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Todd is on the Pod: Chatting with Todd McFarlane at NYCC 2025
2 Playsin 6 hours
We conclude our coverage of NYCC 2025 with a chat with comic book and toy legend—and more importantly—friend of the pod Todd McFarlane! After back to back panels, we recap the big news from the mega fall convention including his Image Comics founder's series of Elite Edition figures as well as an update on what's left for the DC Multiverse.
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
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Transcript
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting
00:00:03
Speaker
Are you ready kids? Get your parents permission, check your mailbox and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast. I'm Eric.
00:00:15
Speaker
And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting. Where we talk toy news, culture and hauls. Along with our journeys as collectors.
Guest Appearance: Todd McFarlane
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting. We are joined once again by friend of the pod, returning guest, Todd McFarlane. Yeah, Todd's on the pod. Todd's on the pod. There we go. ah Yeah, it wouldn't be New York Comic Con if we didn't get a chance to talk to you.
00:00:43
Speaker
Sure, but thanks thanks for coming back again. Yeah, always a pleasure. We're so happy this year. I know I've made this joke before, but I'm going to make it again. We're so happy that that Tom Hardy did not steal you from us like he did two years ago. That's Yeah, so we're we're happy to be back with you. Yeah, absolutely. um You had a really exciting two paddles. You had back-to-back panels yesterday. We had the opportunity to see them, which was great.
Image Founders Toy Line Announcement
00:01:06
Speaker
ah But ah you had ah one really big reveal in the toy panel specifically that I want to spend some time talking of talking about. the ah Those Founders figures.
00:01:17
Speaker
The image founders, for yeah specifically. Yeah, it was interesting because um as we were going to announce it, Jim Lee, who obviously is one of the image founders, said that he could make the panel, right? and so But he came, and he was supposed to come at the end, um so it was supposed to be Marvel, then then a Jim and the founders, but he would tighten the schedule, so we had to do it.
00:01:42
Speaker
and And if you were there, then you saw that like somebody was trying to rearrange the... the screen yeah the slides and all of sudden one popped up you see it for one second there's like dough yeah and oh man man that was quick everybody saw uh but yeah the um it it it was sort of a fun announcement to say hey instead of us doing like a figure here or figure there or whatever oh let's just put it into a program if you will called the Image Founders, which are are the six of us who began Image Comics books back in 92.
00:02:16
Speaker
And let's see if we can do at least one figure from each one of the founders, which is what we announced. And so all of them, ah the six to being Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, Mark Silvestri, Eric Larson, Jim Valentino and myself, are going to all be contributing a minimum of one figure into this series and then we'll collect them and then hopefully if there's a demand then I'll do a second figure of each one of those guys. yeah Yeah, I mean some of those figures especially like the one that jumped out on the screen to me was
Spotlight on Savage Dragon and Iconic Characters
00:02:49
Speaker
Savage Dragon. I mean having Eric Larson Savage Dragon figure you know in modern articulation is something that I know a lot of people have wanted for a long time so and it looks great. You know, it's interesting because ah if you followed a Savage Dragon, you know, for the last 30 years,
00:03:08
Speaker
he's put so many characters in that book that you literally could do these little two-inch ones and and have hundreds, maybe thousands of characters.
00:03:19
Speaker
Because always think of like, ah you know, Simpsons and all the characters in their town. And you see that poster, you know, it's got every one the characters. yeah yeah Savage Dragon's kind of got that exact same sort of thing. Maybe I should talk to Eric and go, hey, I'm going to the whole side Savage Dragon universe this big because it'd just be super cool. so Yeah, no, that's great.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I think one of the coolest things as somebody who remembers like when Image started. um Yeah, back in 92. Yeah, back and all the way back in 92 as an 11-year-old that was super into comics and still is, but now 44.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's ah very cool to see like Wildcats and Silverhawk and all of those characters kind of back in the fold after being away for a little bit. Yeah, together. Yeah, know and in ah and ah like Valentino's character, who I always thought had ah a great look and a great visual to it. i said it the other I thought the simplicity of that design was really good.
00:04:18
Speaker
It's too bad we didn't we don't have 100 issues of it, right? It's Shadowhawk, not Silverhawk. Or Shadowhawk, sorry. Look, look at I understand. i do it all the time. There's all these names that sort of intertwine.
00:04:29
Speaker
but um Shadowhawk to me, it it's interesting when you look back, when we all came up with our number ones, we all sort of placed bets on which ones we thought were going to be the breakout character. I thought Shadowhawk was going to be like the guy because he just had a little bit of a Wolverine vibe, if you will. Yeah. Right. You know, he's just a badass kind of dude, little bit of Punisher in him or something like that. And he looked cool with the color combo.
00:04:55
Speaker
um But for whatever reason Jim you know and went and did a bunch of other stuff eventually and didn't give us the big mountain of stuff like Eric did or I did with Spawn to to advance that character you know even bigger. Because like I said, thought I thought he was going to be kind of the head of the class when we first started 1992.
00:05:18
Speaker
we'll We'll have a fun time with his character. um i don't know
Future of Image Founders Series
00:05:22
Speaker
if there's... I'm trying to think if there's been a profit. Rob Liefeld's character we're doing. don't know if there's ever been a profit. I think that was why why we picked that character. because ah if If I recall, because there have been some Youngblood toys. yeah But I think it was like, hey, let's do one that nobody's done before. So it will be unique instead of like a a redo or an up uptick on it. So...
00:05:47
Speaker
Again, might not be, if you were even ask Rob, his number one guy, but that nobody's ever made it adds to the mystique of it, I think. And even Jim, I don't think the Wildcats were ever under your banner as far as toys. They weren't on, no, somebody else did. think yeah I think it was Playmates.
00:06:04
Speaker
And there's a... And starting with, kind of secretly starting with Grifter little bit. Yeah, yeah. And they'll fit together, which is great. But it's interesting because the Grifter... character which also comes from jim's time at image comic book um but when jim went over dc he he took his studio with him so we got grifter as part of the multi-verse right it's a weird one but it was like but where this one is now a little bit different because this one is you know sort of the image
00:06:36
Speaker
founders uh which is and and it was true now i got jim is going to be given jim lay is going to be giving me approvals for an image founders toy while he has a lot of influence on the multiverse stuff too so i'll be having jim stereo extra jim little little extra jim in your life yeah he's always really generous him and his crew are are really generous with trying to help us no is there Now, with the founders and you know the possibility of going into a second, third year, so on, is there room to go even into like those second and third waves of image, like with like Max and Pitt and things like that? Here's what I would say. The answer in the simple version is yes.
00:07:19
Speaker
The answer to any question when anybody goes, hey, you're going to make this, you're going to do that, always comes back to the same the same answer again, which is depends on how the first wave does. so So even when we do, let's say, a video game line or something or a TV line or something, and we put it in and we sell it,
00:07:38
Speaker
if itself, then we're just as curious to go, hey, how do we make more, right? Like we want to keep feeding the demand. The stores want it because go, hey, you just gave us something and it sold out. When are you going to bring more? So to your question, at some point,
00:07:56
Speaker
ah there's a lot of There's a lot from the founders, right? I mean, somebody put a list together for me in in the 30 years, just in the Spawn comic book, there have been 2,100 characters that have graced those pages. Again, that can be everything from a firefighter yeah to a doctor. So again, I'm not saying that they're relevant, but if you've got 2,100, then there's at least 100 that are sort of super villains or superheroes. Toyetic.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah. yeah yeah that Look, so... Each one of us, I think, has a kind of a little bit of a but a library, but but the question then becomes, do you go to our second, third, fourth best, or do you go to that next wave and do their A their a characters, right? Because years ago when we did, when I first started the company, we did do like the Max.
00:08:47
Speaker
yeah i don't We've never done the Pit, right? The Pit would be really cool to do. Dale Keowns. So I would say those rank higher than some of our sort of B and C characters. They're down a little bit below.
00:09:04
Speaker
But we'll see. um Hopefully the demand will be there and and the customers will speak up. right then They're never shy. Yeah, that's for sure.
New Spawn Figure Details
00:09:14
Speaker
ah Yeah, and and I so i know ah you know the spawn that's part of that wave is the first one to have a larger cloth goods cape, something that we've talked about the past.
00:09:22
Speaker
Getting that, because I mean, it's no secret, the cape is is basically a secondary character in the in in the the comics, has been since day one. Yeah, yeah. we i For sure we'll get the super deluxe spawn with the big cape. And I even, in my mind, know how it would work.
00:09:42
Speaker
And so, but but we're doing ah ah cloth one with a wire for sort of for the first time. We've done some cool capes for him. Yeah. But again, obviously they've all been plastic. So we've had pretty good luck with the capes, you know, the...
00:09:59
Speaker
to What I'm really proud of is that it used to be you would take a cape and you go like sideways and then you'd let go and it would sort of droop down maybe halfway.
00:10:11
Speaker
We we've figured out now that it doesn't do that anymore. Like you put it here and you take your hand away, it's frozen. Yeah, and it stays. It freezes with it. And usually that happens because you have to put a really thick wire in there and it and it ruins, i think, some of the the aesthetics.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah. It also gets heavy so that it also pushes its own weight down. Yeah, so there was a balancing act, but I think we've nailed it really well right now I was just showing off a Spectre the other day from DC and it was like on TV and I I go look at you can put it here and you take you can tell because I go I'm holding it watch what happens when I move my hand not nothing nothing happens So spawn He'll have a cool one like that, but what we need is the Mondo one. But i in my mind, the Mondo one is going to need help because you can't you can't make a big, fat wire. So what's going to, in my mind, what we need to do is add stands.
00:11:07
Speaker
stand Prop it up along the way. Yeah, prop it up. But ones that you put done right, um i if you put them in and you put the fold right, you'll hide it all. yeah So when it's on your shelf, you go, oh man, there it is, all cool cloth.
00:11:24
Speaker
And it ah it the the thing that is helping to hold it up at the very end a foot away from him will be hidden if you do if you do it right. so but that's we' We'll get there. We'll get there.
00:11:35
Speaker
And now, a word from our sponsors.
00:11:43
Speaker
This segment is brought to you by our friends at Chubsy Wubsy Toys. A traditional mom and pop toy store in Little Falls, New Jersey, Chubsy Wubsy Toys brings you the best new toys from the brands you love without the hassle of pounding the pavement searching for them at larger retail stores.
00:12:00
Speaker
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00:12:12
Speaker
That's
00:12:18
Speaker
And tell them Adventures in Collecting sent you.
00:12:25
Speaker
And now, back to the show.
DC Multiverse Line Strategy
00:12:27
Speaker
Well, you also mentioned, you know, the DC multiverse and we saw some new releases coming from that. um You mentioned getting now into this area with DC, you know, where you're picking the kind of C and D tier characters, like those ones that are like the deep cuts. i don't It's actually not fair to say C and D because people love these characters and have wanted them for a long time. Ranking. rank That's what I call them internally. Again, there's no disrespect for them.
00:12:55
Speaker
ah just that we Because I need to know that we have our three lists ye and that we're taking two from each to bucket. to make the sort of more balanced lineups.
00:13:06
Speaker
yeah right Because again, I use sports and and it comes from the sports. We did the sports figures for a long time and had a lot of success. and But we didn't have an exclusive. yeah To give you an example. And then one year, Major League Baseball came to us and they go, hey, we need to make a little bit more money so we're letting somebody else come in make figures. And I went, okay. Okay.
00:13:31
Speaker
That's fine, I don't have an exclusive, I understand it. it's And then I looked at what they were doing and I go, okay, cool, I'm i'm not i'm not being biased, I'm telling you from a business point of view, it's not gonna work.
00:13:44
Speaker
Long term, it's not gonna work. And they're like, well, you just don't want to be competing. No, and why? Because the new person that came in to do it did all the all-stars in the first wave, in the first wave.
00:13:58
Speaker
and And I'm going, that first wave is gonna sell. And I go, it's the second wave you gotta worry about. yeah And the problem is, here's how here's how it works when you go in.
00:14:10
Speaker
If you sell 100,000 units, let's say to Walmart, and they sell out, they want 100,000 for 2. for for series two yeah The one thing that the store buyers do not do is ask who's in a line. They never do.
00:14:27
Speaker
okay i've I've told my sales people, you talk about art more than five minutes, you're wasting your breath. They just look at numbers on a piece of paper, and they go, we ordered 100,000, we sold 100,000, you got another series, you want 100,000. Now, my job is to go you don't want 100,000 a second series, it's not as good. That's what that company should have been doing.
00:14:46
Speaker
yeah But I know what exactly what happened. They ordered 100,000. And sold 50. Okay. and salt fifty Yeah, because it was it was now the not all-star guys. Right? yeah Again, still major league ball players, but not all-star guys. yeah And they got stuck with inventory.
00:15:02
Speaker
And then when the stores look at the number and they got half sales, sales you know how many they order in number three? None. Not we're going to go down to 50, we sold 50. It's none.
00:15:15
Speaker
The only reason they were keeping it going was because they had a number at 100. And so you're out that quick. You go home, literally, home run sales on the first one.
00:15:27
Speaker
Maybe a single on the second one, and then you are on the bench, and you're not even getting orders. And the same is applicable for the figures. If I just do all the A figures all the time, eventually then I'm going to be forced to do the deep cut and the fan favorite stuff, and I can't do an entire line because they're going to buy it at Superman and Batman rates.
00:15:50
Speaker
Correct. So that's why I need to smatter some of this stuff in there. Yeah, you can't just have Vlad Guerrero. You need Dalton Varsha too. yeah yeah Wow. No, no. No, we won't go. Because I'm a geek. Vlad Guerrero was the best player when he played, senior.
00:16:06
Speaker
But he played for Montreal Expos. Nobody cared about the Montreal Expos. I could put the best player for the Marlins and the best player for for Montreal and the best player for some expansion teams, even at that point San Diego. Nobody cared.
00:16:21
Speaker
Or I can put the fifth best person on the Yankees or the Cubs or the Red Sox, sell it all day long. Dodgers, sell it all day long, right? So you that's what you're talking about behind closed doors of going, because people go, hey, why don you do so many Batmans? And it's like, because Batman is still a brand and the 12th best Batman still outsells those deep cut characters. And it may be somebody's first Batman. Yep. Yes.
00:16:48
Speaker
And so it's, you know, it's the it's the the Batman, Spider-Man rule. There's always got to be a Batman, there's always got to be a Spider-Man on the shelf. 365 days year. That's always the case. I agree. They're evergreen. Yep, evergreen figures. yeah They're like Hershey Chocobars. There should always be one out there.
00:17:02
Speaker
So with the DC stuff, we're still seeing, you know, waves of figures, uh, What's the kind of timeline looking like this for you, like, in terms of what's next, know, in the D.C. line? Like, how much more products are we going to see headed into 2026? Well, we have the contract to the end of 26. To the end?
DC Toy Line Contract and Strategy
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, cool. So, mean, again, you've got to do sell-downs and all that other stuff. But, like, again, think there was an initial shock at the beginning. Like, oh, my God, they took it away, and then, like, somebody, I think people thought they were closing the door. Yeah, it's like a guillotine. Yeah. That day. That day. That's it. Door closed. It's locked. That's it. We're done. no, no. But they wanted to make the announcement. And this is how big businesses work is that they have contracts. They know what the end date is of mine.
00:17:49
Speaker
They don't want to wait till the last day to negotiate it. Yeah. So they have to start negotiating like a year or longer in advance because it might take six months to find the right suitor. So that just makes sense. And then you go, oh, we found our our our new partner.
00:18:06
Speaker
and And then you just sort of transition. Oh, by the way, the new partner needs time to develop. right Yeah, toys take 12 to 18 months to make. So yeah so so so that's it. So it was like, no, guys, we've still got a couple good years and of...
00:18:20
Speaker
doing nice product before the transfer comes in on this and you know who knows you know we we're talking about ah Warner Brothers you know who own you know because DC is under Warner Brothers consumer product and anne Mattel to see if there's still some way we can have our fingerprint someplace right and so those conversations are going on too so who knows by the time we get to the end You know, there may be even some other announcements, you know, that people will see as either upgrades or downgrades or whatever. But this is just the nature of being in competition with other people. Yep, yep, yep.
00:19:03
Speaker
Well, that's good. I mean, i'm I'm glad to hear I think there was a lot of, to your point, right, people people not understanding how the industry works. It's like, oh, that's it. He's out. But, like, understanding that we still have a really a full year of announcements ahead of us is is kind of cool. Cool. Yeah, correct. No, no, no. So we, and again, ah our, I would say the only sort pressure, if you will, now is that we know the clock is ticking. yeah So now we know we can only get out X amount of figures between now and the expiration.
00:19:33
Speaker
so which ones do we want to do? yeah When you had years on your contract or you thought you were going to get a renewal on a contract, you can start thinking in in like three, five-year increments, right? So that's not how it's going to work. We go, hey, we've got this much time.
00:19:49
Speaker
We can only get 50 figures or whatever in that amount amount of time. Which 50 do we want to do? yeah There's one that's high on my list. Okay, what is it? You really want me to it? Yeah, say it. Jack Nicholson Joker.
00:20:00
Speaker
89 Joker. Yeah, um I'm trying to think what the... I think... Don't quote me. I think that the issue with that is that they never got the rights.
00:20:13
Speaker
They never got his rights. Yeah. And so so when you're doing likenesses of people, you have you obviously you have to get the character approval, which is what we do because we have the contract.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah. But depending on how that they negotiated, if they did, the likeness to be able to exploit the actual actors. Because we've run into that with a couple of things over the years where they just go, you can't you can't make that person. Again, technically, I guess I could just go to Mr. Nicholson's group and see if they would do it or whatever. else But it's not it's not readily available and through the normal channels the way you would yeah do other characters.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, for what it's worth, Mezco's got some stuff out there that looks like Jack Nicholson. yeah So um we got to knock on the door. is it i there's There's two things. There's like, is it Jack or does it look like Jack-ish?
00:21:10
Speaker
I'd take a Jack-ish. No, Jack-ish. I would take a Jack-ish 89 Joker. Yeah, so the ish, they they they do that, but then Okay, you're doing kind of a knockoff. You can't do the person. I don't know, and you get in trouble. I don't know. So they they they've told us, we there's a couple ones that go, you got to stay away from them. Okay. You can go kind of close, but got to stay away. you can't be It can't be them. Okay. And that's a little bit of a balancing act, so we'll see. I'll ask them again, see if they're comfortable with it. All right.
Conclusion and Fan Engagement
00:21:42
Speaker
Well, Todd, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. It is always a pleasure. Like I said, it's not New Comic Con if we're not sitting with Todd McFarlane. Yeah, no, hope you guys enjoy yourself. Got a couple more days here, Saturday, Sunday. Today should be the crush day. Yep, absolutely. Lots of good stuff out on the floor to talk about and to show off to your fans out here. Yep, excited for Spawn 77. Lots of good things. Mortal Kombat, all's good stuff. Thank you so much, man. All right, be good. Thank you, Todd. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone.
00:22:13
Speaker
Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies. Find more about them both in our show notes.
00:22:29
Speaker
Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
00:22:45
Speaker
Don't try this at home. Voidware prohibited. in Some assembly required. Each sold separately. Not a flying toy. Consult a physician if your toy run exceeds more than four hours.
00:22:53
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer, Frank Hablaui. This program and many others like it on the Non-Productive Network is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.
00:23:15
Speaker
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