Todd McFarlane

Todd McFarlane is a Canadian comic book writer, artist, and publisher. He is best known for his work on Spawn, Spider-Man, and as one of the founders of Image Comics.

McFarlane began drawing comics in high school and in March 1984 got his break with Marvel Comics doing pencils for a back-up story in Coyote. For the next three years, he worked at DC Comics, where he made his only contribution to the Star Trek universe, three illustrations in "Who's Who in Star Trek 2": Orions and USS Surak (both with Al Gordon), and the Triskelions.

Rejoining Marvel, he had successful runs on The Incredible Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man, and was given full reins on the brand-new Spider-Man comic, which he wrote, penciled, and inked. A year after the title's debut, he left Marvel to form his own publishing company, Image Comics, along with Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Jim Valantino, and Whilce Portacio.

Image Comics was the outlet for McFarlane's Spawn comic, debuting in May 1992, and led to several spin-offs, an HBO television series, and a theatrical movie. The movie, released in 1997 featured work by Rhythm & Hues, Ron Balicki, Tony Brubaker, Jay Caputo, Doc Charbonneau, Donna Cicatelli-Lewis, Melinda Clarke, Harry Cohen, John Cothran, Jr., Charlie Croughwell, Nick Danger, Greg Funk, Caroline Gibson, Tabby Hanson, Kane Hodder, David Howe, Kerry Hoyt, Alex Jaeger, Hubie Kerns, Jr., Stewart Lew, Faith Minton, Larry Odien, Jimmy Ortega, Mark Pacella, Michael Papajohn, Cristina Patterson Ceret, Denney Pierce, Ben Scott, Mary Jo Slater, Laura Stepp, Scott Strozier, Wayne Toth, Alan Tuskes, Frank Welker, and Spice Williams-Crosby. The television series featured work by Digital Muse, Richard Bennett, Ronny Cox, John DeMita, Carlos Ferro, John Hostetter, Jim Lau, Victor Love, Mike Manley, Dwight Schultz, and Kurtwood Smith.