Broken Frontier

David Hine lifts the curtain on the events in last week's Spawn #175, what they mean and how they came to be. The solicitation for the issue reads:

The showdown! The Hellspawn known as Gunslinger hits town, aiming to bring Hell to the high plains. The townspeople have one chance of survival. One man will go up against the Gunslinger… if they don't lynch him first. 

This issue of Spawn is the second part of a two-part story and a departure from the norm for the monthly book. To give Brian Haberlin a breather from editing and drawing the book every month, we’ve planned a few issues where guest artists will work on stories from the past that give additional insight to the plans that Mammon has been hatching for Spawn.

In the case of Gunslinger Spawn the guest artists are Bing Cansino on pencils and Geirrod Van Dyke on digital colours. Greg Capullo also had a hand in the art. Bing’s original layouts were sent to Greg who gave Bing comments and advice – a true masterclass from one of the great Spawn artists.

The story so far, from issue 174, is that Al Simmons’ great grandfather was a Buffalo Soldier who went on the run after a shooting incident following the murder of a black soldier by a racist civilian in Texas. After being caught in a blizzard he end up in the silver-mining town of Bane, where he finds himself sharing a cell with Ol’Job, whose family has been murdered by corrupt businessman, Ed Kemper. Al’s ancestor narrowly escapes a lynching but Job isn’t so lucky. After being hanged by the neck until well and truly dead he has been resurrected after doing a deal with Mammon involving his eternal soul. Ol’ Job has returned as a Hellspawn and has twenty-four hours to slaughter every man woman and child in Bane in revenge for his family’s slaughter.

Issue 174 had a lot of set-up and I read through a stack of books on the history of the American west and the Buffalo Soldiers in particular. I wanted all the detail to be authentic down to the voice of Al’s ancestor, Henry Simmons. I read dozens of letters written by Buffalo Soldiers to get that authentic voice. Issue 174 was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work.

Page 1

With issue 175 I’ve gone for a full-on action issue, something I don’t often do. The influence for this is the Clint Eastwood movie, High Plains Drifter and the TV show, Deadwood.

Page 1

After the lynching of Ol’ Job, one of the hangmen retires to the local saloon to spend some time with Nancy, one of Bane’s working girls. I came across a photograph of outlaws wearing canvas sacks as masks and adapted that idea for the men doing the lynching. It made a connection with the masks of the Ku Klux Klan. This was actually a period when the Klan had been effectively (although only temporarily) suppressed but the bigotry was still there. Gierrod’s colours, produced digitally with Painter and Photoshop add a terrific quality of light and texture to the art.

Page 3

Page 3

Love this splash! Ol’ Job, resurrected as Gunslinger Spawn, hangs his own hangman. Bing and Gierrod have really gone to town on the gore. I wanted a realistic depiction of what happens when someone is shot in the back of the head and this definitely does the job.

The dialogue in Deadwood has often been described as Shakespearean. What I aimed for here is more Dickensian. The action takes place in 1880, just 10 years after Dickens died. I was looking for a nineteenth century American vernacular that coarsened the English of Dickens and also had a Biblical element, especially in the dialogue of Ol’ Job, who had been a preacher before he went off the rails. Here he paraphrases an Old Testament quotation.

Page 4

Page 4

The third panel of this page was Capullo’s suggestion. Isolating an element of the action is one of Greg’s  trademarks. Gunslinger is totally confident of his new powers, fearlessly soaking up the gunfire. The inspiration for the Gunslinger book came from one of a line of McFarlane action figures, which was in turn based on a single panel of the monthly comic drawn by Angel Medina. Spawn editor, Brian Haberlin, had suggested picking on Spawn figures to fill in the backstory of Spawn.

I’d already done a one-shot featuring the Mandarin Spawn toy. I was in London’s Forbidden Planet with my son and we both freaked out over the twelve-inch Gunslinger figure. A toy is not the obvious source of inspiration but the lean gunfighter with the ragged scarlet coat and stovepipe hat really got my creative juices going and it was a great experience to see the character come to life like this. The only thing we lost from the original figure was the tall black hat. It looked perfect on Greg’s cover paintings but it just wasn’t working in the action scenes, so we reluctantly replaced it with the standard Stetson style you see here.

Page 6

Page 6	Page 12

This page opens with another visual suggested by Greg Capullo. We’re looking towards the barman as he fires both barrels of his shotgun at Gunslinger, from inside the wound in his chest opened up by his first shot. Ol’ Job has willingly accepted his resurrection as a Hellspawn but as he looks down in fascination at the hole in his chest he finally experiences a moment of horror.

Hellspawn often continue to transform and develop new powers as they get used to their new existence. In panel 5 Gunslinger’s weapon mutates into a supernatural version of a six-shooter, or as Gunslinger puts it later in the book, “It seems my shooting irons have been improved upon.”

Page 12

Ed Kemper, the villain of the piece, shows the guts that made him the undisputed leader of his gang. He’s scared enough to wet himself but he isn’t going to give up his town.  He runs from Gunslinger, just as far as the hardware store, where he stocks up on dynamite. In panel 6, there’s one of those “Oh Shit!” moments you get in so many action movies, as Gunslinger sees the dynamite is about to blow.

Ed Kemper, by the way, is named after the serial killer. It seemed appropriate.

Page 13

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With so many restrictions on the use of profanity at Marvel, it’s liberating to be able to use coarser language on Spawn. I went to town on Gunslinger’s speech, making the language as colourful as possible. Obscenity as poetry.

Page 14

Some scenes just don’t need words. This is Bing and Geirrod’s finest moment on the book. I think it’s seeing Kemper’s skull already lying on the ground, that does it for me. I’m a big fan of psychological horror and we have a lot of that in Spawn but there’s a place for visceral scenes like this too. I knew when I wrote this page that this was going to be a crowd-pleaser for our loyal fans. A Garth Ennis moment if you like.

Pages 18 & 19

Page 18	Page 19

At the end of Moby Dick, after the whale has had its revenge on Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod, Ishmael alone is saved from drowning, by hauling himself onto Queequeg’s coffin. This scene is a tip of the hat to Melville. Like Ishmael, Al Simmons’ ancestor is spared. Gunslinger drags him through the main street of Bane, where the corpses of the inhabitants are displayed. There are shades of Apocalypse Now here too.

This scene is heavily symbolic. Al Simmons’ great grandfather was at the point of death when he entered Bane, survived a lynching and exits the town in a coffin. The experience represents a death and rebirth. He arrived in town with the name Francis Charles Parker. When he leaves he takes the name of the man the coffin was built for: Henry Thomas Simmons. He leaves Bane reborn with the name of a dead man.