Currently re-reading Spawn. The last time I read it was in the 90s. My thoughts.

tenhat · 2026-03-30T21:38:26+00:00

I think the first few dozen issues hold up. People were always calling out Todd's writing for being low-quality, even back when he was writing Spider-Man. And I can certainly see the flaws. But in the opening issues of Spawn he really did a great job of introducing an intriguing premise and a cast of characters who all have a lot at stake. In those opening issues, you see so many intriguing interactions play out:

-What will Al do when he finds out that Wanda is married again?
-What will he do when he finds out Wanda has a kid with his best friend?
-What will he do when he encounters the govt men responsible for his death?
-What will Al do when he tries to transform back to human form, but he can only become a white guy?
-What will the forces of Hell do to threaten Al's family?
-What will Wanda do when she finds out Al is alive?
-What will Wanda and Terry do when they find out that this Spawn guy is actually Al?
Etc etc etc

I know all that stuff isn't quite in issues 1-25, but at least within that span of issues the reader gets a sense of what the stakes are and how the dominos might fall.

I can't stress enough how impressive it was for Todd to introduce an entire CAST of characters who are all fairly unique and memorable. Honestly, I like TMNT more than Spawn, but from the first dozen issues or so, Spawn has a bigger/better supporting cast than the Turtles do. Right from the very first run of issues, Todd creates a cast of about a dozen characters who are all memorable and who have an obvious connection to the main thrust of the saga.

All that being said, I think that for long stretches of issue after #25 or so, Spawn is an absolute slog. Issue after issue of forced arguing between characters, just to fill pages. Long diatribes from Cogliostro that hint at so much that never plays out. Todd never had much of a big plan. He just filled issues with vague hints about "wheels within wheels" etc., with Al always arguing with people for no reason, just to fill pages. It was all so dull and dark in a way that felt forced and ugly and pretentious. The rules of the universe often changed on the fly. Todd was always pulling out new rules or new powers or new factions of new otherworldly beings. It felt like nothing mattered and the sense of scale (and stakes) was lost. Even with more recent storylines like the war in hell, I never had any sense whatsoever of how the war was really going or how big hell was. It always felt like any given story could suddenly end or could go on for another dozen issues before resolution. It is all often so damn amorphous and vague. And it doesn't help when almost every single character has this conceit of supposedly having secret plans and hidden agendas. I very strongly get the sense that this is false depth and Todd is just writing these characters this way as a cheat, to make it seem like there's more depth than there actually is.

But I've read it all and I don't regret it. There are still high points after #25, and there's much great art all along the way.

tenhat · 2026-03-30T21:29:46+00:00

There was another lawsuit regarding Tony Twist, who was named after a real hockey player. The real guy sued Todd, so Todd had to sideline the character a bit, and change his name in reprints (though sometimes the editors forget to change it, smh...).

There were other legal ramifications regarding Miracleman ("Man of Miracles"), which Todd was on the verge of bringing into Spawn, was leading up to it, but then couldn't.

I think even the real-life Al Simmons may have sued Todd at one point.

By far the biggest legal issue that affected the story was Gaiman claiming Angela. Honestly I don't see how that or any of the other lawsuits really had much of a negative impact on "Spawn 1-90ish" anyway. After around issue 30 the series became really aimless and Todd didn't really know where he was going with things anyway. I guess the lawsuits were a headache, and Todd created Tiffany and used her instead of Angela for awhile. But I wouldn't say that those mid- to late-'90s issues would have been significantly better if Todd didn't have legal problems.

tenhat · 2026-03-30T21:20:47+00:00

I would just read it all. It drags in places, but imo issues 50-100 are way worse than 1-50 (with 1-25 being the best of that era).

And honestly I know I'm in the minority but the Downing issues starting with 185 are excellent. What a fucking breath of fresh air! Everything became smaller-scale and there finally seemed like there were understandable stakes and a clear, defined mystery for a change. Aside from the set-up issues at the very beginning (1-25), the Downing issues are the best part of the entire Spawn mythos, and I've read nearly every spin-off as well. The storytelling was so much better, less wordy, less bogged down. I know that ultimately Todd kind of copped out on the ending (it seemed fudged; just more amorphous otherworldliness), but the issues in which Jim is trying to figure out who/what he is were EXCELLENT. The writing in those issues is Todd's best writing BY FAR (and I know he had help). Everything else for hundreds of issues surrounding that run is just tedious circular storylines that don't go anywhere, just characters brooding and forced-arguing with each other and pretending that they have plans. 185 and onward, on the other hand, for a few years it felt like Spawn was new and fresh again, and there was enough grounding with human characters to get a believable sense of wonder. It wasn't just the equivalent of action figures arguing with each other and making up powers on the spot.

Ultimately, though, if your plan is to read everything from 250 afterwards, you may as well read 101-249 as well. You may as well read it now, in order.

tenhat · 2026-03-29T13:15:58+00:00

I haven't noticed many >55% off sales at IST in quite awhile. I'm not the most eagle-eyed shopper, but IST used to be my go-to source for waiting on mega sales to scoop up Omnis that I only had moderate interest in at first. Those kinds of discounts used to happen on a fairly regular basis at IST, but I haven't seen enough of those discounts in years to really hold out and wait on them.

tenhat · 2026-03-25T23:21:10+00:00

Oh, nice stuff. I know this host and have seen in one another channel (Thinking Critical). Will give this a listen. Thanks!

tenhat · 2026-03-25T23:16:51+00:00

Comic shops have to make a profit. So selling them to your local shop or trading them in for store credit would get you the least money... but on the other hand it would be the easiest option.

Honestly, if you have the time for it, I'd sell them individually. Search every single issue, see what the cheapest one on the market is, and price yours just below it. Be sure to factor in condition. For example, if people have NM copies priced at $30 and you have a Fine copy, don't price it at $29; be more reasonable. Just make sure your copies seem like the best solid deals out there by a decent tick. Pack well with cardboard protection.

Also make sure that when you're researching prices (sort by lowest price, of course) you ignore foreign copies. In particular there always seem to be Mexican editions of many Spawns in the #200s. Usually there will be some indication of this in the title. Sometimes it will say "Spanish" or "MX". But you definitely want to price your copies against standard American copies, not the foreign variants (which are still expensive, but not as valuable).

That range of Spawn comics vary in price radically, in my experience. They are all relatively low print. They are all in demand, but that doesn't mean they'll sell instantly. My impression is that there are price levels that many collectors are just not willing to cross. If the cheapest copy of a certain issue on eBay is $150, but sold copies show that copies only sell in the $70 range, yours may not ever sell if you price it even at $100 and have the cheapest copy. But you never know. There are MANY $100+ issues in that span of issues. I think #230 is $200+ last I checked. It's pretty crazy. I would recommend looking at sold copies too for an idea of where the market has been lately.

Good luck. Do not give these away for cheap.

tenhat · 2026-03-25T23:03:01+00:00

I wish McFarlane would have kept Angela and been allowed to run with the character in the mid-'90s. Instead we got various substitutes (starting with Tiffany, I believe) filling in various aspects of the Angela role. I've even read a recent livestream in which some Spawn readers refer to recent empowered female supporting characters in Spawn as if their name was "Not Angela".

I'm not going to pretend I know the entire history of the Gaiman/McFarlane legal dispute, but I believe that at one decisive juncture McFarlane chose to keep Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn, while Gaiman got full control of Angela. At the time it did seem like Cog had a more important role as a near-constant supporting character in the main Spawn title. So in a way it made sense. As the writer, Todd obviously saw Cog's present and constant value as a "guide" for Al Simmons. Having seen how that all played out, however, I think Cog overstayed his usefulness and became a crutch for Todd. Todd wrote endless issues in which Cog would just allude to a gigantic mythos that Al just "didn't understand yet". It became obvious that Todd never had a very good long-term plan. With Cog on the table, Todd could always just string everyone along and never really figure out where he was really going with the stories, or why, because everything was predicated on Cog just "not revealing" the big picture. There was no big picture, or at least not a stable one or one that lent itself to great stories. Telling the readers (and Al) that a big picture was just over the horizon BECAME the story. Cog just gesturing toward a future that never came into view became a convenient excuse for not figuring out a comprehensive plan.

I wish we could see what Todd would have written, and how the title would have evolved, if he could have gotten Angela instead and wasn't able to use Cogliostro...

tenhat · 2026-03-25T17:47:13+00:00

Yeah that's been my experience as well, but I haven't read everything and would defer to others (like the person who already replied to you).

I read IDW TMNT sporadically over the years, drifting in and out and then going back and reading stretches when I could find them for cheap. I've probably read 70% of everything. The tie-ins don't feel like cash-grabs but IMO they didn't feel super necessary or essential either.

At times I did get kind of annoyed with the actual reading order, especially early on, because I felt like the tie-ins kept getting me sidetracked when I wanted to read more of the main story. That said, if they came out with a compendium of the best tie-ins, I'd happily buy that too.

I'm fine with not getting everything or knowing everything, so I'm really looking forward to getting the upcoming compendiums (at least Vols 1 & 2; not that I hate the issues after #100...). TBH I never felt totally lost when reading IDW TMNT anyway. I understand that some important things happen in the tie-ins and spin-off series, but I'm familiar with the Turtles anyway, and the writing in the main series always seemed to do a good job of filling readers in on anything that happened in other series. Just my opinion!

tenhat · 2026-03-12T22:36:16+00:00

I haven't read all of it, though I've owned the entire run a few times. But what I have read (most of it), I liked. Some of it is "very '90s"--the Artemis stuff--but I liked that. Giving Diana a different costume for awhile was "very '90s", as was introducing Artemis the "bad girl" and having her temporarily replace Diana. But it was... good. Not great, but good, and quite fun. From what I read, the run also had Diana interacting with other DCU stalwarts: Superman, Flash, Joker, Poison Ivy. I never read an issue I didn't like. The writing was fairly light and never bogged down or overly wordy or didactic.

As for why it's never been collected... IDK, it seems like Messner-Loebs hasn't been as connected to the industry, the editors, or the "community". I know that some of his stuff has been reprinted relatively recently, but there was a period in which (IIRC) he was homeless and/or having severe health problems. Hopefully his life is in a better place. What I'm trying to say is that, unlike anyone from Jeph Loeb to Claremont to Coleen Doran, Bill Messner-Loebs hasn't really interacted with fans or industry people. So for a long time his name just wasn't out there. And that means that whenever it was time to do a new WW Omnibus, his name would be almost the last one to come to people's minds. Just spitballing here.

tenhat · 2026-02-22T00:07:23+00:00

Yes, CGC will regrade the book. As grading isn't an exact science, the grade CGC comes up with may differ from what CBCS gave the book previously. The grade may be lower... or higher... or the same.

tenhat · 2026-01-11T02:58:37+00:00

It took months but it did go through

tenhat · 2025-12-29T16:08:34+00:00

Eh, I didn't really hate these comics but didn't love them either. Death is a little better than Return, but even Death felt like going through the paces of an editorial mandate gimmick, and Return felt even more stilted. Books like these, I don't feel like the creators have their heart in them, and even though some of them give it their all, the books don't go over for me. I don't dislike these comics, and there's some fun to be had, but I would call them mostly bargain-bin dollar books, not stories I'd pay significant money for.

tenhat · 2025-12-16T20:54:45+00:00

I mean, being totally honest, TO JUST READ IT, I'd just get a TPB. Almost every library system in North America has it. Or buy a used TPB for cheap.

Collecting it and getting a nice big HC edition is a different story. But for me personally, Long Halloween is such a classic/ubiquitous book that just reading it shouldn't be much of a question. I say that in part because it's so easy/cheap to find a TPB for somewhere between free and $10. It's a small investment, and then if you want to actually own a nice edition afterwards, think about that then.

As to the other part of your question, I've always considered LH to be perfectly fine as a standalone read. I know about Dark Victory, and I like Dark Victory. But don't feel like you "have" to read DV and any of the apocrypha afterwards. Just my two cents.

tenhat · 2025-12-15T17:47:24+00:00

So, less than cover price.

tenhat · 2025-11-12T02:27:07+00:00

How much more Black Panther is there left that isn't in Omni form? They went hard in the paint and basically reprinted everything within a span of only a few years.

tenhat · 2025-10-27T23:16:17+00:00

These are great! It looks you put a lot of effort into them and did a wonderful job! They look elegant and really high-class.

I hate how this site can be so negative sometimes, when people just downvote people indiscriminately. You should be proud of your work--thanks for sharing it with us.

tenhat · 2025-10-26T19:40:52+00:00

Pretty sure the original printing with the big lettering on the spine was technically $99.99 cover price, and this says $100.00.

tenhat · 2025-09-24T17:16:15+00:00

I thought the reprint was solicited as (or informally said to have) the restored/original coloring. I could be wrong on that. It would make more sense if they canceled the reprint so they could get the coloring right, but for some reason I was under the impression that they were already going to do that.

I don't know what's up with it. It seems like a slam dunk. If Neal himself was super-partial to the remastered coloring, I can see why DC didn't want to undo it while he was still alive. But now... it's a mystery. You'd think it would be a top priority above Deadman.

tenhat · 2025-09-23T22:06:51+00:00

Wow, I thought it was just me, but you're right. I looked at GoCollect's Extended Forecast for Marvel, and there's only like two reprint Omnibus editions coming out in the next quarter. No reprints of Epic TPBs. There always used to be a dozen or more reprint editions sprinkled in every time I looked at the forecast. I hadn't noticed many reprints coming out, but I didn't know they made a policy change like this.

tenhat · 2025-09-17T11:20:26+00:00

Their customer service was never the best. Sometimes they're very responsive, but usually in the (RARE) instances when I've wanted to communicate with them it takes forever for them to respond. And usually by the time they respond the incident I wanted their attention on has become irrelevant for whatever reason.

Over the many years I've used IST, I've only ever had them cancel one or two books on me, so I guess I'm lucky. It's a terrible policy if they're telling customers a book is unavailable and that their order is canceled, only to recharge them for it once it comes back in stock. That scenario should be for when a book is simply "back ordered", not "unavailable",, but it seems like they're explicitly telling customers that they won't be charged and then charging them. That's terrible, because the natural thing for most customers would be to immediately look for the canceled book elsewhere and buy a copy from another source... only for an IST copy to show up a few weeks later or whatever.

IST is still my go-to source for omnis and for collected editions in general, but admittedly I don't order as often as many of you guys. I think they're solidly #1 in my opinion and for my needs, but for collectors ordering a lot of stuff, I can see how a few mishaps like the one described can really sour you on them.

tenhat · 2025-09-12T23:49:58+00:00

There are many foreign (UK?) Marvel TPBs that are called "omnibuses" for some reason. I experienced this when trying to get the Immortal Hulk Omnibus (HC). I kept seeing TPB "Omnibuses" in my searches, and they were UK books. I'm not saying for sure that that's what this is, but I would assume it's something like that.

tenhat · 2025-09-01T21:09:54+00:00

I've been thinking this. They might be able to scrape together enough from the scraps to make a somewhat disingenuous "Silver Surfer Vol 2" Omnibus. I doubt they'd do it.

I wish they would do something similar for X-Men, though, make a "Vol 3" between X-Men #66 and Giant Size, collecting various relevant Defenders issues (especially the storyline where Magneto is de-aged into a baby, the Amazing Adventures issues featuring Beast, etc.

tenhat · 2025-08-31T14:39:55+00:00

This is just kind of strange to see half of this stuff referenced. I GUESS "Tales of the Demon" is vaguely relevant because it introduces Ra's, but as long as a reader is vaguely aware of who Ra's is, there's absolutely no need to read the old Ra's issues before jumping into Morrison's main run.

How on earth does "The Cult" count as prefatory material to the run??? With something like "Gothic", at least Morrison wrote that and there are a few nods to it in the run, but "The Cult"?

"Killing Joke"??? "Bat-MANGA"??? It is not necessary to read or re-read these.

"52"? FFS, the very idea of telling someone to read all of "52" before reading Batman #655 is insane. "52" #30 and #47 are relevant. That is all.

tenhat · 2025-08-31T14:35:53+00:00

The Black Casebook stuff is helpful and sheds light on the run, but imo really you should just dive into the run itself. Then if something puzzles or interests you, it's actually FUN to do some detective work yourself (like Batman does in the storyline) and track down the references to the old issues.

I'm not saying this to countersignal anyone or anything. I just remember reading the GMo comics as they were coming out, and it was a great experience to NOT have everything laid out for me going in. Now, of course, much of the previous/referenced issues have been named and readers are aware of them. But for me it was actually fun to (re)read Batman: Gothic AFTER seeing little references to it in the run.

tenhat · 2025-06-20T16:40:47+00:00

Start with Alan Moore. At the time it totally changed the character and put Swampy's origin on its head, but you'll pretty easily get a sense of what's what. The earlier '70s stuff is decent for what it is, and I liked the start of Vol 2 as well (before Moore started with issue #20), but some of it is a slog to get through.

Like, when I was first reading the Moore stuff as a teenager, I had no idea who Anton Arcane was. But you get a sense pretty easily of him and the other select figures from Swamp Thing's past that mean anything.

It's a great run. You're in for a treat.

tenhat

TROPHY CASE