Posted in: Comics, Conventions, Events, Image, NYCC, Pop Culture | Tagged: new york comic con, Retailer Day, spawn, todd mcfarlane

Todd McFarlane On No Blind Bags, 3 Spawn Movies, Anime & Eating Glass

Todd McFarlane at New York Comic Con on no Spawn Blind Bags, three Spawn movies, an anime Gunslinger Spawn after Kpop Demon Hunters

At Retailer Day at New York Comic Con, yesterday, Todd McFarlane took to the stage, and then went down into the crowd of comic book store owners and employees to talk about, well, everything pretty much. But he started with public profiles for comic book stores.

Todd McFarlane: People need to know you exist. I understand there's an internet, but you want to make it as easy as possible. And there are the ones I've seen before where there are posters in every single window, so you can't even see in. So, it's not even really sort of inviting. And some of them even have bars across it. Like, we have these because there's a lot of crime here. They're not really appealing places for, like, a mom and a grandma to bring their kid, right? And then the ones that to me are like magnificent are the ones that, at times, the comic books are actually pushed back. And what they have in the windows are two things. One, bright light bulbs, right? Cuz that seems to be in shortage at times. I've been in stores where I go, you know, you can buy more than 20-watt light bulbs. And then they put pop culture in the window. And the reason that to me that sort of matters is because you can get anybody then. Because here's the thing about us comic book people. You guys know we're the choir. You don't have to preach to us anymore. We're coming, right? You can put the comic books in the front, in the middle, or in the back of your store. We're coming because we're the addicts, right? And the addicts will always come. To have longevity, at times you can't completely rely on us because life gets in the way. We go off sometimes, we go to college, get married, have kids, whatever, lose our jobs. A lot of things can happen. We don't have the money to come in, or the time to come in. So you have to then get other people to come in. And that's where you have sometimes Harry Potter up in the front, or you have Magic: The Gathering up in the front, or if there's a big movie coming out, you have Batman. Even if there's something like Sinners or something like that, you've got a couple of t-shirts. You put it up there cuz that's pop culture, right? All these conventions, again, they still call them New York Comic-Con and they call them San Diego Comic-Con, but as you guys know, it's pop culture. We're in the pop culture business, right? The stores that I've seen that have been the most healthy that have been around for like 40 years understood that they can't rely on just the comic book people 100%, all the time, unless you've got a small shop with a small rent which is where the toys and the anime and the Pokemon cards and all those other things come in. Because at some point, a fan's a fan's a fan, a geek is a geek is a geek, and if you can get somebody to come in and help support your store, do it. Because all the boats go up with the tide. I don't care if the majority of what you're selling is Pokemon cards. If it keeps you in business to be able to sell toys and comic books, because I'm in that business. So, as long as you're healthy, I can maybe get a couple things out on that level, we're good. For me, the longevity has been that price matters. Everybody in this room knows that right? Everybody has a budget. Price matters.  Quality matters. And if you can deliver quality and you can deliver price, you can sell that all day long. You add one more element to that, which is called brand. I spent 30 years mostly selling toys based on the price and the quality, and then all of a sudden somebody says, "Hey, we'll let you do Batman and Superman." Right? That just takes it to the next level. But we were already selling. But if you can get the brand, the price, and we can sell all that, people will then come into your room and support us. I believe our ecosystem is based on multiple factors and none of us is more important than the other because it's a chain. I believe this with all my heart. It's a chain. You need people that are on my end. So you need the publishers and you need the creative and the art people. Why? If you don't have anything to put on your shelf, there's nothing on your shelf. So why would they come in? That's one of the components, not better or worse, one of the components. Then we need your stores. I need everybody in this room. I don't have the career and or the life that I enjoy without the people in this room because you guys have places where people can go and take the product that myself and tens of thousands of other creative people make, and you put it on your shelf and you expose it. So, we need stores. You make product and you need stores. And then you need the other piece, you need the customer right and never take the customer for granted. They are our lifeblood. I am always aware of them. Would I, as a 15-year-old, have wanted to buy that at that price? That usually determines about 85% of my decision-making. It is that simple. I don't overthink it. Would 15-year-old Todd have wanted this? And if the answer's yes, then I go, "Okay, let's go and make it." Because if they take that product off your shelf, then you have an empty shelf, and you're asking me to basically make more stuff and tens of thousands of others of us to put it back on the shelf so they can come in and take it off the shelf. And if this system keeps going like that, then we're all good. And the fourth component that I think at times gets undersold, which is just as dynamic, is the media part of it. I don't care if there's anybody out here who does podcasts or does news or does reports or does reviews on comics, toys, or whatever. I don't like all of it; to me, it is valuable. All of it. Because if they don't know that my product exists and my peers or that your store exists, what gets them hopped up is like, "Oh my gosh, I just saw an image of my favourite character from my favourite movie, TV, comic book, video game. I don't care what it is. They saw that. They go, "where can I buy that?" And they'll start doing a little bit of homework, and they'll find out that you guys have a store or that the book exists. Now, you're doing a bit of promotion. I'm doing promotion. Everybody's doing promotion. But constant talking about things in our industry matters. And if any one of those four were to get crippled for whatever reason, the house of cards falls a little bit, right? We've seen moments, right? Some of us are a little bit older. We've seen moments where some of them sort of hurt due to the economy, and the customer basically refrains from what they're pulling out of their pocket. But when they're in a good mood, we all know it's glorious, right? We only wish that those sunny days, those sunny years, would last, right? Who knew that for some of us to have our best year, all we needed was to have a global disease, right? It's true. Sales went up. People were collecting, they were at home, and it was like, "Oh man, if we would have known this, we would have made the disease 10 years earlier. It would have been easier those prior 10 years." But given that we don't control all those elements, all we can do is react to it. I know I have met with you. I have been there. I used to run a store myself. The margins are this thin. You guys… well, I think most of you do it because you just love the hell out of it, which is actually puts the biggest smile on my face because it can't be because you guys are all driving Lamborghinis, right? Anybody even have a damn Lamborghini, right? I don't even have one. So, I'm going to have to go drive Jim Lee's. Again, as part of the talk, I just like being in front of you. We're going to do here because I don't know what's on your mind. I'm going to walk around. I think we did this a little bit last year a little bit. You guys have questions. You guys have curiosities about anything that I'm doing and or what is happening at your stores and or our industry because our industry is only as good as us combined, right? We are warriors. We have to survive. Okay, we got the first one right here. It's going to be good.

Audience Member 1: Will the Spawn movie ever come out?

Todd McFarlane: Yeah. Oh, man. Right for the jugular. Yeah. Okay. It's a good question, and then I understand it cuz I've been teasing you guys a long time. Here's what I'm going to say, and I'm going to not talk about it anymore. I have talked about it a lot, and I'm at the point where my wife was like, "Stop talking about it. just tell them when it's coming out." And so the next big piece of information that I give you guys, whether that's tomorrow or a year from now, will be that we've made the deal and we are going into production. Instead of, here's who's the director, here's who's the new actor, here's who instead of adding all that piece, let's just get it done. I will tell you, we just signed an A-list director not long ago. I'm not going to tell you. We're not making the announcement. There are A-list people still involved. It's just agonising to me as much as it is to you because here's what I know. Once it comes, if it works, then all that stuff that you and I can do, everybody in this room that we can do with Spawn, you're going to have another element. Every time there's a TV show or movie or video game that works, you guys know we can all exploit it, right? Not in a bad way, but in a meaningful way, and we'll get there. I keep my fingers crossed, like I said, I' I've got a battery of A-list people behind me. We just got to get the script that I sign off on. I haven't gotten to the script. But will it be horror? Yes. This guy, the director, yes. Yes. I promise you. So, um, oh, good looking dude over here and he's got big muscles. I better get a question here. So, all right. What do you got?  Look at that guy. Give him a flex. Give him a flex. Man, look. Come on, man.

Audience Member 2: With the with the prices, right? You're talking about pricing. Um, with the creators, we're seeing their prices go up, too. I'm pretty sure we all are, right, when we get a book signed and everything like that. So, when you talk about like crippling or whatever, I'm just going to ask you, what do you see as far as the chain reaction? Because are you going to start seeing people pick certain books? Because again, I'm also a facilitator. So, not everybody's going to want to get every book graded. Now I and in my opinion, when you see the price of some of the books that you got inside and are you going to see people start picking out certain books? Are you going to see more important books getting graded rather than just anyone?

Todd McFarlane: Okay, I'll paraphrase. He said f-king inflation, right? So here's the reality of the world, right? I've said before, but it's true. Name's Todd, only rhymes with God. None of us gets to control anybody else, right? Here's what happens. Everybody in this room and every creator and every person gets to make decisions they personally believe are right for that moment. We don't always get it right. And then the customer has a choice, and the customer will support the things that either they believe is given fair value back, is still entertaining them, or is a quality product. So you can sell a Cadillac at $80,000 cause there are some people who believe that they're getting their value out of that, right? Where other people go, "What? I've never paid more than $20,000 for a car." Those are personal choices. What I do know is that when you make a choice in which customers react negatively, it's very sobering, right? Everybody in this room has probably made a decision. They went, "Oh, that backfired, right?" like, "uhoh, undo that, how do we get that done?" So, everybody's got to feed babies, right? And so, the creative people are no different than everybody in this room here, too. They're doing what they think supply and demand, right? Economics 101 is dictating, and then they're going to get data. I've always said to people, look at you, nobody has to ever give me an email, cause I get the data on my sales, right? I pick a number of sales that I get. You guys do the same thing. You buy 20 books. If you sold out 20 of them, you go, maybe I'll order 21, 22 next time. But if you've only got 10, then you just go, they're speaking. They don't want 20. They want half as many of them. And you just react accordingly. All of us are in this business, which is why this is the survival business, right? This is the thin margin survival, so when we do that at the thin razor and decades go by and you're still there, it means you've made way more right decisions than wrong. And people who make wrong decisions and sometimes that comes attached with greed, they'll find out. Look, I'm getting to be old. I have found I can give you a hundred stories of people who made a ton of money and shot up like rockets, but I tell you, they came down just as hard, right? It was a short-term cash grab, and then they pay for it, right? Where I think if you give people fair service and quality and product, they will become loyal back to you and then you can mess up and they will give you the benefit of the doubt on some of those mess-ups instead of, if you're trying to constantly pick people's pockets and you mess up, they will walk away from you. So, I understand sort of where it comes from, cause it's frustrating because you've got a budget. So, you can only take so much. It just means that at some point, the cream's going to rise to the top. And what's the cream? I don't know. The consumers are going to tell us. Oh, yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Oh, man. This guy over here. Let's do it.

Audience Member 3: I've got three questions for you. One industry, two personal. So, uh, first personal question. You're about the right age. I've never heard you mention it. Did you play Dungeon and Dragons growing up?

Todd McFarlane: No, I did not. No. I play baseball on on the weekend, right? I think I still got a bruise from last week, right? So, I got hit. I played with 30 year olds, right? I play board games, though. Anybody play board games? Yeah. Yeah, I play board games.

Audience Member 3: We've called modern comics for the last 35 years. Shouldn't the '90s plus be the image era?

Todd McFarlane: I meanyou've got like the gold, you got the silver. I wouldn't call it Image because there's a lot of other product that was out there like Pacific and First you okay you always have to have a leader in any kind but it should be more of an encompassing some so from 1980 to 2010, somebody's going to come up with I guess the bronze age they've already taken that, so we'll get the tin foil age or something like that, but anyway I appreciate it but we're just part of a collective group right.

Audience Member 3: Last question Spawn Universe titles have been great. How about like a World Of Spawn anthology, just talked about it. Sometimes you hit home run, sometimes you mess up. An anthology book where you can have different stories, different characters, and then maybe they lead into their own titles.

Todd McFarlane: We've been talking about that. It's sort of a sampler book to see which ones can be the Amazing Fantasy #15 and the Detective Comics #27. I mean, I'm using big examples, right? But like they're like, "Oh, you put this guy in there number 27 and all of a sudden he pops out." Right? I we're we're we're talking about that because, and the reason is, to your point, do I put out three or four books and hope that one of them catches or do I put three or four of them in one book and let the readers tell me who they like the best and then break them out based on on the data and the sales and whatever kind of influence were there? Again, you can't create it and sometimes you don't even know. You think it's that character and it ends up being that character, right? So, yes, ma'am.

Audience Member 4: Follow suit with a personal question. You've been a loud important voice in this industry for a long time now. What are some goals you have? Some things that you want to do that you haven't done yet, some things that you aspire to become to accomplish.

Todd McFarlane: Wow. Um, career-wise, there's only really one big itch I have that I'd like to scratch: I'd like to direct a full-length feature movie, right? And so, again, originally it was going to be Spawn, but I'll be able to then make that deal, and as part of the deal, I'll just go "and you either got to let me direct part three or I've got these other ideas and I get to be the director of it". I've done music videos, right? So, I've done a handful of music videos. So again, I've done some directing, and every time I do one, because those are short, I just go, could I sustain this for 30 to 60 days? I'm silly enough to think that I've been directing my whole life with comic books, right? You're doing storyboarding. You have to pick the angles. You have to do it if you're writing it, you have to have that character thing. Yeah. Everything's in mind. So I just think that I could do it. And if you get it yourself, let me tell you, always find people who are better than you in other jobs. Right? So, I remember I saw this movie, it came out about the same time as Venom, the very first movie. It was called A Star Is Born with the Bradley Cooper, right? Bradley Cooper directed that movie. It was the very first movie he ever directed. Watch that movie. It does not look like a first-time director. Why? Cuz he wouldn't hire a good cinematographer. And the cinematographer is an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer. He made him look good. Bradley had the ideas, and then they just executed for him, right? So, I'll make sure that I'll go get a good cinematographer and they'll make me look good. As good as they made Bradley, not physically, but at least on film. So, all right. Oh my gosh, we got one over here. I passed the table over there. Let's go.

Audience Member 5: Will Spawn get blind bags?

Todd McFarlane: Okay. Blind bags. This is a good question. Okay. We're going to get two raoises of hands. Don't look at your neighbours. Don't let peer pressure come. One. Who likes them? Who doesn't like them? All right. I understand they exist. I understand people are doing okay. I understand people are doing it. These are these moments where I go, is it actually adding to what we're doing? Is there a longevity to it, or is it a money grab? Right. Oh yeah. I'm sure everybody can argue each one of those parts, right? I can't figure it out yet to do it for the long term, like I can't figure, it's a it seems to me a little bit to be a little faddish and until if it's still around in a year or two and people are doing it and you guys are clamoring for it, then I can do it. Right. So, the one thing that I haven't ever done was, just do it because you can, right? Do it because there's a hunger for it, not because you can do it, you can make a quick buck, right? So, I think every decision I make business-wise is like turning on my water spigot outside the house, right? You can turn it on. Water comes out. But what if that water comes from a well and it's fine, right? I believe you should, for me, turn on a spigot when you're thirsty. I mean, so for me, my business is doing okay. You guys help me life. I've got a decent amount of brand name recognition. I've got money. It's like I do I need more money because I can do this little quick thing. No, not really. So, I need a bigger reason than to just turn on and do it. For now, we're not doing it. We're watching it. We're seeing what's happening, but it's not on the docket right now. But if you guys clamour for it, and your fans and your customers do it, then then we'll we'll we'll deliver. That's that's what our job is. Sometimes just give where the demand is. You don't have to like it, right? I mean, I made NASCAR toys. I never even watched the race in my life, right? And I made it cause why? There were millions of people that liked it. So, I just gave it to them and I did the best job I could. So, no blind bags for us right now.

Audience Member 6: Earlier, you said you go based on the data that you're presenting through sales and such. Has there been a point where you gone against that, where you decided something different based on the data you received, the opposite, you chose that "this suggests that this is the right thing to do but I believe in this", and went that direction instead.

Todd McFarlane: It's an interesting and good question. The answer is yes. If I thought that I needed more than one test to get to the answer, but if you go no, it looks like it didn't work, but I think this is a long play and then you do it three, four, five times and you're still getting the same data that it doesn't work, then the answer is it's not working. It's that simple, right? So, I don't do it, going, "they got it wrong, I'm right". I just think we just need to play all four quarters of the football game before we get the score and then from then you can make a way more educated decision on what it is that you do. Right? So small businesses… two things that I've seen for small businesses that are the greatest failure for me personally. Number one, the way you name your store. I have seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stores. I drive by, I do this with my kids. Tell me what they're selling. Freddy's Fanatic. It's fun. Cute name. I don't know what the f-ck you're selling. So, why would I stop? Do I stop? Do you got bowling balls? Do you got baseball bats? Do you got dresses? Do you got furniture? Give me a reason to come cause I need to know what business you're in. So, the Freddy's Fanatic Furniture? Done. I know. Like, if I need furniture, I might go I might go into that store. If I don't, I drive by. But Freddy's Fanatic, I don't get it. I don't. People are trying to come up with a clever name that has a double meaning. They miss the word underneath it. Call it whatever you want, and then put books and comics underneath it, or furniture or dresses or put something underneath it. So, I know why I'm stopping at that store. And number two, and this is even more deadly, cause I've had my own friends do this. They start their own business. They do a spreadsheet. And here's the great thing about spreadsheets. If you guys have done it, especially at the beginning, anybody can make any number work at any time. So, you're going to start a cupcake company. Make sure you call cupcakes in your name. If you're going to do a cupcake company and you go, "Hey, look at Todd. It only costs this much overhead, and this is my rent, and this is everything, and all I have to do is sell 500 cupcakes a week. I sell 500 cupcakes a week, 2,000 cupcakes in a month. This all works. I only have one question for you. I've done this to my friends. "Do you know anybody in this city that sells 2,000 cupcakes a month?" If it were me, I would go to the number one selling cupcake place in that city. I would take, you know, these things, these clickers, when you click it, you get a number? Every time you click it, you get a number? I would sit for a week at that store, and I would click. How many people are walking out with cupcakes? And at the end of a month, if the number one cupcake place in all of Phoenix, Arizona, which is where I've lived for 30 years, only sells 1,500, your spreadsheet says you have to sell 2,000. You have to sell 33% more than the number one cupcake store that's been in business for 20 years in this city. I don't think it's going to work. And I've tried to have this discussion with my friends, and they come up with models that are based on "what?" I always say. What's that model? If you sell 20,000 based on "what" do you know that the demand is there? And I have sadly had probably 10 friends have their businesses shutter sometimes within months, because of a bad spreadsheet. They spent hundreds of thousands to get 5,000 people a year when the top business in the city was maybe getting two. It's a bad math equation. So, at least tie yourself to some data. I was talking about it over there. Find some data you can tie yourself to. Just don't make it up because it works on your spreadsheet. So, last question. Okay. We've got the last question over here. Okay. Oh, man. This guy is looking pretty good. He's dressed. He's dapper.

Audience Member 7: "Who in comics right now as an artist that you think is underrated?"

Todd McFarlane: Oh, this is a big question. Whose art is underrated? You go down to Artist Alley, I am telling you there's a hundred of them. I have said before, I said it last year. The amount of talent in our industry right now is at its peak. For me, from my perspective, in 40 years, it is at its peak. Part of that is because of the influence of the internet. The internet now allows us to discover not people in America, not North America. We get to discover talent around the world. And it is down there. I've got somebody, one of my artists. Oh, where is it? Where's Carlo? Right here. Carlo Barberi right here. We can get them from all over. The talent is there. Why are they underrated? I'm going to tell you that's a whole other conversation. This is the hustle part. You can have skill, but be passive, and that can be damaging. And you can be kind of overconfident and be mediocre and you can kind of succeed. Right? So I put myself in that second category. I've said before dozens of times I can be in a room with 10 other artists that are better than me. And I'm the 11th guy, and somebody comes in going, "Hey, we got this big giant job. It's going to be high profile. Who?" And I walk out with the job. And there's only one way I walk out with the job, as the 11th worst person in a room of 11 artists. There's only one way cuz the other 10 that were better than me did not raise their hand, and so they have no choice but to pick me. They have more talent than me, but they picked me. So sadly, this is it breaks my heart, especially as a dad, when I see some of these kids, they have way more talent than I ever had or some of my peers ever had, that they're passive. The thing that you can't teach people, I've learned as I've gotten older, you can't change personality. You either eat glass or you don't, right? You're either glassy or you can't teach that. Oh yeah. So Rob Lifefeld and I were glass eaters, right? Not the best artist, but we were to elevate our careers because we were glass eaters. You should have seen what would have happened if we actually had f-cking talent. All right. Is there one last before we go? One last guy right here and then they're kicking us off. You guys are going to get… I think you guys have already handed in your books? So, I'm going to be as soon as I end up this I got to go sign them. So all that's being taken care of. We're going to make sure that you guys get what it is we're supposed to get here. Okay. Last question of the day, and then we're going to pass it on to somebody else.

Audience Member 8: Since we're waiting on the movie, is there any plans for an animated Spawn similar to your HBO series that we love to death?

Todd McFarlane: Yeah. So, uh, yes. So if I'm having more conversation than anything right now, I mean I just recently moved to Pasadena in the LA area because my three kids all ended up my adult kids, all of them congregating there. So my wife and I, after 30 years in Phoenix, moved to Pasadena and are going to ultimately be up in Altadena, which is where all the fires got devastated. So I want to get up there and hopefully help build that community. But animation is the one thing that I've been talking to a lot of studios about, and not just half-hour stuff, full-length features, right? Because you guys saw what happened here with Demon Slayer, right? And K-pop, right? I mean, you got like animation caught Hollywood off guard on a full-length feature, and they're they're everybody now wants quote unquote adult animation. I think I've got a bunch of brands that actually will fit quite well, right? I think Gunslinger is a killer animated sort of full-length feature. So, all right, everybody, thanks for coming. Hope you guys enjoy your show, and we'll see you tomorrow.

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