Is Spawn a ripoff of The Crow or Ghost Rider?

my only experience with spawn is the hbo series. it was meh at best. didn't really care for the character or the setting

He has nothing to do with the Crow whatsoever.

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I recall a theory that Spawn is based on the Prowler

>>90322846
More like The Spectre, but for hell.
Ghost Rider and The Crow both have heroes who specificially avenge the innocent. Spawn was basically avenging himself. At least early on. I dropped it around issue 90-something because I got sick of hearing about that fucking baseball that McFarlane bought. It was bad enough having the same editorial wasting like six pages every issue month after month talking about how important this fucking ball was, but when they actually had Sam and Twitch mention it in-story I literally tore the comic in half, dropped it on the floor, and never even thought about buying an issue again.

He's a ghost rider and spiderman hybrid

>>90322977
Fucking lol, I don't even remember that being mentioned in the comic. McFarlane is such a fucking fanboy doofus.

Also Spawn is Venom with a cape.

>>90323049
Sam was reading about it in the newspaper and mentioned it to Twitch.
Of course this was already after "Bootsy is an angel" "jk, all the hobos are angels" and i want to say some lame-ass VampiresVsWerewolves bullshit. Everything really started meandering badly after they finally reached the "Spawn runs out of power" limit and he had to go to hell and fight for his soul against...Savage Dragon for no apparent reason. It seemed like they had no idea what to do with it after that. McFarlane wasn't writing or drawing it anymore (Capullo's art was gorgeous, though) and the story was just a complete mess.

>>90322846
Its kind of weird how Spawn has stuck around this long. Hes definitely a product of the 90s, and unlike Lobo, hasnt really boosted in popularity.
>>90322964
Isnt The Prowler sort of a Spider Man sidekick?

>>90323158
They didn't knew what they were doing and they kept not knowing until the end of Armageddon arc and the reboot. The reboot was fucking great at first, but I stopped following and I'm sure they fucked it up.

>>90322846
yes

also Spider-Man, the only character Todd MacFarlane ever learned to draw.

>>90322919
Except that they're both supernaturally empowered after death to seek revenge.

The Crow just doesn't have all that pointless mall cop setup to prove what a great guy he is.


>>90322977
The what?

>>90323320
The Specter, Jim Corrigan, hangs out with The Phantom Stranger, basically God's wrath incarnate? Ringing any bells?

>>90323183
Prowler was a character that McFarlane created while working on Spider-Man. He's a cat burglar type. No powers, just a couple of gadgets and a costume.

>>90323365
No, but I meant the baseball. There's one in particular, or he just keeps on about his whole damn collection?

I never had the patience for MacFarlane.

>>90323377
The original Prowler in anon's image is from ASM #78.

>>90323183
>Isnt The Prowler sort of a Spider Man sidekick?
Yes, but he's also one of Marvel's first black characters.
I think I remember MacFarlane saying that Spawn was based on an obscure Marvel character that he just liked a lot, that people would be surprised by the resemblance if they knew who it was... Something like that. It seemed like he was keeping it vague for legal reasons, and then seemed to confirm speculation it was the Prowler

>>90323320
>The Crow
>what a great guy he is
The title of the comic refers to the bird, it's not a superhero name. Eric Draven is only one of the hero characters in The Crow. There were a bunch of other mini-series with different people all empowered by the Crow to avenge themselves. There's also Ash Corven (Sarah's boyfriend from City Of Angels), a native american woman who was pregnant when she was killed by cartels and is avenging her unborn baby's death, and several others.

>>90323377
Nah Senpai, he was created by Lee, Mooney and Buscema in the late sixties.

A black window washer who turned to a life of crime because his boss didn't think his inventions were any good. Or Stole them or some bupkiss.

>>90323320
The Crow is brought back to kill the person that killed the person he loved, Spawn is brought back to act as an emissary for the devil, he accepts it so he can see his wife again.

The Crow can't die and once he kills the target he's gone.
Spawn can actually be killed and keeps getting into stupid complicated plots.

>>90323463
Ever wonder why Bendis never just wrote for The Prowler?

>>90322846
Neither. He's based on Venom. He even has the tentacles, mouth and tongue recently.

>>90323505
The Crow is also proactive.

He seeks out the people who kills his loved ones. While Spawn mopes in the Alley for ever and ever until you're rooting for the stupid clown and begging for the fucking world to end, BECAUSE THAT WOULD AT LEAST COUNT AS SOMETHING HAPPENING!

>>90323183
>Its kind of weird how Spawn has stuck around this long. Hes definitely a product of the 90s, and unlike Lobo, hasnt really boosted in popularity.

Unlike Lobo, Spawn is a creator-owned character. And his creator, Todd McFarlane, seems very resistant to letting anyone other than him play with Spawn. Here's a quote from Erik Larsen on why he quit co-writing Spawn with Todd:
>Ultimately, I can only do so much on this. I do my pass–draw the book and script it–then I push away from the table. Todd does heavy rewrites and a lot of art revisions as he digitally inks. Sometimes that involves moving panels from one page to the next–other times it means completely rewriting or redrawing a page. As I am continually reminded–it’s not my book.
>Believe it or not–I was writing the book–but Todd rewrote it so heavily that you couldn’t tell. There were all sorts of plans which will never see the light of day. That’s how that works.

There's also the Spawn movie and the script for it that Todd's been continually teasing for years. Of course nothing so far has ever come of it and I have a feeling the reason why is because studios don't want to finance a movie using a script written by him but Todd is refusing a movie to made unless it uses his script.Todd probably wants a lot of creative control for this movie and studios don't feel safe giving it to him.

Not really, only one supernaturally/occult themed hero is allowed to exist

Spawn is more a combination of Ghost Rider and Venom if anything, if we were to really compare him to others conceptually and story wise...and even still he's not a direct rip off

The Crow is nothing like any of them

>>90324645
Not only one*

>>90322964
Not Prowler, Nightwatch.

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>kids these days don't know who who fucking Nightwatch

>>90325082
I thought Nightwatch came after Spawn?

>>90325082
Wrong, Nightwatch was introduced a year after Spawn

>>90322846

heavily "inspired" by the Ketch Rider and Brock Venom with a pinch of the Punisher.

Ketch Rider
>demon with anmesia
>demon but good guy
>living chains
>lots of spikes

Venom
>sentient costume
>spiderman face

>>90324643
I'd bet it's also partly because he doesn't want an incident like what happened between him and Neil Gaiman.

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>>90324643
Man, I wish Ghost Rider and Lobo were creator owned.
So much pain and suffering would've been avoided.

>>90328299
I feel like if Image didn't take off McFarlane would've ended up using a lot of the ideas in a solo Ghost Rider run

Like how Youngblood was a reworking of a failed Teen Titans pitch and Cyberforce was going to be Silvestri's pitch for an X book

>>90328467
Lobo may as well have been creator owned for the whole period Alan Grant was writing him and all the various minis. I think the reason the character was so detached from the rest of the universe was because he was unpopular with editorial, but he made sales.

>>90325290
>>90325369
>>90328282
kek

>>90323008
Accurate.

>>90322846
>>90322964
>>90322977
Living Suit = Definitely Venom, since in a way it's him thumbing his nose at Marvel over the who created Venom debate.
Sam and Twitch = DeWitt and Twitch, the two guys from the Chaykin and Helfer era Shadow. Seriously, go look them up.
Prowler and Ghost Rider could be good choices for influences since McFarlane worked on both. But I think David Quinn and Tim Vigil's Faust might also have been an influence.