This is Spawn Point my regular-ish posting about all things Spawn and his Universe and McFarlane Productions. In this post we have a recap of Todd McFarlane's panel from Phoenix Fan Fusion (May 24, 2024).
So after some thinking, Spawn Point is going to be a weekly post on Fridays (most likely), separated between some sort of critical engagement/review of that week’s comics or older material and applicable news. Consider this the “news” portion of the week.
The big news consumer news this week was the announcement of McFarlane Productions working with Marvel and gaining license to produce, 1:10th and 1:6th scale “posed figures” aka statues. In both his statements at the Phoenix Fan Fusion panel and in an interview with comicbook.com (embedded below), McFarlane highlights the highly specific verbiage used as to not violate either Diamond Selects 7in figure deal or Hasbro’s Marvel Legends deal, which allow for the production of articulated action figures. Oh, licensing you can always find new way to cut a piece of pie if there’s money to be made. I’m not much of a statue’s person. This move into statues, however could be seen as an attempt by McFarlane and Marvel to gain new purchase within fandom communities.* One of the things that stands out to me the most when I go to anime conventions is that posed figures by BanPresto and others make up the majority of what is sold and they’re in that rough 1:6 – 10 scale. Manufactures like McFarlane (with My Hero Academia and now Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War) and S.H.Figuarts (with well everything else) produce action figures based on anime properties, but that isn’t what I see, anecdotally, in my roommates collection. With the general convergence of western comics and pop culture with anime at fan events and in retail, these like $35-ish figures could be an attempt to gain purchase with audiences in a from factor they are already familiar with.
The other bit of commentary comes from reactions to both McFarlane’s panel presentation and to a lesser degree the interview with comicbook.com. I do not have the wherewithal to fully theorize this at the moment, but I want to note the use of populist rhetoric in McFarlane’s sales pitch as it relates to not wanting to overly exploit his customers. During this presentation he vaguely recounted past opportunities to nickel and dime them. This isn’t a new rhetoric for him, the archive of his statements demonstrates a critical and capitalist-skeptic sentiment, couched in folksy “common sense.” These statements should not be read as being anti-consumerist, he is very much about consumption. That salesmanship mindset helps to explain the recent semiotic based critique of audiences critical of his NFT business (McFarlane Digital, and a lesser degree OddKey) and why he is able to fits within the Web3 space rhetorically as well as more mainstream capital. Which is why I’ll be at listening to McFarlane’s appearance on the Gen C Podcast from Consensus 2024 (it’s some crypto bro event.)
Next Week: Rat City #1-2 thoughts and News
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