Todd McFarlane’s Spawn has seen real growth in recent years, expanding from one long-running comic book series to a veritable franchise that includes spinoffs like The Spawned, The Scorched and Gunslinger Spawn. That growth continues in 2024 with the debut of the latest spinoff series, the futuristic Rat City.
Rat City is notable not just because it jumps ahead a century into the future, but because it's the first Spawn comic to be written by a woman. To find out more about the latest addition to the Spawn franchise, IGN spoke with writer Erica Schultz herself. First, check out the slideshow gallery below to see an exclusive new image from Rat City #1, then read on to learn more about how it charts the future of the franchise:
The Origins of Rat City
Spawn has been on the stands since 1992. In that time, the series has crossed the 350-issue mark and, pardon the pun, spawned numerous spinoffs and tie-ins, yet the franchise has never been written by a woman. That finally changes with the advent of Rat City, as Hallow's Eve and Daredevil: Gang War writer Erica Schultz makes her mark on an iconic comic book hero.
"It means a lot," Schultz tells IGN. "I've been a huge fan of comics for so many years, and the fact that Spawn has never had anyone except guys writing the character is I think an oversight. I think it's something that they never really thought about, but I'm glad that they brought me along. I had a great conversation with Thomas Healy, the editor-in-chief over at McFarlane Productions, and we chatted about a year and a half ago. I just pitched this idea and they really liked it. So we said, 'Let's do this.'"
Schultz says she was given plenty of freedom to creatively overhaul the Spawn Universe, including bringing a decidedly sci-fi spin to a franchise normally steeped more in horror and the supernatural.
"Spawn has always had its horror and superhero and noir genre, and we have that, but we also have more of a sci-fi aspect to it," Schultz says. "We have more of a Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, very Syd Mead backgrounds and everything, like very Ridley Scott look to it too."
The series may take place in the futuristic landscape of 2111, but the "Rat City" name draws directly from the contemporary days of Al Simmons.
"Rat City, it's a throwback to I believe it was issue #42 of Spawn, where they first refer to the section of the Bowery as where Al and Bootsy and Bobby and all the unhoused men who were living with him. That's the first time they really refer to it as Rat City. The idea is basically that the Bowery from the beginning, from New Amsterdam days, has always been sort of a center of all kinds of going-ons, but both good and bad. Just like Al was living in this area and was this king of Rat City, this protector of this area, so is Peter, our new character."
Who Is Peter Cairn, the Spawn of 2111?
The Spawn franchise is still being shaped by the events of 2020's Spawn #300 and #301, which paid off on a long-running series trope by revealing what happens when Al Simmons' necroplasmic countdown timer finally reaches zero. Readers saw Spawn explode in a massive detonation, and that blast is echoing across not just space, but time, too.
That's where new Hellspawn Peter Cairn comes in. Even living nearly 100 years in the future, Cairn is affected by Al's power and becomes the first living human to transform into Spawn.
"Peter is not dead," Schultz teases. "Peter is a soldier and he was in a mission that we will see in issue #1, and he becomes an amputee. He is given these cybernetic legs, these legs that are infused with nanites. In Spawn #300 and 301, Al Simmons has the necroplasmic detonation, what I call the God Bomb. Basically, he's got Violator, he has an angel and himself, and when he detonates that, basically he sends a shockwave across time and space. So everything that happens after #300-301 is going to affect the world going forward. Once that energy goes through, Peter gets changed and several other people get changed by this energy. That's how Peter becomes the Spawn or the new Spawn of 2111."
Like Al Simmons, Peter Cairn is a soldier. Schultz reveals that his origin is steeped in something called the Conflict in the Caucuses, basically the Spawn Universe's version of World War III. It's only after his horrific injuries that Cairn begins to questuion what it really means to be a hero.
"Peter Cairn, he is a soldier," Schultz says. "His father was an engineer and his mother was a math teacher, and he grew up in Bridgewater, Connecticut. He never fit in and he always sort of felt like there was something that... He wasn't fulfilling his desires, but he didn't have the vocabulary to say, what is it I really want? So Peter decides that he's going to go into the army. While he's in the army, something happens called the Conflict in the Caucuses. It's basically just a PR title because the world doesn't want to say it's World War III, but that's basically what it is. To him, he's actually thriving and he feels that he's doing something good. He's being the hero. He's being the good guy. Who doesn't want to be the hero? Who doesn't want to feel that they're making a difference in the world?"
Schultz continues, "Once he's injured, he sees this grim reality to that. I wanted to show how this enthusiasm that he originally had was then shattered once he no longer became useful. I think that that's important because I think a lot of times people, they will associate who they are and their core being with something else. So whether it's service or a fandom or something like that, and the second that bubble is popped, that really affects you. How do you then deal, how do you then cope with that reality coming? It's a lot of an exploration of how he decides to use that power, who he decides to protect versus not protect, and how that's going to affect basically the world around him going forward."
The Art of Rat City
Schultz is joined on the new series by artist Zé Carlos, a Spawn veteran who has also worked on titles like Captain America. As Schultz explains, Carlos has been instrumental in helping a series achieve a blanace between the new cyberpunk aesthetic and the classic Spawn style.
"Zé is fantastic," Schultz says. "It's really great to be working with an artist who just gets it and understands the style, understands the vibe. The details that he puts into these pages are really just phenomenal. If you just look at Peter's design, the design of the cybernetic legs and how that changes from when he's a soldier, to when he's human, to when he is turned into Spawn. Because you can see there's these piping going through and there's blue lights on his legs before he turns into Spawn, and when he Spawn the lights turn green. You can see it's got a cyber aesthetic, but it also hearkens back to the original Spawn. But we want to make sure that it's not so far away from the original Spawn that people think, oh, this can't be within the Spawn universe.
Schultz continues, "At the same time, look at the cape. It's this slender cape. It comes down. It's got that notch. Just everything has been doing has been fantastic. The double spread that you have up now, this is when Peter loses his legs, this is when he's in the army still and there's an attack on his convoy, and he and his best friend are injured severely. There is so much emotion and so much just despair almost conveyed in the acting of the characters and in the acting on the page. He's just phenomenal artist and it's a pleasure to be working with him."
Rat City #1 will be released on April 10, 2024.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
