Spawn #3: Questions Part 3 Review
Medium: Comic
Release date: 8/1/1992
Review date: 10/16/2024
Score: 5/10
You know, I’m willing to chalk up me not quite vibing with Spawn’s “Oh god, my wife!” headspace by not personally having a wife, I’ll own up to that on my end - my bad Todd. Because boy oh boy does Spawn spend most of this issue in his feelings about “his wife,” or if we’re being quite honest, “his ex-wife.” While tempting to describe the events of Issue #3 as “things happening,” I would argue that actually, nothing particularly changes during its duration. Spawn starts the issue by breaking into the CIA headquarters to find Wanda’s current address (oooh excitement), only to then mope around and faint after he goes to see her (significantly reduced excitement). Now to be fair, I would also probably mope around if I learned in the span of about a minute that my ex-wife married my former best friend and that I was impotent, but that doesn’t magically make this issue any more interesting. We sort of end everything in the same place as we did last issue, with Spawn sulking in an alley while the Violator stares at him; I kind of find it hard to pretend too much happened. Let’s see, what else goes on, we get the third straight “Youngblood” reference this series - you guys had way too much faith in Rob Liefeld back then huh? We get to see what Spawn’s devilish captor looks like (kinda underwhelming design, if we’re being honest) but still don’t know their name. What else, uh… I’m not quite sold on the Sam and Twitch police routine? It's not bad but I don’t really get where it's going either; maybe they’re just to get the readers tuned in about why the police aren’t doing anything about the Violator’s killings? Other than that, was there anything else this issue? Uh… well, OK, this issue partially confirmed a rumor I’d heard before about the “Spawn” comics and Todd McFarlane, namely that Todd McFarlane is a very talented artist and a not quite so talented writer, and that “Spawn” doesn’t actually get good narratively until someone else other than Todd takes over scripting for the series. Not trying to pick fights, but the dialogue in this issue is noticeably eye-rolling, like the whole bit right after Al faints following seeing Wanda and her kid, "You want me to call your wife," "I don't have a wife anymore," "Sorry to hear that, she must have been really special," "Yeah... me too, kills me every time I see her," I was over here laughing, I'm sorry, having this conversation exist as a plot contrivance to then have Wanda and Terry (Wanda’s husband and Al’s former best friend) talk about Wanda's dead former husband is bad even by comics standards. Fingers crossed that Todd gets into some sort of better form the further we get into the series.
I don’t know man, it feels like every issue of this series so far has just been building momentum for something to happen in the following issue, only for the process to subsequently start all over again; I can’t imagine waiting a whole entire month to just be told “ah dang, tune in next time, that’s when things are gonna get good!” over and over again.