Spawn #8 with Tony McMillen

Oh, yeah.

So my first exposure to Spawn were the toys when they hit a few years later.

And not long after that, I became a hardcore comics fan, was reading Wizard Magazine and everything.

And that's when I learned the whole Image Comics story.

And by that time, I also knew who Alan Moore was.

And even though I hadn't read any of his comics just yet, I definitely understood that he was an important writer, right? He and Frank Miller were the guys who changed mainstream comics and who made them grow up, quote unquote.

And it was kind of shocking when I went through Moore's bibliography and saw that he had done all this work for Image throughout the 90s, because both sides seemed to be at such opposite ends of the spectrum.

But the more you learn about Moore and his own history, you can see where the attraction to Image comes in.

I think he definitely appreciated the fact that these guys had broken away from Marvel and were now not just doing their own thing, but doing their own thing and thriving.

And it also probably didn't hurt that they all had more money than God.

Yeah, I believe McFarland paid them each a million bucks, each of the writers, which, you know, Alan Moore was doing fine money-wise, but a million bucks is one issue.

I don't know if he ever achieved that before.

I'm sure Dave Sim, if he got a million bucks, that was the most money he's ever seen for anything he's done.

Yeah, but what you just mentioned is one of the biggest parts of this is that this is Alan Moore's reintroduction to the mainstream.

And for me, I was perfectly poised to accept it and then use that as the gateway drug to his older work and then his more independent, weird work a little bit later down the way.

This is just, it was, you know, I honestly think Alan Moore, you know, Tom McFarlane said, I'll get Alan Moore, the biggest writer in comics.

But Alan Moore, if it wasn't strategic, it was brilliant in retrospect.

There's this whole generation of guys like me who have heard Watchmen's really good, maybe haven't read it yet.

You read Spawn, and then he does Spawn Blood Feud, he does Bad Rock, he does all this stuff.

And then 1963 kicks in, and it's funny, there's an ad for 1963 in the back of Spawn 8.

And 1963, I remember I got the first issue, and I shouldn't have liked it, but I really enjoyed it.

And I didn't have any affinity to the older comics.

I haven't read Jack Kirby's and Stan Lee's Fantastic Four or Steve Ditko's Spider-Man yet.

I knew of them, kind of like I knew of Alan Moore as some figure in the animals of comic history.

But I really enjoyed 1963, and I think...