Props to him for deciding at some point that creators should get a much bigger piece of the pie. Dave Sim and a few others had been saying the same thing for years or decades, but McFarlane and his Image partners had the weight to really set an example that wouldn't be seen as just an odd exception.

Clearly he's a good businessman; one successful enough to afford spending a million dollars on a baseball. Being personally unable to sell anything for a profit, a good business sense is a quality I admire in others. McFarlane's legal dealings with Neil Gaiman didn't endear him to me, though. Maybe successful businessmen have to be ruthless, even if I hope some of them aren't.

As a writer, I thought his scripts were unfortunately pretty awful. ("His webline... advantageous!" from Spider-man #1, is one of the worst lines I ever came across in a comic; I remember it to this day). On the other hand, he had the maturity to recognize it when he invited four big name writers to contribute to Spawn (Miller, Moore, Gaiman and Sim). Someone else might have said" %$# it! I'm da man! People will buy my stuff no matter what!" but he didn't. Tip of the hat to Rob Liefeld, who did the same thing when he got Alan oore to write his books.

As an artist, McFarlane certainly has a distinctive style; but then so does the aforementioned Liefeld; everyone's got a favourite, and everyone's is someone's least favourite artist. I could appreciate the enthusiasm McFarlane put into his work, but never actually liked it. His Mary Jane looked nothing like Romita's, Kane's or Andru's MJ; she was just a generic and anatomically improbable sexy lady. I thought that was pretty unfortunate, since MJ is one of the rare female comic-book characters from that era to have actually recognizable features. Spidey's tangled web, as seen in the picture at the head of this thread, looks like it's about to collapse into a massive knot. I do like its "barbed wire aspect" you mention, though; that kind of looks like actual spider webbing. (***edit: I see that chaykinstevens just mentioned that it was a Michael Golden concept. Cheers, mate!***) 

McFarlane started a trend with his knot-inducing depiction of the web, too, since just a few years later Joe Quesada had Daredevil's billy club wire twist and turn into the same kind of topological nightmare. 

Each page I saw of Spawn of Spider-man served more to catch the eye than to tell a story, which is fine if you're into buying and selling original pages but kind of annoying when you want to read a story. But yeah, I must admit they did catch the eye.

Overall, McFarlane's certainly left his mark on the business of American comic-books, for good or bad. That's quite a legacy.

Good graphic designer, middling superhero artist, terrible storyteller, good businessman, sucker for baseballs.

After Ordway and the brief moment of Don Newton, he is the artist I think of, for Infinity, Inc. That said, I recall more his page designs than his storytelling or figure work. Batman Year Two loses something from Alan Davis, who is more expressive and a better storyteller, to McFarlane. Not a fan of the Marvel stuff and thought Spawn had nice page designs and nothing else to offer.

That's the thing....to me he was a designer, not a storyteller. He created great static images and page designs; but, he couldn't convey a story. His comics make great posters, because they are all about the shot.


Leaving that aside, he made some fine toys, though I didn't buy them. I left that behind more than 20 years before. But, they looked nice in their packages and on shelves.

Made a fortune, too stupid to consult a lawyer about using people's names and likenesses without their permission and in reneging on agreements. Bad track record in the courts.

Declared bankruptcy to avoid paying a judgement against him, yet it didn't alter his lifestyle.

Paid ridiculous amounts of money for baseballs that were hit by guys juiced to the gills on steroids.

Really bad with proportions for infants and children, in general.

Shot his mouth off a lot, in the press and generally lived to regret it, when confronted about it. Outgrew it.

Never claimed to be a great artist, according to his Comics Journal interview (pretty much copped to all the criticisms of his work).

Mumbled and slurred a lot in his speech (I watched those videos, with Stan Lee, from Stabur)

Did I miss anything?

I was a fan of Todd's stuff as a kid and don't have any issues with it as an adult. When I re-read his Hulk and ASM stuff a few years back, I thought they were fine. The problem is that when he decided that he wanted to be Frank Miller, instead of letting him work on some C or D-list title, they forced him to produce an A-list book.

Say what you will about Spawn, but they're still publishing the thing, which is more than I can say for most creator owned properties. 

I think Jim Lee is a killer artist, he always really stood out to me as the strongest in terms of just overall art talent.

Jim Valentino was the odd-man out as he was the elder statesman and came from an entirely different comics background. His non-superhero work is pretty solid, and he played a big role in the editorial side of Image. 

I was a fan of McFarlane, Liefeld and Silvestri as a kid, and a big devotee of Jim Lee. The problem with the first wave of Image creators is that they couldn't get their books out on time, and the constant delays killed off a lot of the initial buzz. Savage Dragon was the most consistent book of the early Image titles. My favorite was MAXX. 

I will echo Valentino, away from superheroes, but the rest do nothing for me, as storytellers or as a particularly stylish artist. Sam Keith isn't an Image founder, as he didn't own part of the company; but was one of the few outsiders they didn't dump, when they purged other books, in the wake of threats from Diamond, over late titles.

That said, I don't think they are horrible artists, other than Liefeld; but, even he could be inked to something good, like in Hawk & Dove, and showed major improvement, in a couple of more recent era things.

I've seen worse crap out there than anything they did, though not published and marketed as prominently as their stuff.

For me, the only early Image worth actually reading was The Maxx, Shaman's Tears (and it felt like lesser Grell) and the 1963 stuff, until they at least got guys like Alan Moore to play in their sandbox a little.

I'm a story guy, anyway, so storytelling is going to trump flashy art, unless the artist can do both, like a Neal Adams (though some of his layouts....and don't let him write the script.......). If you want to talk that era, the Dark Horse crowd were more up my alley, in terms of adventure fiction. Image got more interesting, for me, when they started publishing more work from other people, with more original ideas (or at least less blatantly swiped).

I've never cared much for Lee's art, other than it is better than the rest. He has a lot of cliches, over-renders, and stock poses. So do other artists, but I don't think he transcends those other artists, either. I'd rather see someone like Gene Ha, Steve Epting, Chris Weston, or Tony Harris.