Spawn #16
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSpawn #16 marks one of the most consequential creative handoffs in early Image Comics history: it is simultaneously the first issue penciled by Greg Capullo and the first written by Grant Morrison on the title, replacing Todd McFarlane as both writer and artist in a single issue. The story introduces the Anti-Spawn — Heaven's answer to a Hellspawn, later called the Redeemer — a counterforce that would anchor Spawn's cosmological conflict between Heaven and Hell for decades, with multiple hosts carrying the mantle across hundreds of subsequent issues. The darkly ironic choice of Jason Wynn, Al Simmons's corrupt CIA superior and the very man who orchestrated his death, as the first Redeemer host gave the series a sharp moral complexity that elevated it beyond its shock-value reputation. Capullo's debut also set the visual template that would define Spawn for the better part of a decade, cementing the book's look through issue #100.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
By late 1993, Todd McFarlane had committed to writing and drawing the Spawn/Batman crossover with Frank Miller for DC Comics, creating a gap in the main Spawn series that required outside talent to fill. McFarlane brought in Grant Morrison — fresh off celebrated runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol at DC — to script a three-part arc beginning with this issue ('Reflections, Part 1'), while Greg Capullo, who had most recently drawn X-Force for Marvel, took over penciling duties. The issue shipped with a December 1993 cover date, with inking split between Dan Panosian and Art Thibert, coloring by Olyoptics (Steve Oliff's studio), and both lettering and editing handled by Tom Orzechowski. Morrison's arc introduced new cosmological infrastructure — Psychoplasm, Simmonsville, and the Orbital Angel Station — that expanded the mythology McFarlane had sketched in the book's first fifteen issues.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First penciling work on Spawn by Greg Capullo, who would go on to be the series' defining artist through issue #100.
- First issue not written or drawn by Todd McFarlane (aside from earlier one-issue fill-ins on #8–11); McFarlane stepped away to work on the Spawn/Batman crossover with Frank Miller.
- First appearance (cameo/origin) of the Anti-Spawn, also known as the Redeemer — Heaven's equivalent of a Hellspawn, created by imbuing Jason Wynn with Elemental Fire at the Orbital Angel Station.
- Jason Wynn, Al Simmons's CIA superior and the man who ordered his assassination, is chosen as the first Redeemer host — a deliberate irony central to Morrison's script.
- First appearance of Major Vale, introduced as a military observer alongside Jason Wynn at the Simmonsville test site.
- First appearances of the locations Simmonsville and the Orbital Angel Station, as well as the story concepts of Psychoplasm and Elemental Fire — all new additions to the Spawn mythology.
- Chapel, Wanda Blake, and Malebolgia appear only in flashback or vision form in this issue.
- The issue — part 1 of the three-part 'Reflections' arc (#16–18) — has been reprinted in Spawn Origins Collection Vol. 3 (collecting #15–20), in Spawn Collection Vol. 2, and in the Spawn Origins Deluxe Edition slipcase Vol. 1 (collecting #1–25).
Cast · 11 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Spawn #8 (1996), Споун #6 (2001), Spawn: Edición Integral #2 (2011), Spawn Origins Collection #3
Key issues in Spawn
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