With the announcement of a new Spawn movie starring Jamie Foxx coming out in the near future, many people may be wondering, "Who is Spawn?" Well, the Image Comics character has quite a convoluted history, but we'll do our best to break it down for you.
Spawn first debuted in 1992 in Spawn #1, which took the comic book world by storm, selling more than 1.7 million copies, a crazy-high number for a indie comic book. For comparison, The Walking Dead #163 was one of the highest selling indie books in decades and that sold 730,000 copies.
The comic was written and drawn by Todd McFarlane and revolved around the afterlife of Al Simmons. In life, he was a Marine, in the CIA, and a highly trained assassin. However, Simmons was betrayed by his friends and murdered while on a mission, and because Simmons killed so many people, he ended up in Hell.
He left behind a wife and desperately wanted to get back to her, so Simmons made a deal with the demon Malebolgia: He sold his soul to make it back to Earth. However, there was a catch; Simmons returned to Earth five years later as a Hellspawn, and his body was burnt to a crisp. He also discovered his wife had moved on, remarried, and had a child.
Simmons, now as Spawn, quickly learned from a demonic clown named Violator that his job was now to do Malebolgia's bidding, which involved killing a lot of people with his newfound demonic powers and super-sweet cape. Simmons isn't the only person to become Spawn though. Throughout the years, a few others have taken on the mantle, including Sir John of York from medieval times.
If you want to learn more about just who this character is and all of his super-powers, check out the video above, which has all the details.