Batman/Spawn: The Classic Collection

DC Comics; $19.95

In 1994, with the Image Comics boom well underway, there were two one-shot crossovers produced that featured Batman and Spawn. Now, both Batman/Spawn: War Devil #1 and Spawn/Batman have been collected in a hardcover edition ahead of the upcoming new release.

Three of the top 1990s Batman writers – Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench, and Alan Grant – teamed with artist-colorist Klaus Janson for Batman/Spawn: War Devil #1. In its story, an ancient evil, one that wiped out an entire colony, has returned to Gotham. It’s up to Batman and Spawn to figure out what’s happening and stop it.

While the Caped Crusader in the second one-shot, Spawn/Batman (originally published by Image Comics), is younger than when we see him in The Dark Knight Returns, writer Frank Miller’s Batman is definitely cut from the same cloth as that iteration. He’s brusk, demanding, tough, and resourceful.

Artist Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, only two years into the Image Comics revolution at that point, is a different style of character. Brutal, direct, and haunted, Spawn was full of a fire that only McFarlane’s artwork could deliver to fans.

The personalities of the two heroes couldn’t be more different. And unlike the traditional team-up formula, after they finish bashing each other around upon first meeting, they never see eye to eye, right down to the last page.

This short collection is like stepping back into a very powerful part of the 1990s, and it only increases the appetite to see what’s been cooked up modern day for these two characters.

– J.C. Vaughn