
That is playing crankshaft.
Right, exactly. Exactly.
Who are not a new metal band, but, like, still, they were. They could have been, I guess.
I think the coolest thing about this game is definitely just the sheer number of characters you have in there. Like, I will just kind of reactionarily, naturally use, like, 36, 37 somewhere in there as a random number for a lot, but not a ton. This game seriously has that many characters.
Yes, it does. And so many of them are, like, it has so many of the iconic characters like Sam and Twitch, even, which is kind of funny that you can play as twitch the whole time, and. But, yeah, I love that. And this is also. I love Capcom fighting games. When I read that this was a fighting game before I got to watch it, I was hoping it was, like, just a classic Capcom joint, because I love those. This is the era where Capcom was getting into those really expansive rosters. They were doing, like, the huge, like, definitive dark stalkers. I forget the exact name of it, but it had the, like, another, like, 28 characters. They were doing, like, Street Fighter three was expanding into third strike with so many characters. So Capcom was leaning into that. And it is an urge and a style that I personally love because I just. It makes the game more replayable to me personally.
Is there anybody here that you really think is missing?
I don't know. What do you have, George?
Well, is Angela in the game with this?
Because it came out too late.
Exactly. So I think that are iconically related to spawn. Angela would probably be the biggest one that just could not be in there due to legal reasons, which you may or may not have covered on your show before. But Tom McFarren lost the rights to Tiffany if he ever even had them legally. Who knows? Or, sorry, lost the rights to Angela. So he created Tiffany.
The big one for me would be Chapel, which is replaced by priest. Here we get it. It's already been sort of, like, etched out of spawn continuity. But Chapel would be really fun in this game because we kind of have all the rest of the big. To this point, all the big antagonists are really here. There's nobody that I look at this list, and I'm like, you know, you got the Fleabiac brothers. You got the curse. You got another version of the curse. Zygor overt kill. I mean, I guess you could throw, like, tone twist in there. You could throw our Billy Kincaid.
Kincaid Maine Wolf. So, yeah, I guess Chapel and Angela are the two that were legally probably not allowed to be here at all. But if you're a fan of, like, especially the early spawn mythos, those are the two characters you'd want to see that are not in the roster.
I'd argue that you could throw in all the young, all of Youngblood. Like, like, they would work. And, dude, I would be a bad rock main all the way.
Like, yabba dabba doom.
But also any of the image characters. I think that. Here's the thing. The best version of this game is called Image United.
Ooh, yeah, that's true. Just a full on image universe. Shadowhawk. You can play a shaft. Shaft in there.
Yeah. And the max.
Oh, that would actually be sick. The max. Did they ever do a Max video game?
Fucking lovely. I don't think so.
They did a cassette, the max VCR game.
I was really hoping that they would have zombie two because they have zombie one.
That's true.
I think, though, that zombie one is just a generic zombie.
Right. But you like number two better. You know, he's the ebert to the zombie one Siskel.
Exactly.
So, yeah, I think overall, I mean, honestly, I wish I could have played this game, especially on Dreamcast. I never really got to. It does. I'm gonna. I know it's a bad game. I know it is. I know in my heart that it's bad and that trying to play it now, it would feel like trying to play, like, a game in zero gravity or something. But it does make me wish I could seek out a dreamcast and this game, because, again, after going through spawn, the comics are not unlike this game, where it's just a series of boss fights. And it does make me want to play as, you know, like, overt kill.
Here's my thought. Do we need to bring back this kind of game? Like, we've joked about this being sort of, like, offline Fortnite, but, like, one, do we need to bring back, like, four player brawler 3d? Like, 3d brawler environmental? Like, I'm gonna throw a bomb at you. Shit. Like, I don't know. Maybe we should. I mean, I know that's kind of super smash brothers, but serious match brothers is 2d, right?
Yeah, mostly, yeah.
So listen, ironically, is there something here?
Could we pitch out on it, you think? Oh, I will say the other thing about this game. There is no. There is no story. Like, there's no story to this game. It is just boss fights and unlocking characters. And there's not. There's no, like, campaign mode that really. It's just. It's like. It's like early mortal Kombat where they were just like, I don't know, fight a bunch of guys. I don't care. I actually wrote fortunate, because I do think that. What was that?
This is. I wrote a storyline for this game. You ready?
Yes. Let's hear it, please. They can only help it.
A few characters are in the same general area, and then they fight.
So it's like spawn versus the Mafia, and it's like, wow, we afraid they're the real mafia is gonna sue.
Well, hey, that's a whole thing, because in Marvel Comics, the mafia is the maggia.
Well, that started in the sixties, where maybe some guys might be knocking on the Marvel comics off, send Jack Kirby.
Down to punch George and Chris. Who are your favorite characters of the whole 37?
Well, for me, the ones that I think I'd want to play the most, for some reason, I really like the idea of Redeemer. I like the idea of playing Redeemer here, and I like. I really like when I was watching the videos, I loved the model for overt kill and how big he was. And in my mind, I just really wish that the voice actor or voice performance would have gone full of sicilian with it, because he is canonically italian.
I would have to be just the super basic person in there and say spawn, because at this point, I don't really know too well who anyone else is. But also, Redeemer has a big sword, and that's cool.
That's true. Dark ages spawn, huge monster sword. That's pretty sick. Dark ages spawn replacing medieval spawn here, of course.
Oh, true. For me, I think it would be. It's got to be one of the fleabiac brothers, mostly just because they're all there, so probably one of them. But you know what, though? Although I like her, that might be. That might be recency bias, because George and I just covered the curse in recording time but not release time. And the curse is a. He's a funky little cyborg.
Yeah. Bonds enemies are mostly just weird cyborgs who are, like, created by the mafia or created by angels or created, like, in service of some weird religious mission. There's a lot of cyborgs going on, and I don't think it's. I don't know what the deal is with exactly, why they're so, why Todd was so focused on having spawn specifically fighting cyborgs. But maybe there's something to the idea that Al Simmons, as a hero, is bonded with something else, and his body's been changed, and so that's maybe an earthquake.
You're a lot of credit there, cyborg.
Maybe I am. Maybe it's something that I just want to. Maybe that's my no prize explanation.
I think it's just that cyborgs are cool to draw.
I mean, they are.
It's a little bit like mutants in. I almost said they're like the mutants of the nineties, but mutants are the mutants of the nineties, and they are almost like mutants, though, where if a cyborg is a cyborg, that's a built in reason for them to have, like, powers or weapons or whatever and be able to go toe to toe with spawn.
Yeah.
Normally, about now, I would ask you what this game gets right and what it gets wrong compared to the comic, but the lack of story, the lack of even attempt of a story, like, there's absolutely no reason, I think, to look at that, because the character models all look like the character they're supposed to be, and they all attack each other, which seems pretty accurate to me.
Yeah, in a way, it is kind of a 100%. It does exactly what the comic does. It takes all of the characters. It smashes them together. And that is what the comic does frequently. I brought up the hunt. That's issues 21 to 24 straight up. That is just a bunch of characters slamming into each other for the first time in some cases, you know, so in a way, the game is what the book is. So it gets 100 out of ten there.
Yeah, if the. If the only marker we're going by is vibes, it's 100% nails, the vibes. I think the renderings of the characters and the environments, even for the time, were pretty cool. And like you said, Chris looked pretty accurate to what we expect to see when we think of those characters. I think there was maybe some care given to at least adapting the visual style of spawn. I think when you consider that was originally an arcade game, it makes a lot of sense as a home game. If we're looking at, like, how does it adapt the sort of byzantine mythos of spawn of, like, angels and demons and Hellspawn? And it's a zero. It doesn't do any of that. It shows you literally nothing other than the fact that they all want to fight each other.
If you knew somebody who was trying to get into spawn, would you give them this game as a primer course. And would you tell them that the game is good, or would you tell them that the game is bad?
I don't think I could give it to them. I think I would give them the Super Nintendo game a little bit sooner. But it also maybe depends. Maybe I don't give them any game, and I just give them comics. Like, it's. It's a. It's tough sledding for the Spawn games.
And, yeah, I would definitely say if you want to get into spawn and you want to learn who he is, what you need to do is seek out a dreamcast, specifically find this game. It's the only way. No, absolutely not necessary to do any of that. I think at the time, if, like, it was an easy to come by game and maybe someone had a dreamcast or something, I would say it's probably a fun way to learn who some of the characters are. But, yeah, I don't think if someone was like, is this going to get me into spawn? Or even, is this going to get me into video games? I don't think the answer would be yes. In either case, maybe if they really like the characters, it would get them to read the comics. But that isn't, historically a great way for people to jump. They kind of just stick with the medium they like. But you should read the comics.
I wouldn't go out and buy this game for them or anything, but I would definitely buy it for me and tell them, come over and play it, and you see how cool this is and everything. Let's go read the comics now.
That's a good point. It would be a really fun, like, especially back in the day. Like Pierce said, if I had a dreamcast at the time, my buds and I would have been playing this nonstop. We were playing it non stop night, staying up way too late.
And also, we would have probably been. We probably would have been helping each other to get through the story a billion times to, like, unlock all the characters.
Yeah, true. Would have been 15 people sitting around taking turns doing it. That's what we used to do with Soul Calibur and all that stuff.
We would have been like, soul Calibur two, a game that spawn is in. But, yeah, it would have been like, we would have been the hamburger on game facts, who, in November of 2000, wrote a very extensive guide to this game. And we thank him for it or them for it.
All credit to the Hamburglar. This is a non spawn fact, but the Hamburglar's full name is Hamilton B Urglar. And the B stands for Burger.
So his name is Hamilton Burglar.
Hamilton Burger Urgler.
He is my long lost brother.
Yep. We can tell by the striped suit and the mask that Chris always wears.
It's true. Coming at this from the other angle of things, what different comic property would you tell somebody? Hey, this is like, spawn, and I already know that you like it, so you should go check out Spawn.
I feel like the two obvious ones are Spider man and Batman. Just based on design and sort of general kind of. I mean, you have to be get. Those characters have such a history at this point that you have to get specific about the stories. It's, you know, other than that, I don't know.
I would say if someone likes nineties comics, especially if someone is a fan of the lethal protector era of Venom, the. Oh, my God, I had another. Oh, Ghost Rider. Especially nineties Ghost Rider and lethal Protector era venom. And even x force a little bit. Those are comics that, if you can dig those, you'll probably like a lot about Spawn, because there's a lot of those, like, you know, the. The excess of, like, again, cyborgs and big guns and big capes and chains and hellfire. And there's a weird symbiote suit with the crazy relationship to the bearer. A lot of those elements that are really present and very prevalent in other, like, popular early nineties comics are really right there on the page. And spawn in a cool way that I think is really fun.
Yeah. And I would say, too, like, probably just watch the show. And if you love the show, if you love the show, you'll, like, definitely be in the mood for the comics.
And spawn with all of his hellfire, everything about him. What is he wearing to the Hellfire gala? And since he thinks it's a potluck, what's he bringing?
Well, what in terms of what he's wearing? I would love to see, like, hellfire gala spawn, to be honest. I would love to see Spawn, like, evening gown spawn. That's what I want to see. Mask on cape in full on, like, train mode, evening gown spawn. Put it in a plastic bubble and sell it on a shelf. And I would pay as many as $50 to own it.
I think that spawn would show up in the dress that Vindicator wears in spawn number ten. It is made of money. And I would also buy that action figure. I would buy that statue, as we would also buy the vindicator version of it. But as vindicator as, like, lady justice or lady Liberty. Yeah, but wearing a dress made of dollars. And I think Swan will wear that because I think Todd would wear a suit made of money.
Yeah.
If he could wear a t shirt and jeans. And Todd is spawned. And. And bonus, Todd, as we covered so well.
George and Pierce, it has been great talking to you guys about this one. And both of you just jumping straight into my Twitter feed and saying, hey, you haven't covered this yet. You need to get on it.
Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah. Is the thing I say a lot more now. I used to say, heck, yeah. Then I started covering spawn.
Yeah. All credit to pierce on that one for reaching out. They do a lot. They. They manage a lot of our social media and our editing and stuff like that. So Pierce is the workhorse of spawnography, and I am just happy to be along to kind of drone on a little bit. And thank you again, Chris, for having us on play comics to let us do that.
Yeah, truly. Thank you, Chris, and for having our friends on. Shout out David Petbos, who is now. Who's not writing spawn, but is writing a character that starts at sp Space Ghost himself.
I'm so excited for that one.
First issues. Real good.
Yeah. I've been a fan of space Ghost probably longer than any other superhero, and I give it my appropriate approval. My mom was showing.
I've definitely been a fan of space Ghost Ghost for longer than I've been a fan of David Pepos. So.
I mean, really, all I needed to know about the space Ghost comic was that David's writing it, and I'm sold right there.
Yeah. We love you, David. We're gonna have him. I'm gonna have him here. Yeah, we're gonna have him here for. For his bachelor party soon. So we're going to make him read some spawn, I think.
Yes. Until then, though, if people want to hear more from YouTube, where else can they find you? Around the Internet.
On Twitter, on Instagram? We're also on Bluesky. Spawnography. Bluesky, whatever it is. You can find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all that stuff. We're spawnography. There's not a lot of spawn podcasts, so if you search spawn, you'll probably find us. I'm at pe lightning most places. Yeah, George.
Yeah, you can find me online. Aside from all the spawnography social media, my personal social media, you can find me wherever I'm at Instagram, bluesky ript trash. And you can read my writing every single day@newsarama.com. where I have worked for very long time.
And as always, we will have links to all that down in the show notes, because I can't remember what the blue sky thing is either. And future editor Chris can fix that problem. Also, I got to see George's cool hair, and you guys didn't.
For those who aren't lucky enough to see it, I do have kind of almost a very spawn green kind of hair. It's very bright green.
Chris, can we end this one the way that we like to end our podcast?
Yes.
So you can do your outro, obviously, afterwards. But we like to say, for Todd.
So loved the world, he gave his only begotten spawn.
And how do you follow up something just as beautiful as that? Well, I could tell you that you can go to playcomics.com and check out all the social media things, including links to Twitter and Facebook and blue sky and all that fun stuff. But I just did that, so I'm not going to tell you that anymore. Ha ha ha. If you want to help support the show, the best thing you can do is to make sure your friends know about it. That can be telling them directly. That can be leaving a review on Podchaser or Apple Podcasts. Prove to me that you did that somehow and I'll send you a sticker and something else cool that I picked up at the comic shop that you'll like. I know you'll like it because I know what it is already. Or you could leave money because making the shows do cost money. Oh no, lit class. Dan McMahon and Carl Antonovich do it. Maybe you can be like them and get your name mentioned at the end of episodes here. Don't forget the play. Comics is a part of the Genomegeek.com network, home to such other wonderful shows as legends of S h I E l D, where we continue to take a look at evolution. There's other good shows too, though. You should check all of them out if you like the music. This that I'm rudely talking on top of right now. Head on over to soundcloud.com. best day to check out best day's music. Most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character.
On Twitter, spawnographypod on Instagram. Ponography for Todd so loved the world.
That he gave his only begotten me cause I'm spot. Yeah.