Todd McFarlane’s Neil Gaiman. When Gaiman came in for a single issue he introduced a handful of characters and changing Spawn’s world forever after.
Although the Image Comics titles like Spawn broke sales records, critics weren’t impressed when it came to the actual stories the comics told. Spawn was no exception, as the initial issues threw in a lot of half-formed ideas that struggled to come together into a cohesive whole. Deciding to take what the critics were saying about the writing to heart, Todd McFarlane hired what many considered to be the best writers working in comics at the time. This was how the likes of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave Sim and Frank Miller came to each write an issue of Spawn. Each writer took their own approach to McFarlane’s signature character, but it was Gaiman’s in particular that provided the Spawn universe with an overarching mythology that the series previously lacked.
Spawn #9, written by Gaiman with art by McFarlane, opens in the 15th century, where readers meet angelic bounty hunter Angela successfully tracking down and killing a medieval Hellspawn. The story then flashes forward to the present day, where Angela returns to the Earthly plane to hunt down the newest Hellspawn, Al Simmons. Simmons is still struggling to come to grips with his newfound powers, befriending the homeless population of the alley he now calls home. One member introduces himself to Simmons as Count Nicolas Cagliostro (later to be known simply as “Cogliostro”), and he seems to have a history with Hellspawn, knowing more about Simmons and his newfound powers than anyone else.
With this single issue, Neil Gaiman builds a world that had been missing explain his powers as Spawn. From the centaur Chiron training Achilles to Obi-Wan Kenobi showing Luke Skywalker the ways of the Force, mentors have been crucial to heroic fiction - there to establish the rules of the world in which the story takes place and give heroes the tools they need to succeed. Cogliostro’s appearance in Spawn #9 similarly hints at a larger world for Spawn to discover, such as the Sandman-esque touch that Spawn’s alley is actually a place where lost souls from history (among them Richard Nixon and Elvis) congregate together.
These additions from Gaiman served as springboard for McFarlane moving forward, with Cogliostro becoming such an important figure in the Spawn mythos that he went on to be a central character in other media, like the HBO animated series and the 1997 feature film. Unfortunately, a lengthy legal dispute between Gaiman and McFarlane saw many of these elements downplayed later on, the results of which eventually saw Angela the Marvel Universe. Yet Neil Gaiman’s contribution to Spawn remains a crucial moment in the character’s history, expanding the world in a way that the title still benefits from to this day.
