The Big Picture

Todd McFarlane expresses gratitude for the importance of platforms like Collider, emphasizing the need for information and engagement with fandom at events like San Diego Comic-Con. Due to a reduced Hollywood presence at Comic-Con, attendees are shifting their focus towards shopping for collectibles and exploring activations, resulting in a crowded convention floor. McFarlane shares his thoughts on the Mount Rushmore of the comic book industry, highlighting Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Simon and Schuster, and John Buscema as influential figures, and also mentions Greg Capullo as a notable modern talent.

With a reduced Hollywood presence at San Diego Comic-Con 2023, the attention of fans in attendance turns instead towards activations, comic books, and of course, collectibles, and there are few people who understand that better than Todd McFarlane. A comics legend in his own right, McFarlane is also the owner of McFarlane Toys, a company that specializes in high-end, high-quality collectibles from the worlds of sports and fandom.

In this San Diego Comic-Con interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, McFarlane talks about the current state of the comics’ industry, his unique approach to making toys for his company McFarlane Toys, his wild working relationship with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder on the music video for Do the Evolution, the popularity of Spawn, and who should be on the Mount Rushmore of the comic book industry.

COLLIDER: I’ve told you this before, and I’m going to say it again. I’m a big fan of your work. I grew up reading your work. You had a real impact on me in terms of where I’m at now with Collider just getting me into the space, reading comics. I just want to thank you.

TODD MCFARLANE: Oh, no. Well, actually, I think that there’s not enough acknowledgment going back the other way. And I did this on a couple other interviews of thanking people like you. I think, at times, what people like you and what your platform do gets taken for granted. Especially when you have things like the pandemic, then it really becomes obvious to me the importance of what your group does.

Now, even here this year, with the lack of Hollywood, there still needs to be information coming out. There still needs to be fun. We need to engage with fandom regardless of what’s happening at any given time in the world. […] Look, they’re all going to come, and they’re still going to put tons and tons of news out there, and yes, it would be fun to have more Hollywood news, but you know what? That’s not a reality. But there’s still a lot, and you guys are still doing your job. So you guys are a lifeblood to our industry, too, so thank you.

One of the things about this year at Con–and you’re on the convention floor, you have a booth, maybe you can tell me–when I walked around on Wednesday night and Thursday, the floor was on another level of crowded, and it’s because there are less panels this year. Everyone is shopping this year in a way that I don’t know if they’ve done in the past.

MCFARLANE: No, no, they’re not in a line for 8 hours. So they have to reallocate their time, and they’re going, “Okay, well, I normally would be lining up for Hall H, or that big panel that’s going to be 4 hours of my day; I’ve already allocated that. That’s not happening. What am I doing during those 4 hours?” I keep saying I think that there’s an interesting documentary autopsy to actually interview all these people. A lot of people say, “Okay, I know you bought your tickets hoping for the whole Hollywood side. It wasn’t there. Tell us what you did instead.” And just listening to how they basically went, “Well, I like anime, so I did more anime. Oh, I like toys. I went over and did toys.” Maybe just a lot more. Who knows?

They’re on the convention floor buying exclusives. They’re just shopping. I got a bunch of questions for you. In an emergency what are you saving at your house? If you have 3 minutes to grab stuff besides your family and pets, they’re already out. What are the things that are in your house, whether it be shoes, toys, whatever it is?

MCFARLANE: That I’d be lamenting that I didn’t go back in and get scorched a little bit for? Wow, not too many. I used to have all my high-graded books in the house – my Action #1 and stuff, but my wife said, “You better get that out of the house. I don’t want that in the house just in case somebody knows it’s in the house.” So, I don’t have to save all my high-graded books. But probably a couple of things off the top is I’ve got a 1971 Kellogg’s baseball set. These are the cards you got out of the cereal box. You could only get them out of cereal box. There are 75 of them, and you couldn’t send in box tops. I have the complete set, all in PSA 10. I have the top. Actually, I’ve got, like, five sets on PSA that are number one. But if I only could save one, I’d save the ‘71 baseball Kellogg set.

And then I’d probably grab– I play sim games, like board games. So I’d probably grab the ‘72 baseball season because that was when Steve Carlton became my hero. He’s a lefty, I’m a lefty. It’s a dice-rolling game. I’d probably grab one board game. Right now, my favorite board game is a game called Imperial Struggle. I think it’s a genius chess game. I like chess games. And what else would I have to grab out of there? Oh, I do have a couple of pieces of artwork. That’s right. I have most of the artwork someplace else, but I do have a couple of pieces hanging on the wall I’d have to grab.

Who do you think should be on the top of the Mount Rushmore of the comic book industry? If you have three or four people that you can put on it?

MCFARLANE: Well, the easy one for me is Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Those are one and two on there. They’re right there. You probably have to put Simon and Schuster just because they began this thing that is now here with us. You don’t have to say they’re the best artist or best storyteller. You just have to go, “They put the first step on the moon.” So I put them up there. And then, between the beginning and the big boys, who else do I think has climbed the mountain that high? Now, I get a little personal; I think John Buscema. John Buscema did a giant body of work that was just magnificent, that was up there.

If I had to put somebody from today’s world on there, this may seem a little bit biased, but I’d put Greg Capullo. I mean, for modern. And again, I’m arbitrarily picking one because of the quality of his work, and the body of work, and the deadline. Jim Lee is amazing. And people will say nice things about me, and I’ve got other people. But to do it for that long of a time, which is why I put John Buscema. People who do a body of work for so long, I know how hard it is, so I’m just amazed at them, which is part of Jack Kirby. Bodies of work, to me, matter. And then, by the way, they draw really good.

Image via Disney+

How has the comic book industry gotten better since you started, and how has it gotten worse?

MCFARLANE: Gotten better, easily is that the talent level is way higher than when I broke in. Because back then, we’re talking about the mid-’80s, you either had to be in New York or in that vicinity to send it. So it was essentially whoever was the best artist that had the attitude, that lived within a thousand miles of New York, in North America. And mostly America.

Now that we’ve opened it up with the Internet, and people can post their artwork and you can now find global artists, all those people that were discovered because they were in a basement in Ohio 35, 40 years ago, they’re now global. So I have people now that work for me from Poland and Korea and Russia and Spain and Mexico. I grab from all over the world. I think that’s magnificent. So the competition is really high because it’s amazing. The downside of that, I would assume, as a young kid is that now the competition is really tough.

I look at the way they draw now, and I go, “Man, if I could draw like you with my hustle, you think I’m doing good now? I’d be up by the moon right now.” But there’s so many people that are great that they get lost in it. It’s like all these great artists that are not, to me, getting their due that are there. And then I think even here, I think there’s a little bit of enticement of going to conventions and doing sketches, and just doing covers, and just doing these one-offs, making money. And I get it. Everybody’s got to feed their baby, and you got to do it. But I don’t think, long term, it builds a career. It makes money, and it gives you a little bit of reputation. It doesn’t build a career, and it doesn’t turn you into a potential brand. So it’s hard for me to find people that want to do interior artwork and do bodies of work.

You have a very successful toy company, and you’ve done a lot of cool stuff. What’s the IP that you’re still dying to get your hands on?

MCFARLANE: It’s actually a bigger answer than that. The theory in my head isn’t that there’s one I’d like to do, it’s that I think if I could write every contract in toys, the last paragraph on every contract, no matter who gets it—Hasbro, Mattel, Playmates, everybody else—the last paragraph says, “And with this property, McFarlane Toys gets to do one figure.” Because then I get to do my one Star Wars and my one Transformers and my one Marvel and my one whatever is the hot one. I could do one just to say, “This is what it would look like if you gave me the contract,” and pass it on. Because I look at a lot of stuff, and I go, “Man, come on, just give me one.” That’s it.

Have you tried—because I know the license is impossible, and I ask this of everyone, and maybe my asking this will bring it into existence—the big thing that fans want is Blade Runner, and it never gets made because the license is just so complicated, or I don’t know what the reason is. But have you tried for Blade Runner?

MCFARLANE: I would be surprised if we haven’t. I don’t know off the top of my head why we didn’t get it, but I’ve been told no hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Usually, what we do is I’ll go back and look at that one […] So, what historically happened with us is that we go and ask, and if they say no, then there’s usually two reasons. It’s no because, “We don’t want to do it, we think toys are schmaltzy,” or because somebody already has the license. Those are the two.

The one where it’s like, “We think toys are schmaltzy,” and/or there’s a complication, then we go, “Okay, what if we come back in two months,” and you come back, and you come back, and you come back. Let me tell you, early when I was making toys, the people at Apple Records said, “We will never license a Beatles toy. Todd, stop asking.” So I just kept asking, and eventually, they went, “Fine, but it’s got to look like an animation.”

It has to look like Yellow Submarine.

MCFARLANE: Right. But that’s better than no. I got him away from a no. Jimi Hendrix was the same way. They’re like, “We’re not going to sully his reputation with that plastic toy,” or whatever. And I kept trying to show them what it would look like, and I think it would be cool, whatever. Then eventually, they went “Oh,” because they’re thinking of, like, a $4.99 toy from when they were a kid in the aisles, and they’re projecting. Just like people who don’t understand comics. When you say comic books, they think of Archie and Superman because that’s what they did when they were eight. And they don’t know there’s now this whole litany of titles that basically has a wide range, just like the movies and TVs they go to.

McFarlane Toys has made a lot of toys. What do you consider your top three? Like, are there three that you’re just like, “Oh my god, I love these. These are just great?”

MCFARLANE: So let me see off the top of my head because I don’t really have one that’s a burner, but there’s an amalgamation of some. So to me, when I was making toys, they kept saying, “You can’t do that. You can’t do that.” Even sometimes in my own factory, “No, you can’t do that. That won’t work.” And so I would just go, “Well, let’s just try it. I want to see with my eyes it doesn’t work.” And then it would work. And I go, “Guys.” I remember we used to do grooves in the baseball players for pinstripes, and then we’d have to do a wash. I thought it looked clunky, and it was messy. And then I go, “Why can’t we just tampo the pinstripes on?” And they went, “Yeah, but we can’t get all the way through the wrinkles and all.” This is why, when you go over to China, when they say no, it’s because they can’t make it perfect. I keep trying to tell them I’ll take 90%. 90% of cool is still pretty cool.

When they finally did one, were there some deep folds they couldn’t get the pinstripes into, the machine couldn’t get into? Yes, but it looked ten times better than the other way. So I go, “Okay, so there are certain ways you can tampo.” I remember we did one hockey player where the folds on the jersey—I think was Brett Hall—I go, “That’s how I want to see folds.” I turned to my sculptor. One time we did hair on a female, and the grooves were like twice as much as we did, and it held up. And I went, “Guys, we can now start doing hair that thin.” They said, “No, we can’t.” Oh, by the way, we can do 200 paint applications on it and still get it within budget. Then probably the one that sort of rounded it out for me, I think it was the Mandarin Spawn. The Mandarin Spawn had all this super detail on it and super sophisticated painting, and they all went, “Todd, get ready for a disappointment.” And when it came, I went, “Shoot, that held up!” That’s your disappointment? Then let’s do a lot of disappointing toys from now on.

So it’s interesting where everybody else’s head is. And here’s why: in the toy industry, when you go over to China, they have been beaten for decades. Everything has to be perfect and clean. It’s like every Uno chip has to be exact. You can’t miss the dots. You can’t have any smudges on it. And they have been beaten [relentlessly]. And I come over there, and I go, “Hey, I want to make a toy that looks like it’s been underneath the couch for, like, two months, and it’s all grungy, and it’s all dirty.” And they get nervous because they think that if they do that, you’re not going to pay them because they’re used to perfection. So if you’re doing splatters, they can’t replicate splatters. I go, “I don’t care. That means everyone’s going to have a different splatter? Awesome.” And they get fidgety, and I go, “No, I want you to do a rub on it.” And they’re going to go, “It won’t be exactly the same. Exactly the same.” They’ve been so used to replicating.

By the way, it totally makes sense from their perspective, though. Because this is how you typically do it.

MCFARLANE: No, no, no, and I get it. But when I said, “Guys, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to write a letter that says, ‘no matter what they turn out, I will pay you your bill.’ So you’re getting your money no matter what. I just need you to do this.” Sometimes I’d have to drag them across the line to do it, and then they do it, and they go, “Oh my gosh, look at all this.” And then they would take my toys and go get more business. All of a sudden, they go get more business from a Japanese company. Then they kick me out because they go, “You’re not giving us enough orders, Todd.” So they would take my blueprint and then kick me out a little bit later.

Spawn has been popular for a while. Was it ‘92 it came out?

MCFARLANE: Correct. Yeah, we’re year 31.

Sometimes characters don’t stand the test of time. What do you think it is about Spawn that so many people love it for so long?

MCFARLANE: Let’s just start with the 31 years, right? It’s hard for me to imagine that if you take any character, and you’re just dogged, and you go, “I’m going to do it regardless of the ebbs and the flows,” for 31 years, eventually, when you get the upticks, people go, “Oh, yeah, that’s right, that’s that thing that’s been around 10, 20, 15 years!” I mean, the time does matter. The people now know it’s not going away, so they’ve just got to accept it. So now, given it’s part of the mythology of superhero comic books, I mean, if you’re essentially 37, 38 because you probably didn’t remember from 1 to 5 in your age, you’ve never spent one day that you remember where Spawn doesn’t exist.

That was the world I lived in, in my head, with Superman, Batman, Spiderman, or whatever else. If they were always there, I just gave them credit that they were valuable. So time matters. I can’t seem to get this across to creators enough. I just had a conversation with somebody yesterday. That matters. If you can then take that and put story and content in there that people like…If I was to do a word cloud of Spawn, I think the two biggest words would be “dark,” “badass,” “cool.” I think that would be it. And maybe “cape” and “chains” off in the corner. But I think just he’s just a badass dude, and I think people respond to that not only with my character but with any badass character that’s out there, whether it’s Marvel, DC or anybody else. I think people just like characters that push back and aren’t Boy Scouts.

You are, and I apologize for not knowing the exact details, but you did or are doing the “Do the Evolution” 25th-anniversary video. What can you say about it?

MCFARLANE: Well, again, it came out 25 years ago, sort of on a lark. I remember getting a call out of the blue from Eddie Vedder, which is always sort of a weird phone call. [Laughs]

By the way, I am a huge Pearl Jam fan. I wouldn’t know what that’s like.

MCFARLANE: Right, but it’s just like “Todd? Eddie Vedder.” I’m like, “Huh?” “From Pearl Jam.” “Oh, hi, Eddie. Okay, Eddie. Good talking to you, too.” Anyway, what was happening is that they wanted, at that time, the record label was bugging them to do another music video. They were resistant because that’s just who they are, right? This is awesome. They’re a group that doesn’t want to be on camera. Like, “No, we gotta do a music video. We don’t want to be in our music video.” That was their whole goal. And he said, “Hey, I’ve been watching the HBO animated show. We now know how we can do this. We’ll just animate it. I got a song called “Do the Evolution.” It’s about all time, space, and dimension. We need to do all that in 3 minutes. Are you up for the task?” So I’m going, “Time, space and dimension? So from the beginning to the end of time, 3 minutes? Let’s do it! Seems like we can pull this off.”

The thing that blew my mind out of that initial sort of getting set up [is] he said, “I’m going to send you something that just sort of gives you my vibe.” I’m like, “Yeah, okay, cool,” and I thought he was going to send me his soundtrack, or he’s going to send me something, or a sample. What he did was, the very next day, I get this thing in the mail, and it’s a VHS of my Spawn HBO show, edited to his song, “Do the Evolution.” So, I could see sort of the tempo, and I wish I had it because it was super cool. I was just like, “That’s wicked. Oh, hey, Eddie. Who did that?” “I did it Todd.” “No, no, no. But who edited this?” “I did that.” “You edited that?” “Yeah.” “You have an editing machine at home?” “Yes, I do. I have an AVID.” “Okay, so rock and rollers get famous so they can get money, so they can buy editing machines. I guess I thought you guys did different stuff with your cash.” [Laughs] He was really into the process so that even at the end when we actually did the video, at the end he was like, “Hey, Todd, we’re off tour. Is it okay if I come into the editing with you guys and help you edit it?” “It’s your video, you can do whatever you want.

The answer is yes.

MCFARLANE: He’s really good, and he’s smart. He’s a lot of things, right? Even to the bitter end. If you watch that video—you don’t hear it all the time because they cut it—but the last sound you hear is crickets, right? It’s basically lights out. It’s over. But he put the crickets. He’s like, “I wonder if we put the crickets sounds,” and just out of the blue, we fade to black, there’s nothing. But then we put it in, and we went, “Okay, if everything’s dead, theoretically, so would be the crickets.” But it just sounded so cool that it was like everything’s still at night, and that’s all you hear. So we kept it in. He was doing that throughout the whole video. So there’s touches of him throughout that.

The silly, funny story, real quickly, on that one was, every day he came into the editing bay, he was bringing a briefcase. Didn’t seem like what rock and rollers did. And then he’d leave, and I’d go, “You got another meeting now?” “No, I’m going home.” The next day he’d come with a briefcase, put it down, and I’d go, “Hey, you going to another meeting?” “No, going home.” And he never opened up the briefcase. On the third, fourth day of editing, because we’re getting near the end, I curiously said, “Hey, Eddie, don’t mind me asking. I’m not prying, but why do you bring that briefcase every day if you’re just going home?” And he goes, “Oh my gosh, Todd, I didn’t think you were going to ever ask.” I still, to this day, go, “Well, what if I didn’t?” He walked over, and he opens it up, and there’s two brand-new baseball gloves—because he’s a baseball freak—and a baseball. And he goes, “You want to play catch this afternoon?” I go, “What?” He goes, “Because I heard you went to college playing baseball.” “Yes, I played, back then, baseball.” He goes, “I know, I hear you’re good.” He’s a baseball freak. “You want to play catch?” I’ll play catch with Eddie Vedder! Super cool.

There happened to be an [unseasonable] heatwave that day. It was about 107 in Southern California. Eddie, classic, dressed in black boots, black pants, black shirt, black leather jacket, and he’s smoking as he’s playing catch. I’m telling you. And of course, you know how macho men are, it’s getting hotter and hotter—I’m from Phoenix, I’m like a cockroach—I’m not giving in to Eddie.

It’s getting hot, but I’m like, “Fuck you, Eddie, I got this.” And then he’s like, “Oh, yeah?” Then I could see, I go, “I think he’s going to pass out,” but he would not have given up. And I went, “Eddie, you want to take a break?” “If you do.” I knew the answer [was] I’d better give in. “No, I’m a bit hot,” and he’s like, “Yeah, okay, fine. Me too.” If I had just been a little more macho, there was a possibility I could have killed Eddie Vedder that day or at least given him a heatstroke. But anyway, I don’t know if he would have ever opened up the briefcase that day if I hadn’t asked.

I would have asked him on the first day. I couldn’t have made it to third. But I want to ask you for some advice. I know you’re huge, obviously, with sports collectibles, but it’s really in the last year or two taken off with these box breaks, these live box breaks searching for one-offs and trying to strike gold. What is your take on this whole box break into the sports collectible industry leaning into all this?

MCFARLANE: Well, I would put sports collectibles in the category of any collectibles. There’s no one way to say that’s the right way to collect. It’s sort of like religion a little bit, like, believe whatever you want. So if that’s how you get your joy of collecting, doing it that way, and it works, and there’s enough people to support that, knock yourself out. Might not be my cup of tea. I’m over here collecting a different way, but it doesn’t mean that the way that I collect or the way you collect is better or worse than the way anybody else is doing it. It’s like listening to music. You listen to your music and enjoy it. You don’t have to listen to the music I enjoy. So collecting, to me, I think, is almost like tasting food. We all have our own palate of what’s interesting. The only thing in collectibles that my antenna’s up on is when I think some people on our side that have the product are just a little bit of hucksters and are taking advantage, knowingly, of our consumers. I think if you just treat people fairly and price things fairly, then you’ll have fans forever.

The box break, the thing about searching for the really rare card, I understand the appeal. You’re gambling.

MCFARLANE: It’s a little bit of Willy Wonka.

My question is, do you think the live box break and what they’re doing can be applied to the toy industry and comic books in a way where you’re buying, like, five toys, and you’re opening the box hoping that you’re going to get this super rare thing, or you’re buying a bunch of comics, and you’re hoping to get this graded 9.9, whatever. Of these new things, do you think this is applicable?

MCFARLANE: The answer’s yes. On the toy front, where it’s applicable is that we’ve done like chase figures, and rare figures and whatever else, and sometimes the actual customers don’t really get a chance at them because [of] very clever stock boys. People who work in the back room, who are the ones that open them up, have the knowledge, or at least even if they don’t collect that specifically, they’re able to peel them off prior to it ever getting out. So if you could create sealed cases that had that opportunity, and it never went through the normal channels–

That’s what I mean, specifically. Say, McFarlane Toys was creating cases of– You’re creating five toys, and you’re selling it directly to consumers the way that they’re selling these cards.

MCFARLANE: If you did it direct, the answer is yes. If you had somebody who you trusted and had a keen eye that says, “Hey, I’m going to open up a box, and I’m going to only peel what I see because I’m a pro, I’m going to peel out what I think is the best possible 9.9 potential if this got graded,” that’s the one we’re going to sell right here. This whole case, there are two books that, if it was my own money, I’m the pro now, I would send these two books in because I know what these look like, right? Yes, I think it’s applicable.