King Spawn #39 // Review
There’s this guy who is fighting a Spawn. He’s a badass. Dressed kind of like a ninja. All black. There’s a mask and a hood. And he’s holding his own against the supernatural. There are a few powerful hits here and there. Green blood splatters out of the spawn, but there’s more than a bit of red blood splattering out of the ninja-looking gut too. It’s kind of a mess and it’s about to get worse in King Spawn #39. Writer Todd McFarlane continues his journey through another corner of the Spawn Universe with the aid of artist Yildiray Çinar gives the action a bit of strength and quite a bit of impact as amplified by the coloring work of Ivan Nunes.
Spawn is being realistic. Granted: he’s like...crouching on a roof over a crime scene as he’s being realistic, but he’s really thinking about the situation. Haven hasn’t been able to take control of Earth in thousands of years because God has been sending idiots to do his work. So maybe He’ infallible...but maybe he’s just lazy. Spawn should have been wiped-out ten times over in the years he’s been active. There’s a guy who IS about to attempt to bring him in, though. He’s not going to be successful, but Spawn is going to have to get a little creative if he’s going to survive this one.
Aside from some elements of the police procedural thing going on at the beginning of the issue, McFarlane actually has a really solid series of pages and panels that are really concise and well thought out action sequence for King Spawn #39. There isn’t exactly a great degree of depth in the storytelling. But the action sequence that is written does have a quite a bit of impact. It's a fun, little excursion with someone who has a great power, but actually needs something a little bit more than that to be able to successfully navigate the danger that is presented to him.
Çinar does a solid job of delivering the action to the page with sweeping motions. it's all shooting across the page in close-up. That doesn't include a whole lot of background. To their credit, the art team doesn't rely real heavily on motion lines to get across the feeling of the swift brutality that is playing on the page. That being said, there are more than a few moments that feel pretty static when they should be gracefully arching through the space provided on the page.Nunes’ colors are indispensable in giving the action, motion and motion of the page a very distinct Spawn Universe visual-style to the page. It all looks quite good even if it doesn't always have as much force as it could.
The 39th issue in this series actually actually does a really good job of telling what could be easily be a standalone story. McFarlane might not be very deep for this particular issue, but there IS a solid sense of exactly how much a story can fit into an issue and still feel like I kind of a satisfying action sequence. veteran, who knows it how action moves across the page. It’s nice to see that experience put to use in a largely satisfying action/horror fantasy narrative.
