Spawn Universe Begins with SPAWN, GUNSLINGER SPAWN, SHE-SPAWN & MEDIEVAL SPAWN for Spawn Universe #1

READ TODD MCFARLANE'S INTERVIEW HERE:
CBR: Ahead of Spawn's 30th anniversary, you're expanding to four series in a shared universe. How long did you work on this idea to create more titles in the Spawn line?

Todd McFarlane: Let's go way back: the idea of a shared universe has been there since the formation of Image Comics. All the original founders, we came from that world when we were working at Marvel, and some of us at DC. That's what we knew, what we liked and in some ways, why we got into comics; why we collected them and eventually broke into. Even way back then, in 1992-1994, there are little hints of it; we tried it a little bit but never formulated anything official, much to my chagrin. We all went off in our own ways and did our own things but that initial want was always in the back of my mind and thought it was too bad [we didn't follow through].

But then Image Comics flourished and we had all these new books and we started going into non-superhero books and that possibility was starting to ebb because, if you look at the roster of Image titles, very few of them are superhero-related. At the beginning, it was a 100% that direction and I think part of our success is that we didn't stick to one type of genre. But I get up to Issue 100, 200, and the thing when you have a book that goes this long -- and I'm sure Robert Kirkman could tell you the same thing -- you have all these characters that are in there. A book like The Walking Dead is meant to be a group book and have many characters coming and going; it's built for that.

But I had a book called Spawn, it's like Batman or Spider-Man, it's about that character and if you start crowding that guy out, because you get all these other characters and ideas, then Spawn is going to be more like Marvel Team-Up, a Spawn team-up book instead of a Spawn book. The logical extension to that is you give more space to these ideas and these characters outside of Spawn, which means you're going to have to add more books and take that step you've been somewhat hesitant [to take] for decades and just put your head down and do a single book; you're going to have to tear the band-aid and go.

I saw issue 300 as being this sort of this prelude, this mini-catalyst, to say I could do this and here's a great moment in which I could begin to introduce this. There's an event that happened in that story that really showed how this comes to be but, even more so, there's a cover for issue 301 that Jerome Opena did and I inked that had a bunch of these characters. Although I knew not all of those characters were going to be in issue 300-301's story, it was my way of teasing "Just you wait..." because people were like, "Why are you doing those covers? All those characters weren't in it!" and my answer to that was "Just wait, we'll get there." Now we're starting to see the first phase of that thing that I said to wait for. Even this now, and it may seem like a lot for a guy who was only doing one book and is going to have four by the end of the year, can still pale in comparison to what it can be ten years from now and people can go "Four?! That's all?! He's doing 45 now!" [laughs]

You've got quite the bench of alternate Spawns already. What made these four the right ones to springboard these titles off of?

McFarlane: In its simplest form, it was just me saying, "Either put up or shut up. Stop thinking about it, Todd, either do it or put it to bed!" Like I said, #300 gave me the opportunity that, if I was going to do it, here's where I lay some groundwork and go. I'm not here to say this is the perfect time and that I've been holding out for this time. I'm just like anybody else: You come with an idea and it just happens to be at a point in time, which happens to be now, and we'll see what the fallout is. It's either going to be bigger and better than what I imagined or it'll be less; it probably won't be exactly what I thought. There's a little bit of an initial plan, but a five-year plan? I don't have that because that's where I turn to creative people and go, "Help me with this project here and I'll make sure you get rewarded in a bigger way than if you did the exact same work at Marvel or DC."

More specifically, why Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn, She-Spawn and Medieval Spawn for this opening salvo?

McFarlane: Spawn is at the center of it. He becomes the rock you drop into the pool and, from that, the ripples are going to start coming out. The first ring of the ripple, you've got Spawn and you've got the other Spawns:
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