Spawnometer 0:0:2:1: Youngblood Yearbook

Spawn #21 &
Youngblood Yearbook &
Team Youngblood #1-6 &
Youngblood Strikefile

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Spawn #21

by Todd McFarlane

"The Hunt" Part 1
Dedicated To: Mike Grell

I don't want your pity... I just don't want you turning out to be like me or the other guys. We look up to you... the boys and I like like having you around. Makes us feel a bit cocky, if you know what I mean. If you can't pick up the pieces, then you ain't any better that us.

The matter of that little fat Clown, the dismantling of that hired gun Overt-Kill, and the invasion of your office by a costumed vigilante. Calling in The Admonisher to deal with the clown was a brilliant move, sir.

...the costumed invader... he's Terence Fitzgerald, an operative for some ultra-covert agency.

Youngblood Strikefile #4 (1994)

by Rob Liefeld, Eric Stephenson, Jeff Matsuda & Danny Miki

Overtkill was one of my greatest creations, as well as being one of my most dramatic failures.

Youngblood Yearbook #1 (1993)

by Eric Stephenson, Chap Yaep & Norm Rapmund

Greetings, outlanders. This... is Arcadia.

Team Youngblood #1-6 (1993-1994)

by Rob Liefeld, Eric Stephenson, Chap Yaep, Cedric Nocon & Norm Rapmund with various

So, whaddya think, Al? Are these guys what hi-jacked the space station gonna take over the world, or what?

To summarize the situation in the simplest of terms... we won. The Liberty II is now free of Cybernet influence and the satellite network Giger had sought to control has been restored to its proper working order.

Is it true that Psi-Fire and Brahma are no longer with the team?

Tales of Team Youngblood... "The Coming of Cougar"

Masada in Youngblood Strikefile #6 (1994)

by Tom & Mary Bierbaum, Chris Sprouse, and John Beatty

Midnight. The darkness broils with angry, discordant voices. Voices long dead, but forever living. The souls that possess Deborah Konigsberg and give her the powers of Masada...

Cougar in Youngblood: Strikefile #9-11 (1994)

by Robert Loren Fleming, Charlie Adlard, & Tom Tenney

Have you seen the King of the Cats today, Mr. Lion?

Image is Everything

• Episode Art Gallery
• Cougar in Marvel Age
• Lynx in Megaton Holiday Special
• Sonik in Megaton Explosion
• Sonik as Marvel's Tempo
• Marvel's Thumbelina

Promotional Material

• Squadron SupremeCast: The Secret Wars boys take a quick break from their coverage of all things Beyonder to review and discuss the seminal mini-series by Mark Gruenwald and Bob Hall.
• Zero Hour Strikes!: Co-hosts Siskoid and Bass cover the whole of DC Comics' 1994 crossover event.
• Action Film Face-Off: The Alberich brothers - both military combat veterans - are each assigned an action film to compare and contrast. Two films enter. One film leaves.

Thanks @rolledspine pic.twitter.com/a7H7FsJrnb

— Schlocktopus (@Schlocktopus_1) August 29, 2019

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— Odell Abner Dracula (@DellDracula) August 30, 2019

Spawning Ground

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Al Simmons, Batman, Brigade, Cybernet, DC Crossover, Jason Wynn, Marvel Crossover, Overt-Kill, Prophet, Rob Liefeld, Sam and Twitch, Savage Dragon, Spawn, Spawn Podcast, Terry Fitzgerald, The Violator, Todd McFarlane, Tony Twist, Wanda Blake, Youngblood,

2017 Heroes Convention Huntsman Jam Figure by Alan Davis

So here's a sticky choice made by Frank-- he didn't want to include any of Jim Lee's characters, since they were sold off to DC Comics, literally one of the big two surviving comic book publishers around since the beginning with one of the greatest accumulations of sins against creators on record. Deluded that this jam might actually appear in an Image comic someday, he didn't want any compromised copyrights that might force a later exclusion, like when Michel Fiffe Image Jam #1 erased Void when it appeared in an issue of Savage Dragon. Same went for Alan Moore's 1963 characters, which became another rights boondoggle when Moore abandoned them (and then had his own America's Best Comics sold to DC by Jim Lee.) So how do you acknowledge the formidable presence of Jim Lee as an Image founder without using any of his creations?

Use one of Chris Claremont's, Lee's writer during his run on Uncanny X-Men. The debt WildC.A.T.s owed to Claremont is... measurable, come to think of it. That's probably why Claremont was (I believe) the first writer invited to publish their characters through Image, and he did so via a guest stint on said book. At one point, Huntsman was going to be Whilce Portacio's Image book as well, but Claremont was off in Paris at the time and Whilce wanted to get moving on a title... about another couple years later. Anyway, Lee drew most of Huntsman's appearances that weren't done by another ex-X collaborator, Marc Silvestri. Huntsman is still owned by his creator, and the association with Lee made him a good Wildstorm stand-in.

Since we're all about X-Men artists, another of Claremont's longtime collaborators who was also an influence on Lee and did work for Wildstorm was Alan Davis. In a better world, we might have had Claremont & Davis' Huntsman instead of Sovereign Seven and ClanDestine being consigned to the dustbin of Chromium Age historical footnotes. Davis also drew Alan Moore's seminal super-hero deconstruction Miracleman, which added layers of subtext by not only referencing Moore in a Jim Lee analog, but also a "creator-owned" property that was ultimately gobbled up by the other of the Big Two, Marvel (not to mention further tying into the McFarlane/Gaiman legal battle that cost the former the rights to Angela.) An absolutely delicious context cake!

That said, getting Davis would be a laborious longshot, but thankfully Frank has one of the world's great girlfriends, who stood in line for three hours to wait for him while Frank continued to move the jam around. Davis was doing while-you-wait quick pieces for charity (HERO, I think,) so it was a mad sprint once the call went out for Davis' availability. Given how many smiling faces Davis draws on his characters, Frank was amused by how crabby he was about drawing Huntsman. He complained the whole time about the inadequacy of the reference and the shortcomings of Lee's rendition of the character's costume and accessories. Regardless, worth it!

Side note: for those who would grouse about the exclusion of Wildstorm properties, several ultimately were included in the background at the choice of the final artist, who filled-out the jam with a multitude of additions.