REVIEW: ‘Spawn Kills Everyone’ The Complete Collection

Spawn Kills Everyone : The Complete Collection is a trade comprised of issues the Spawn Kills Everyone one-shot series and issues one through four of Spawn Kills Everyone Too from Image Comics. Written by Spawn‘s creator Todd McFarlane and J.J. Kirby, art by Will Robinson, and J.J. Kirby, and lettering by Tom Orzechowski, Spawn Kills Everyone follows the mini anti-hero heading to San Diego Comic Con to land himself the film franchise he believes he deserves.

Spawn Kills Everyone includes a lot of meta references and provides humorous commentary on nerd, comic book, and movie culture. In a rushed attempt to scamper to the “superhero announcement stage”, the anti-hero accidentally ends up in the cosplay competition, but not before causing carnage by violently annihilating a handful of innocent con goers. Sticking with the meta-commentary, Spawn is awarded first place by guest judge, I’ll give you a guess who, Todd McFarlane. At which point, he is quickly murdered in a quite gratuitous fashion.

On the other hand, Spawn Kills Everyone Too tells a somewhat different story. After an evening of stuffing himself full of junk food and binge watching Desparate Housewives, our little guy realizes he needs a Doctor, stat. After being seen by Doctor Doom, Doctor Octopus, and receiving a prescription to be filled out by non other than Doctor Strange, and Doctor Fate, Spawn heads home in an attempt to recuperate.

From here on out things go from bad to, well, weird. While taking a bath, he – how do I put this – farts out some babies: The Spawn of Spawn. These adorably drawn, thanks to Robinson, mini-minis are all over the place. The rest of the series deals with baby Spawn trying to take care of, his spawn while also attempting to kill off active Superheroes in an attempt to land a mega movie franchise deal.

This story over promises and under delivers. The meta-commentary while fun, never really sticks the landing, and the other popular figures from nerd culture feel jammed into the story with no other purpose then to arouse your sense of fandom.  As mentioned above we get from issue one of the actual comic series the four comic “Doctors” as actual medical professionals. We also later see cameos from Aquaman, Captain America, and even a Xenomorph from the popular Alien franchise.

Not only is the story lacking, but it’s not overly funny either. The series is littered with poop jokes to an overly obsessive point. It leans on them far too heavily, and you can start predict the set up of the punchline before McFarlane even makes it there himself. The violence also serves as an to attempt to deliver a humor, but overall ends up being gratuitous and one dimensional. At no point in the story does mini-Spawn ever come up against any actual conflict himself.  It’s understood that the series is supposed to be a satirical take on popular nerd-culture figures, however, none of this story feels connected, or well thought out.

In relation to the violence, I have to talk about con carnage in Spawn Kills Everyone. This issue felt extremely tone deaf to the society, and world we live in now. Spawn murders half a dozen cosplayers at San Diego Comic Con and I’m not quite sure how you can read this without instantly grimacing that this just feels a little too close to reality. Humor and escapism in comics is understandable, satirical comedy based off society sure, but over excessive violence directed at innocent teenagers, and at one point – a child? It all felt a step too far.

This leads to my next point. I’m not sure really at what demographic this is supposed to be intended for. The over excessive use of violence leads you to assume that we are looking at 18+ title. That being said, the poop jokes would have you assume maybe a young teenager would chuckle at this?

Overall, the one saving grace was the artwork from Kirby and Robinson, depicting some great reincarnations of well known comic characters, but not well enough to revive this poorly delivered story. All in all, it felt like the series was never intended to be anything more than five issues of poop jokes, with some meta-references thrown in for fun.

Spawn Kills Everyone available in comics stores now.