SDCC Interview: Todd McFarlane On His Pearl Jam Anniversary & Upcoming Toy Reveals

Todd McFarlane has made an indelible mark on nerd culture. He has been a powerhouse in comics, creating the hero Spawn and helping to found Image Comics. He has also become a tent pole in the collectible community with his company, McFarlane Toys, with collectibles from across brands including DC Comics, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spawn, and Critical Role.

McFarlane has also shown his skills as a music video director. McFarlane shared exclusive behind-the-scenes concept art from Pearl Jam’s “Do The Evolution” music video for the 25th anniversary while at San Diego Comic-Con. He discussed how he got involved with the music video, specifically what prompted Pearl Jam to pair animation with their music.

Todd McFarlane caught up with to discuss his toys, comics, and more. McFarlane also broke down the importance of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in lieu of a Spawn movie update and teased that more Arrowverse figures are coming.

Todd McFarlane Talks Toys, Spawn & Pearl Jam

: I am no stranger to the Todd McFarlane toy line because I get almost every single DC collectible you have. That Batmobile that you guys made is stunningly gorgeous. I love it.

Todd McFarlane: Yeah, it’s fun to actually get outside the figures themselves sometimes. And get to do props and vehicles and whatever else, have a little bit of fun with it. I mean, again, just geeky stuff, right?

I’m going to tell you, Todd, the reason I love your figures so much is the price point. But the way that they look, they’re such beautiful pieces that you can display around anywhere in my house. It’s phenomenal.

Todd McFarlane: Look, the goal both in comic books and toys and all the other businesses I do, is how do you give the most value and price it as low as possible? The easy one is how do you build a Cadillac and sell it at Ford Motor prices

And if you do that, you’d be surprised at how loyal people will be to you because they’re going, “Oh, he’s not trying to pick our pockets. He’s actually given us a lot of value and doing a fair price.” If you make a quality product and price it fairly, people will acknowledge that, whether you’ve got a big brand on it or not.

Because for a lot of years before I had stuff like Superman, Batman, I had to sell a lot of brands, especially mine, Spawn, that didn’t have it. And they’re going, “It’s quality and it’s a fair price. Okay. We could do worse than this.”

I saw that you guys just released the Catman action figure. These collectors’ editions look gorgeous.

Todd McFarlane: Yeah, yeah. It’s San Diego, so you’ve got your exclusives and stuff like that. They’re got five or six they’re selling at the booth right now that said they’re doing really good. We’ve got a pre-order on three statues.

The one that I’m biased to is the Batman with the biggest cape we’ve ever done, I think bigger than any Spawn cape. The biggest cape I’ve ever done, ever based on a piece of artwork that I did in Batman year two years ago when I was working for DC. It’s about a foot and a half tall, so you could get all the cape coming in on it and it folds up and then down. It’s even way bigger.

But it’s all, again, anything that has detail and some of the props, or even just the look in the characters that you want, people will react to it. We’re doing a nightfall Batman there that everybody’s like, “Oh my gosh, it’s been a while. Time to jump on that bandwagon.” Sometimes you just, you have the right time, the right character at the right place.

Do you guys plan on doing any more DC past films, whether they be the Batman films or the Christopher Reeves Superman or anything like that?

Todd McFarlane: In terms of the figures, one of the things that we’re selling at the DC booth right now is some figures from the Batman trilogy. I think the three that are there is one of the Joker minions, the Bane with the coat, I think. And then the Heath Ledger Joker with the new paint job or something. Those three are there. Are there more coming? Yes. Forget whether it’s Christopher Nolan, just the Batman movie franchise as a whole from beginning, Tim Burton all the way to today, there’s lots and lots to be mined, not only with Batman, but with a lot of other characters.

That excites me. Now, I want to switch over and talk about McFarlane comics for a second.

Todd McFarlane: Yeah. We’ve got a bunch of comic books that were coming out of. I mean obviously, that’s my first job before I broke into toys and all those other things that I got involved with. And for the longest time, I was just doing one book, Spawn. I was like a dog with a bone. I’m just going to put my head down and I’m going to go Spawn, Spawn, Spawn, Spawn. And then, we got to issue 300, 301 that where not only is that an anniversary book, but it set a world’s record for the longest-running creator-owned book ever on the planet.

And from there, then in 2021, I expand it and we came out with four books to create the Spawn universe, for lack of a better term. And we’re just going to continue to expand those. We’ve got the four, so we’ve got one coming out every week. And then, we’re going to add stuff like Sam and Twitch and Misery. We’ve got a couple of mini-series. We’ve got some projects with some celebrities that we’ll be talking about at the panel tomorrow.

We’ve got seven that are coming, but there’s also about eight or nine waiting in the queue behind it. I mean it took me 28 years just to get to two books. I want to almost be cautiously too slow in rolling stuff out. Because just to be mindful of that people have a budget. Oh, by the way, to that point, all four of my books are 2,99. Of all the books in comic books being printed today in North America, mine are the only ones at 2,99. Everything else is 3,99, 4,99 or 5,99 for the same 20 pages and upwards. And I’m going, “Why?” I’m not a big corporation. I don’t have a big building. I don’t have to have some Ivy Tower. I’ll just put it into the comic book and make it as cheap as possible. Just like the toys.

Talk to me about these storyboards for a little bit.

Todd McFarlane: Yeah. What you handed me here was 20 years ago I was involved in a music video for Do the Evolution with Pearl Jam. And that came about real quickly when we just got a phone call from Eddie Vedder going back. And he was like, “Hey, Todd, Eddie Vedder.” These odd phone calls. Nobody pre-warned you just, “Hey Todd, Eddie Vedder.” “Hey Eddie, how are you doing?” Okay. And he’s like, “We’re getting pressured to do a music video.” But here’s the thing about music videos. Usually they’re arguing about how much they can be in their music videos and whether you going to be on me or the guitarist or whatever else.

This was Eddie saying, “We’re getting pressure from the record label. They want us to do a music video. It’s been a long time since we did one, but we don’t want to be in it.” I’m like, “Wow. That’s the opposite.” “But Todd, I was just watching at that time…” This is how far back we’re going, “I was watching your HBO Spawn. And the bell went off going, ‘We just animate it. We don’t have to be in our own video.’” And so we began, I go, “Okay, cool. What’s the song?” He goes, “Oh, it’s Do the Evolution. It’s about all time, space, and dimension. And you need to do it in about three and a half minutes.”

And I went, “Seems like an easy task, Ed. And so, let’s go.” And that’s how Do the Evolution ended up being this video that, at that point, got a lot of notoriety. The song was terrific, and the visuals were there. And then even to the very end, Eddie came down into the editing bay on the very last days and helped us edit it.

He has an editing machine. I don’t know if he still does. At that time, he had an editing machine at his house because when he said, “Here’s what I’m thinking the vibe would be,” he took a Spawn HBO show and edited it to his song so that I could see sort of the energy. And I just went, “Wow, Eddie, that’s cool. Who did that?” And he’s like, “I did it.” I go, “What do you mean you did that? Who? You’re editing it?” “Uh-huh.” “How are you editing that?” “Oh, I’ve got a machine at home.” Rock and rollers try to become popular so that they can get money, so they can buy editing machines.

I thought it was about Cadillacs and houses in the Riviera, but I didn’t know he was an editing machine. He’s very hands-on about the stuff he was doing, at least back then. Yeah.

Are we getting a remastered version of this music video?

Todd McFarlane: Correct. Right. We’ve got a 20th anniversary coming out. And they’re going to be having a little bit of fun with it. And so, what you see here are some of the original, literally from 20 years ago, these are some of the original storyboards that were from that video right there.

We dug it. Because again, like I said, it had to be through all time, space, and dimension. We start literally with an amoeba. The black, and then the first amoeba split. And then eventually, you get through, and this happens to just convey the prehistoric time. And then it fast forwards and eventually you get into the dark ages, medieval, modern. And then we go into the future.

Because again, we got to keep going, going, going. And it goes really fast. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it goes fast until you get to the end. And then it all destroys itself and you’re back into the black again. It comes full circle.

But it was a project that ended up getting nominated for a Grammy. And I was like, so I do my first one and go, “What? You do a music video, you get nominated for a Grammy? That’s pretty easy.” It hasn’t worked that easy sense. But it also was the one then that after that comes, then you can imagine other people see it and they go, “Hey, you want to work on another one?” And then a couple years later, we worked on the Korn, Freak on a Leash. And that got nominated and it won a Grammy. You’re going, “Hey, thanks Eddie for putting me on the map.”

I know you’re a big baseball fan. I hear that there’s a connection between you, Eddie, and baseball. Tell me that story.

Todd McFarlane: This is an odd moment, and I still think about it in my head that Eddie is a big baseball nut, coming from the Seattle area, whatever else. He came to the editing bay. It was this row of houses. And he was there every day, every day helping us with the editing. But he came with this little briefcase every day. I thought it was professional for a guy who was dressed in black and looking like a dude.

And he’d come. And he’d lay down his briefcase and I’d go, “Oh, okay.” And then the next… Then he’d leave and then he’d come back the next day and he had his briefcase and then he’d leave. And he was there all day. It’s not like he was going to other meetings. And so on about the third day or fourth day, we’re getting near the end and I just said, “Eddie, I’ve just been curious. Every day you come, you got this briefcase, you don’t seem to do anything. I don’t understand. I don’t mean to pry, but why’d you bring that briefcase?”

And then he goes, “Oh my gosh, Todd. Oh my gosh, I didn’t think you were going to ever ask.” Because to this point, I go, “What would he have done if I’d never asked?” “Oh, my God.” He walks over to it and he goes, click, click. And he opens it up and inside are two baseball gloves and a brand new baseball. He goes, “I heard you played baseball.” I go, “Yeah, my college got paid for on a baseball scholarship.” “That’s what I heard. You want to play catch when we take a break for lunch?” And I’m like, “What?”

And somehow he knew I was left-handed so there was a brand new glove for a left-hander and one for him, right-hander, and a brand new baseball. I go, “I’ll play catch with you. I’m playing catch with Eddie Vedder. Let’s go.” We went outside. It was unseasonably hot. There was a heat wave in LA at that point. It’s about 104. I come from Phoenix. I’m like a cockroach. 104, that’s easy.

But Eddie’s out there playing catch. Now of course he’s going, “Oh, Todd’s a stud. He played baseball. I’m going to keep up with him. I’m going to keep up with him.” But Eddie, he had black boots, black pants, black shirt, and he was smoking. He’s all dressed in black and catches. And about 15 minutes into it, I was like, “Eddie,” I could see he was going to pass out, but he wasn’t going to give because that’s just that macho thing. And I go, “Eddie, you want to take a break?” “No. Why do you?” “Yeah, I’ll just go get a drink of water.” He’s like, “Oh. Phew.” I go, man, I could have killed Eddie Vedder that day if I just went, Oh yeah, let’s just see this dude, I’m going to give you a heat stroke.” But he was going to go in the heat. And the question was, would he have ever opened up that briefcase if I never asked?

Would he have just gone and gone, “Well, Todd never asked.” I don’t know. It’s a weird one, but we got to have a little bit of fun that day.

That is incredible. That’s the best story I’ve heard at this convention.

Todd McFarlane: Yeah. Who’s ever played catch with Eddie Vedder?

And then almost killed him by playing catch?

Todd McFarlane: I would’ve been infamous at that point.

Last time I was at New York Comic-Con, the lights literally shut down as you were describing to me what you would do for a Spawn trailer for the film. Any updates you can provide about the Spawn film?

Todd McFarlane: We’re right in the middle of a strike. Everybody’s saying, “Don’t go out and promote,” and whatever else. Jason Blum gave an interview before the SAG strike. People can go out there and read that, which essentially just says, like any other project, Spawn’s no different than a million other projects. You’re constantly working on stuff, but again, things that are out of everybody’s control come along. Things like the pandemic and people get caught in that. And then, up until recently, a writer strike comes, boom. That goes down, the actor strike, whatever.

But when those inadvertent things aren’t happening, then you’re pushing the boulder a little bit forward so that we can, at some point, go into Hollywood and actually sell it. I’m hearing about stuff that [is] 90 percent completed, and then they’re having to shut it down. We’re so far away from that. We have to sell it at some point. For right now, it’s pens down on the writing, and nothing’s happening on the actor.

I’m just as curious to see how long this all takes to get resolved. But my guess is that once it does get resolved — and fingers crossed should be hopefully sooner than later, but I don’t know if that’s even true — that within 60 days after the resolution, we should then be able to actually go into the city. And actually say, “Hey, we’re ready.” I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t control any of this. I’m just going along for the ride.

Todd, thank you so much for joining us here at San Diego Comic-Con 2023. But can I make one request for my McFarlane action figures? I really loved the Grant Gustin Flash that you guys put out. Any chance we can see any of the other Arrowverse characters?

Todd McFarlane: Here’s the thing about geekdom. As it gets bigger, it becomes a blessing and a curse. And the blessing is that there’s so many people and they support you and they’re magnificent. And the curse part is that they all have their own personal wants and needs.

The list of things that we want to do as a corporation that Warner Brothers wants us to do, that the fans want us to do, we keep adding to that. And the upside is that that list is getting long. We can be busy for years. There’s going to be no shortage of what I can do for the coming years, but by coincidence, that character actually is on the list already. It’s moving up the conveyor belt.