Media Release -- After an amicable parting with artist Whilce Portacio, Todd McFarlane needed to find a new artist for his ongoing comic series, Spawn. McFarlane got creative and used the popular site Twitter to promote his interest in new talent. An extensive search on the social media site led McFarlane to his next Spawn artist, Szymon Kudranski.
"I placed a post on my page that I was looking for artists. I got about 200 responses or so. I'm pretty particular about what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that true diamond in the rough that can hit the ground running and is only going to get better, instead of someone whom I'm going to have to do a lot of work with from the start. I don't have that luxury," McFarlane said, "I wasn't looking for a Spawn artist per se. I was just looking for artists. You can always put good talent to work, and so I was looking for artists whose style would sync up creatively with where I wanted to take my books. Szymon was that talented artist that melded into my creative plans."
Looking for a more photo-realistic style for his title after issue #200, McFarlane was happy he found the skill set in Kudranski. "Since I was going to take over Spawn myself after #201, and go into this style anyway, this more cinematic approach, it was nice to open up Szymon's submission and say, "Wow! There's already a guy doing what I want!"
Also joining the talented new Spawn artist is writer Will Carlton. Carlton works for the entertainment mogul, and after numerous pitches, McFarlane decided to give him a chance. "Will has shown me that he has a huge creative imagination. I thought I could shepherd him a bit by being involved in the plotting, but give him a crack at doing some cool dialogue, and come up with some great story ideas," McFarlane stated. "Szymon will be adding his two cents, too. He's a very involved artist. Kudranski and Carlton take over the title starting with Spawn #201, scheduled to hit comic book shops later this year.
Spawn #196 releases Wednesday, March 3rd, featuring guest artist Rob Liefeld, with many pages drawn by McFarlane himself.
Other guest artists on the road to issue #200 include Whilce Portacio in an encore issue (#197), Adventures of Spawn artist, Khary Randolph (#198), and Image Founder and Savage Dragon creator, Erik Larsen (#199). Stay tuned to spawn.com for announcements on release dates.
