Todd McFarlane on Reuniting with Frank Miller After 25 Years for New Comic Book Collaboration
It’s been a long time coming, but comic book legends Todd McFarlane and Frank Miller are back at it again. After 25 years since their explosive Spawn/Batman team-up, the two titans of the comic world are collaborating once more, this time for The Curse of Sherlee Johnson #3.
In an interview with ComicBook, McFarlane reflected on the good old days when working together across publishers felt effortless.
“When we were both back in the late ’80s and ’90s, the formality of doing comic books wasn’t there like it is today in terms of, like, people started getting under exclusive contracts, and you only work with one [company],” McFarlane explained. “
There was a lot of just being friends back then, of like, ‘Hey, I’ll do a cover for you, you do a cover for me.’ And you didn’t really have to get any clearance to some extent through the editors of the company, cause you just swapped pages and did stuff, and it was way easier. And especially when exclusives came around, it got tough.”
Their upcoming collaboration involves a variant cover for The Curse of Sherlee Johnson #3, which hits comic shops on September 17th. Miller created one cover solo, while the second variant sees both creators joining forces again for the first time in decades.
McFarlane admitted it’s wild that it took this long to reconnect creatively with Miller.
“When Frank and I did a couple of things back then, and the big one, which was the Spawn/Batman, you know, again, it was just like, ‘Let’s have some fun together, right?’ I mean, that’s it,” he said.
“Let’s come up with a crazy idea and do it, and here we are now again, 25 years later. And again, it just shoots you back to like, ‘We should’ve done this.’ Like, as you mentioned, it’s been 25 years. Like, why? There’s no good reason it should’ve taken this long for any two friends or collaborators to not have done it over and over.”
The Curse of Sherlee Johnson #3 will give fans a chance to see both solo and joint variant covers, and McFarlane is eager to hear what readers think.
