OMG, that is perfect.

Jack Kirby vs. Stan Lee.

Frank Miller vs. John Byrne.

Grant Morrison vs. Alan Moore.

Get your bets in early. This will be a royal rumble indeed.

Back to the actual possiblity of these Essential Collections... how about if each author had a team affiliation, and the characters are dual affiliated to their books?

It could be called the Writer's Block Essential Collection.

I vote Lee, Byrne, and Moore. Especially Byrne, he was putting himself into comics and drawing naked jump rope She-Hulks before it was cool man.

Todd McFarlane is a pompous asshat. I've met the guy in real life, and his ego could barely fit through the convention center.

On a side note...While both of these guys have created their own universes, I'd consider both to be more or less artists, and not so much authors. In fact, I would say Jim Lee is an artist, and McFarlane is a two-bit "tracer" as Kevin Smith would say...

Todd McFarlane: "Wow, thanks for putting all those pencil lines under my magic marker-ing Greg Capulo! It really brings out my obvious talents! I'm gonna go sculpt more KISS figures with a single point of articulation to celebrate" <exits stage softly chanting "Todd is so smart, s-m-r-t...">

I must disagree. My experience was much different.

I understand the haters and their gripes with the man. He is a control freak that knows no bounds. But... when I met him we talked hockey for ten minutes and he lit up like a little kid. He was obviously very astute about the game (he later bought a piece of the Oilers and designed an alternate logo that rocks) while being very friendly to me personally. He even predicted the miracle run that our Panthers made to the finals that year, the year of the rat. Damn. That was ten whole years ago. Time flies.

If I may be blunt, my friend, I would say that statement a steaming pile of crap. In fact, I think it deserves a double post.

Todd McFarlane owned Mysterio like no one ever did or ever will again. He built Spawn from nothing and had a property that made both Marvel and DC shake in their boots for a good long time. He released the first run of Angela action figures with no panties... then painted on the cotton for all succeeding editions. "Party Angela" has always been one of the hottest items in all of pop culture because of it. I got mine autographed.

McFarlane may be many things, and many of them may be negative, but he can be personally credited with a greater quantity of quality entertainment than almost any single individual that I can think of. Who cares if he drew everything, who cares how many ego fits he had, he makes sure his stuff gets out there and his entire body of work is as good as anything this side of Alan Moore. In fact, Todd McFarlane might even have a slight edge on some of my ballots simply because of the action figures. He raised the level of the toy industry in that genre all by himself and he raised it HIGH. Effort equals results, and his contribution to humanity will stand forever as an example of the excellence that one human can bring to the world when they dedicate themselves completely to their art. He gets it done, on many different levels.

Todd McFarlane started out with drawing, and he was very good. His real "art" is entertainment merchandising. He may have no equal, as an individual.

(In my hyperbolic opinion.)

Perhaps he just had disdain for the youth of the era? I too met him over 10 years ago...I want to say I was like 12 at the time.

I met him outside of a convention center, after a convention. I was holding my copy of Spawn #1 with the hopes of getting an autograph from him. I was amazed to see him standing out by himself...no one was around. I walked up to him and told him that I was a big fan of the Spawn books and would love to have an autograph.

He didn't even so much as look at me and smuggly said "The magic pen is put away for today kid." and walked away.

Greg Capulo walked up but a moment after, and I think he realized what happened. He offered to do a custom sketch for me! He sat and shot the shat with me for a little while, and by the end of the conversation I had an awesome sketch of Violator. It was very cool of him to do. I also soon realised that all of the art that I liked so much in the Spawn books was actually Capulo's art, inked by McFarlane.

Perhaps that situation (also being my first convention) soured me on McFarlane in general.

As far as your statement about him rasing the bar on toys...Well, he made them "pretty". Don't get me wrong, there is DEFINITE craftsmanship there as far as being a nice looking piece. That being said, the man should sculpt busts or statues. Have you ever seen a kid try to play with a Spawn toy? The things have no posable joints, and half the time they are too top heavy or whatever to actually stand up. The "toys" are clearly made to be looked at and not played with...Just call a statue a statue, Todd. This is most of the reason I ended up buying a Toy-Biz multi-jointed Spiderman toy and painting it up to look like Spawn (I was a crafty little kid).

In short, maybe I caught the guy on a bad day, but that really is all that I know of him.

But that's what we wanted. Personally, I play with mine alot and they work just fine. (I take my Patrick Roy and terrorize him with the bendable demons from the Gravedigger figure.) The market, however, begged for low-cost high-quality sculptures to collect. The sports stuff, the infi different licenses in all areas of entertainment, the insane craftsmanship of the products? I honestly don't see how anyone could complain at all about his influence on the genre. Unless it's just pure hate because of who he is.

I think one issue counts as a run. :)

I was profoundly drunk last night and was most definitely thinking of Warren Ellis.

Probably guilty! ;) I'm man enough to admit it though...that's gotta count for something in the grand scheme of things, right?

I still have some Spawn "toys" hanging on my wall (in the box, as there is no reason to remove them really...). You are right, there is definitely a niche market that needed to be niche-ified, and Todd stepped up to the plate to answer the call.

Maybe he should also make a line of more articulated Spawn toys? He's the only one who has access to the rights to the character, so why not market it to both the statue collector and the kid who wants to play (or even pose Spawn in a way any different than how he looks in the box)?

And all things aside, at least he's not Rob Liefeld...YEEEEeeee...

LOL I gotta agree with Mono and Stu on McFarlane. The 'toys' are gorgeous and created their own unique market, he's an incredibly talented man who has an obvious propensity for being a super-###, but in the end the good things he's created outweight the bad in my own opinion. The major bad from him in my mind was trying to screw Gaiman over so badly, but the courts forced him to make good there.

I wouldn't put him in league with Moore though.

Yeah, you're right. I stand by my other points, but this is pretty true. He does all ready have some classics to his credit.

-Mike

He'll just make your batman call you ######## or dense and then make Robin eat a rat to stay alive.

F8cking bastard batman.

Another who hasn't been mentioned yet.

In my opinion, he belongs in the category, "Master of His Own Long-running Series", along with:

Bill Willingham, Fables
Garth Ennis, Preacher
Bendis, Ultimate Spider-man (whose name has now shrunk to one word, like Cher or Stu)
Judd Winnick, Outsiders (even if he is a horrible person, he at least ran the pre-Crisis Outsiders well)
Geoff Johns, Teen Titans (the latest run obv, but he's been pumping out absolutely brilliant issues for 42 issues now)

And that's not even including those already mentioned, like Moore with Everything He's Ever Touched, etc.

Judd Winnick, Barry Ween

and the Clown one!

I always forget the good Winnick stuff. You know.

Before he gave Mia Dearden AIDS.

(Bastard.)

Well, that certainly could happen, but Frank Miller has done other stuff besides the batman.