How to Make Iconic Art, Reinvent Spider-Man, and Meet Every Deadline | Todd McFarlane

1. 0:00 – 1:18

   Start

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gerbs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today, [mouse clicking] I'm so excited to have with us [bell dinging] Todd McFarlane. He is an Emmy and Grammy-winning director, producer, and creator of one of the world's best-selling comic books, Spawn. He is best known to many comic book fans for his work as the artist on The Amazing Spider-Man, for which he co-created Marvel's top villain, Venom. Todd is the CEO of Todd McFarlane Productions, McFarlane Toys, one of the US's top action figure manufacturers, and McFarlane Films. He is also a co-founder of Image Comics, which debuted Spawn in 1992, selling 1.7 million copies of the first issue. In 1997, Spawn was made into an Emmy Award-winning animated series on HBO and a live-action feature film that grossed more than $100 million. In 2019, Todd made history with Spawn number 301, earning the Guinness World Record for longest-running creator-owned superhero comic book series. You can find him on all the social, Instagram @ToddMcFarlane, Twitter, @Todd_McFarlane, Facebook, like Todd McFarlane.

2. 1:18 – 6:55

   Baseball.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:18

      Todd, welcome to the show. Nice to see you.

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:21

      Tim, thanks for having me this morning. Appreciate it.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:23

      I thought we could start with a confession on my side. Ever since I was a kid, and to this day, I still have a poster of The Incredible Hulk number 340, Gray Hulk versus Wolverine, that features your artwork, and I am a longtime collector and fan of your work. So it's exciting to have you here, and I'm excited to, to dig into all sorts of things. And I thought we would begin, and this might be a dead end, we'll see where it goes, but asking about how baseball informed your approach to art and comics, if at all. If those two things tie together for you.

   4. TMTodd McFarlane2:03

      So here's what I would say about that, and I'll, I'll give you a little bit of back history. I would say it informed me more on the eventual business side, the, the competitiveness on the business side.

   5. TFTim Ferriss2:16

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane2:18

      It's always interesting when you do certain interviews or you're with people. I w- I, I always just sort of think that sometimes interviews are like laying on a psychologist's couch, and they're like, "Todd, why are you like that? What drives you?" Right? Here, here's, here's the answer to that question so we can get that out of the way. I think it was the day I came out of the womb, and it was in my DNA, right? So there's not a single day I don't recall not being Todd. So what, what is natural for me, I guess for other people, because I now understand as I get older their personalities, that my personality has been baked every day of my life, and it's like it's not, it's not an effort to do what I've done in life, right? So people go, "Oh, my God. You're so tenacious, and you go up against people, and you're such a rebel, and you, you fight for what you believe in." Of course. W- there's no other option in my brain, right? So it's not... I'm not fighting.

   7. TFTim Ferriss3:14

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane3:14

      I just, there's no other option. So it's just a natural progression on where I wanna go.

   9. TFTim Ferriss3:19

      Mm.

   10. TMTodd McFarlane3:20

       But I would argue that whatever that DNA is got enhanced [laughs] with two things. One, I had a brother that was a year older and one a year younger, and then you get three boys together, what are you talking about? Every day was a competition. Who could eat the cereal the fastest.

   11. TFTim Ferriss3:35

       [laughs]

   12. TMTodd McFarlane3:36

       Who could jump the most steps down. Who could run to school the fast- what are you talking about? Everything is a competition. And then you take that, and eventually, I was never gonna go to university, right? I remember being in class when they brought, in high school, they brought the, the recruit in, the college, and they, they s- sort of talked, and I go, "Well, I'm not going, so I'll just put my head down and continue drawing," 'cause I was always doodling. And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder, I remember, and they went, "S- son, why is your arm not raised?" And I'm like, "What? Like, what?" I, I wasn't even paying attention, sadly. And I go, "Well, what, what was the question?"

   13. TFTim Ferriss4:12

       [laughs]

   14. TMTodd McFarlane4:12

       They're going, "Well, who wants to go to college?" And I looked up, and every single person in my class had their arm up. Now, that's okay.

   15. TFTim Ferriss4:21

       Mm-hmm.

   16. TMTodd McFarlane4:21

       But I looked at the two sort of druggies that I know, and, 'cause I'm friends with all of them, and I'm looking at them going, "What are you talking about? You're not going to college. You got Fs, like, across the board. You might even drop out in grade 12."

   17. TFTim Ferriss4:34

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane4:34

       Like, so anyways, I gave them my reason, which is I don't enjoy education, and so let's just convert it to broccoli, and let's say I don't like broccoli. Why would I then go and pay people money to eat more broccoli? Doesn't make much sense, does it?

   19. TFTim Ferriss4:52

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane4:52

       So I go, "I'm not going." Now, did I go to college? Of course I did. Why? Because I'm an athlete, and, and so I played baseball, getting back to your question, and somebody offered-

   21. TFTim Ferriss5:03

       Mm-hmm

   22. TMTodd McFarlane5:03

       ... me a scholarship to go to play baseball. So my last three years, I was on a Pac-10 baseball scholarship, and at some point, now you have to get sort of simplistic. If somebody's gonna give you free education, I'm gonna grab it. Did I want it? Not really, but if it's free, I'm gonna grab it. And, and oddly, Tim, of the 25 guys on our team, only two of us graduated with a degree in four years, and, and the other guy w- I'm Canadian, the other guy was a Canadian. I remember the coach going, "Because Canadians don't, don't wanna hustle as much in sports," right? Because we got a degree. Like, what he's talking about was free.

   23. TFTim Ferriss5:42

       [laughs]

   24. TMTodd McFarlane5:44

       And, and the reason I took it and I got it done for free, because the dumb athlete was alive and well. But they're not really dumb, they just don't go to class, and if you don't go to class, you don't get your marks, and if you don't get your marks, then eventually you don't get your degree. Here's the funny thing about that. Somebody is offering you a free degree, and 23 of my teammates decided they wouldn't get it in four years, so either they would never get a degree or [laughs] gun to my head, this is weird, they're gonna come back and pay to finish it. I go, "Finish it? The buffet was open the whole time you were there, and you chose not to eat." Like, oh my gosh. So if nothing else, given that I'm sort of a cheapskate, I'm going... They're gonna give it to me for free. I'm not paying another penny to come back here. I'll take that degree. So I got my degree, and I was off to the races. Now, now between the baseball, which is competitive, and my brothers, then all of a sudden, y- three weeks before I graduate, I end up getting my first job in comic books, and all of that sort of made me a freelancer, and I had to begin taking care of myself, and it's like, okay, it's just another game, another game of

3. 6:55 – 10:53

   Rejection letters.

   1. TMTodd McFarlane6:55

      competition.

   2. TFTim Ferriss6:56

      First job in comic books. You've posted, I wanna say, photographs of 350 or so rejection letters.

   3. TMTodd McFarlane7:02

      [laughs] Yep.

   4. TFTim Ferriss7:04

      When did you first start sending those out, and did you get any particularly helpful feedback that allowed you to modify things so that you were able to get that first job?

   5. TMTodd McFarlane7:15

      So let's go through it real quick. Did I get over 300 rejections? Yes. Is that tenacious? Is that determination, or is that delusion?

   6. TFTim Ferriss7:28

      [laughs]

   7. TMTodd McFarlane7:28

      At what point do you say, "I'm gonna be an opera singer," and people keep giving you nos, and you go, "Man, look at how determined I is"? At what point do you say, "Maybe I just can't sing opera," right?

   8. TFTim Ferriss7:37

      Right.

   9. TMTodd McFarlane7:37

      So there's a fine line. People give [laughs] me way too much credit for those 300. I think a normal, sane person with sort of less enthusiasm, we'll leave it at that word, than me would've probably at 200 rejections found another option to make money. But the reason I was able to assimilate that many rejections was because I was going to college. So I was sending off samples almost continuously while I was in, in school. So it's like I didn't have a job. I was going to school. So I didn't care. I had four years to basically try and get a job, and then at probably at the end of those four years, I was gonna look at that pile and say, "Maybe I need to find something else." My degree is, I thought is in graphic designing, and I thought I was gonna be the guy who's gonna do Michelin tire ads, right? I go, "That's okay. It's a admirable job. You know, it's a graphic designer." That was sort of where I thought the reality of it was gonna be. So but three weeks before I graduate, I get my first job, and how did I get it? By sending literally 700 samples over the course of those four years and just on one level, I think I just wore them out 'cause I sent it to every editor at every company. And so th- they, they used to have, let's say at Marvel, 'cause my first job was at Marvel, they have, like, one submission editor. No, no, no, no, no. The people who give you the work are the editors, and they have 16 editors. So I would send it to all 16 editors. Ultimately, I went around the submission guy. I just went, "What? You're not, you're not... You gotta give it to the editors anyways. Might as well send it directly to the editors." So I would keep sending it to the editors over and over and over to every company, every editor, and I think, Tim, in hindsight, I think that they probably had a board meeting or whatever, one of those Monday morning meetings, and they just said something like, and I'm making this up, but said, "Oh, for the love of God, that Todd kid, that, that, that punk that keeps sending us... We keep getting, like, a box of mail from this guy every two weeks. Would somebody in this room give him a couple pages just so we don't have to open up his mail every two weeks?"

   10. TFTim Ferriss9:46

       [laughs]

   11. TMTodd McFarlane9:46

       I think I just, I think I just wore them out.

   12. TFTim Ferriss9:48

       [laughs]

   13. TMTodd McFarlane9:49

       And, and I got the job literally three weeks before I graduated, so I never even had to use my degree. Now, what informed me in those, it was all constructive criticism. Let me tell you, 'cause people say, "Oh, Todd, you got the last laugh." No, no, no. Everything they put in those letters was constructive criticism because the people who just thought that I was, you know, not very good threw my, my portfolio and my samples in the garbage. So everybody who took the time to write back actually gave a little bit of sort of insight. And so what I would do, they didn't know it was actually gonna keep me fueled, is that I would take that insight and then redo another batch and send it to everybody again. So I th- you know, where I was making 20 mistakes, eventually it got down to 18, and then 16, and then 15. And I think probably when I was at six mistakes, I think they finally said, "Hey, he's getting better. He's not perfect, but... And he seems to be enthusiastic, so somebody give him, give him a chance. See

4. 10:53 – 18:52

   Compelling storytelling and meeting deadlines.

   1. TMTodd McFarlane10:53

      what he can do."

   2. TFTim Ferriss10:54

      So for people who don't have any familiarity with comic books, penciling, anything along these lines, what were some of the things you were getting feedback on and getting better at? And I suppose this, this leads into the question, like, what, what does it look like as a comic book artist to get better? What are you getting better at? And maybe that sounds like a silly question, but I'll give it a shot.

   3. TMTodd McFarlane11:15

      There's two things that I think make a good artist in the comic book industry. One is just, you know, pure drawing skill, right? So there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who, who can draw circles around me. So that, if you can just draw pretty pictures, you can go a long way. The second piece is storytelling, and if you can do great storytelling and be average drawer, you're still gonna have a pretty good career because people then will be entertained by everything you do. So I'll use an example, and, and I hope, I mean, 'cause I'm friends with him, [laughs] I hope he doesn't take it. Frank Miller is a great, great storyteller. He's the one that wrote The Dark Knight for Batman. He's the one that, you know- ... created 300 that ended up getting turned into a movie, and Sin City, and all these things. He, he rejuvenated dead characters like Daredevil. I wouldn't say, and I think Frank would agree, that he's not the best anatomically correct artist, and his drawings don't get every muscle right. What he does is he tells stories better than anybody else in our industry, period. So he could do it with stick men, and you would still be engaged-

   4. TFTim Ferriss12:36

      [laughs]

   5. TMTodd McFarlane12:36

      ... because of his writing, the way he does it, and, and what's happening in it. So Frank has been able to take that storytelling, which to me, as I've gotten older, is way more important than whether you've got flashy lines. I came in as a kid who wanted to do flashy lines, 'cause it would... People would go, "Oh my God, look at all the detail he's doing." But then I found out that really what they wanted was less flash and more clarity on the pages, right? You should be able to give a comic book to a non-comic book reader. You know, go, go next door to your neighbor or give it to your mom, and at the end they should be able to say, "Hmm, you know, not my cup of tea. I don't collect comic books, but that was kind of interesting," because they understood what they were supposed to be reading and the sequence they were supposed to be reading it. And if you don't do that, you're no good in our industry. One more thing. If you can't keep a deadline, then you're for sure not good at anything. As a matter of fact, people who can keep a deadline in an industry that is driven by monthly deadlines can have long careers and not be very good at drawing, because you have to get product out every 30 days. So go ahead if you wanna be the kid that's flashy and dr- do a bunch of lines and take twice as long, but they're never gonna give you a regular gig 'cause you have to get books out on time, period. Out.

   6. TFTim Ferriss13:59

      Uh, I'm embarrassed that I don't know this, but I know you made it far.

   7. TMTodd McFarlane14:01

      You can still lead a productive life, Tim. Don't worry about it.

   8. TFTim Ferriss14:04

      Yeah, I'm working on it.

   9. TMTodd McFarlane14:05

      [laughs]

   10. TFTim Ferriss14:05

       Working on the productive side. But what are the deliverables on a monthly basis? Are you, are you shipping out a few pages at a time? Are, are they waiting until you have the entire book done, so to speak? What, what do the actual deadlines and deliverables look like for a full-time comic book artist?

   11. TMTodd McFarlane14:23

       So it has shifted, as you can imagine, with technology, right? So the way that it used to work, and I'll age myself, 'cause I got into the business sort of pre-internet, I'd have to do my pages, take them to the... either phone FedEx, and they were called Federal Express at that point.

   12. TFTim Ferriss14:42

       Hmm.

   13. TMTodd McFarlane14:42

       And so I would have to phone Federal Express. When I use FedEx, my wife would go, "Oh, you're so hip calling them FedEx," and then eventually they caught on. Um-

   14. TFTim Ferriss14:50

       [laughs]

   15. TMTodd McFarlane14:51

       S- uh, but, uh, so you'd phone FedEx. They'd either come and pick it up, or sometimes you would miss the call and their deadline. They were, the drivers were past... I was living in a remote area up in Canada, and, uh, on an island in Canada. And so I, I, if I missed a driver, I, I would literally, h- which is why I hired an assistant to, to help sort of package stuff up, he would drive to the airport, which was about an hour and 15 away, while I was finishing up pages. So I'd go, "Oh, I've got another hour." And then we'd drive to the airport. Do you know how many times I've ran down the tarmac 'cause it was a little sort of prop plane that flew-

   16. TFTim Ferriss15:26

       [laughs]

   17. TMTodd McFarlane15:26

       ... to Vancouver, British Columbia? And they were... h- I think he was always looking over his shoulder going, "Todd'll be here in about two minutes." And I'd be running down the tarmac, and, and I'd basically throw my package to him, and he'd get it done. Today, all of that's taken away because now you can, you can scan your pages and hit a, literally a download. Boom, it's gone.

   18. TFTim Ferriss15:47

       Mm-hmm.

   19. TMTodd McFarlane15:47

       It doesn't solve anything, Tim. Alls it means is you just get to push your luck with deadlines later and later. So let's give you an example currently happening. The biggest comic book that's gonna come out this year in our industry is a book called Batman/Spawn, right? So that-

   20. TFTim Ferriss16:05

       Mm-hmm

   21. TMTodd McFarlane16:05

       ... goes to print, 'cause I just talked to the people at DC Comics yesterday. It goes to print on Monday, right? You and I are talking on Friday. I still have to write... It's a 48-page book. I've only written eight pages. I've got to finish writing the 40 pages.

   22. TFTim Ferriss16:22

       [laughs]

   23. TMTodd McFarlane16:22

       The- there's 10 pages that haven't been colored. I literally talked to the person who does the word balloons after I give him the script, uh, to say, "Hey, w- sorry, dude, we gotta both work pretty hard over the weekend." They're gonna probably get the last pages at midnight on Sunday. They're gonna look at it and make sure nobody, no pages are upside down or backwards, and then they're gonna hit send, and it's gonna go to the printer. And the printer's waiting.

   24. TFTim Ferriss16:47

       Mm-hmm.

   25. TMTodd McFarlane16:47

       'Cause when, when you've got a big print run, 'cause this can, like I said, it's gonna be the biggest of this year, you can't swap out books and say, "Ah, we'll just swap out another book. Can you just substitute?" Not of that magnitude. They've got lots of printer presses waiting for this one book, and it, we've gotta deliver. So how does it work? By our chinny chin chin, like a lot of other things in the world. You just get it done.

   26. TFTim Ferriss17:10

       [laughs] So, so let me back up for a second, 'cause I think I heard you correctly. Now, you have delivered so many deadlines. Even if you have to chase down the plane on the tarmac, you've-

   27. TMTodd McFarlane17:21

       I've missed the plane a couple times

   28. TFTim Ferriss17:23

       ... you've missed the plane a couple times. So this is a huge book, biggest in the industry of this year. Did I hear you correctly that you said you have eight pages done out of 48? I guess I'm just wondering if you-

   29. TMTodd McFarlane17:33

       Writing-wise.

   30. TFTim Ferriss17:34

       Yeah, writing-wise. Okay. Wow.
5. 18:52 – 29:25

   How industry status quo led to the founding of Image Comic Books.

   1. TFTim Ferriss18:53

      When and how did you decide to start Image Comics? Because I remember as a kid, I wanted to be a penciler for about 10 years.

   2. TMTodd McFarlane19:01

      Oh, wow.

   3. TFTim Ferriss19:01

      So I was, I was really tracking all of this. And then I was an illustrator in high school and then part of college. I actually had the... I was the graphics editor at a magazine where Jim Lee had been the previous graphics editor, so I had a, the same desk that he'd used.

   4. TMTodd McFarlane19:16

      Jim Lee's the head of DC Comics, for those that don't know.

   5. TFTim Ferriss19:18

      Yeah. And he had these sketches in the desk that he'd done after getting hammered [laughs] in college, and I thought, "These are just treasures at the time." So this is, this is a lot of fun for me to explore, and I remember Image being a very big deal. So for people who have no context, can you explain sort of why and when Image was founded? Because, uh, I think that's a big piece of this story.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane19:43

      Look it, I assume that the majority of people listening don't collect comic books and whatever, so we'll keep it simple. Everybody knows Marvel and DC. Everybody, right? If you ask the next natural question, "Huh, who's number three?" That has been Image Comic Books for 30 years. We are celebrating our 30th anniversary, so is the Spawn character, 'cause it came out that first year. And we've been number three for 30 consecutive years. As a matter of fact, those first couple months we came out, we actually passed DC Comic Books. We were number two for a few months. So when people sort of get past, you know, the Marvel and DC, and even in the industry of Hollywood and/or people that are looking for ancillary products, right? You, which you have to, because in case people don't know, Marvel's owned by Disney. Marvel's owned by Disney. They don't share that too much. And, uh, DC Comic Books has, for a long, long time, has been owned by Time Warner, now, you know, Warner Brothers, Discovery, AT&T, you know. But w- let's call it Warner Brothers. So one's owned by Disney, one's owned by Warner Brothers. Okay, so you're Sony, you're Universal, you're Paramount Studios, you're, you're Netflix, you're Apple, you're, you're Paramount Plus. What are you talking about? Where are you getting product? Not getting it from Marvel. Why? They're not sharing. And you're not getting it from DC, 'cause they're not sharing. So you literally have to go and redact all of those books and, and, and you're left with everybody else, and that puts our books in really good position. Now let's go back, 'cause that doesn't answer your question.

   7. TFTim Ferriss21:19

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane21:19

      How did we get to Image Comic Books? For me personally, when I was trying to break into comic books, like I said, in all those years, uh, leading up to breaking in, those... I was reading everything I could get my hands on about our industry. And what I found was I was coming across a common theme, and the common theme was that everybody, no matter how big your standing had been in our industry, eventually got pushed out against their will and in some cases got the short end of creative and financial sticks.

   9. TFTim Ferriss22:02

      And these are artists?

   10. TMTodd McFarlane22:03

       These are artists, writers, whatever. These stories had been written over and over and over again.

   11. TFTim Ferriss22:09

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TMTodd McFarlane22:09

       And so I remember, you know, one in, in particular reading about, there was a gentleman, his name was Jack Kirby, and his nickname was Jack "The King" Kirby, right? To put it in perspective to people who are laymen listening, that they called him The King for a reason, 'cause he was, and he got the short end of the stick. Jack Kirby's the guy who helped create the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and even created the, the costume for Spider-Man and the Hulk and Iron Man and on and on. That's who Jack Kirby was, right? He helped cr- create it with Stan Lee. So I remember reading those articles, and this is long before I break into the industry, and I went, "Man, if they can do that to Jack King Kirby, they can do it to anyone." And so when I got my first job in comic books, when I, you know, three weeks before I graduated, I went in with my eyes wide open. And so I knew what the game was, and I go, "Okay, their job is to exploit me as much as possible. Can I do the same in reverse?" At the same time, the win is they're getting something of value out of you, you're getting something of value out of them. And the value that I was getting out of them was twofold. One, I n- I, I had all these dozens of characters in my portfolio, including Spawn, and I never, ever had one second of temptation to ever pull any of those out and offer them to, to Marvel or DC when I was working with them. Did I create new characters when I got the plots from the writers? Of course I did. I was a professional. I helped co-create, and I'm the visual creator of Venom, right? So Venom's my guy. B- why?

   13. TFTim Ferriss24:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TMTodd McFarlane24:00

       'Cause I, you know, we came up with the story, and that was what it was. Okay, fine. But I never said, "Oh man, I'm having a good career at Marvel, let me reach into my portfolio and offer them my characters." Never. Why? Because in the back of my mind, those stories had been haunting me that were there. And at some point, Tim I was selling more comic books than any human being Marvel was employing, period. To the point that I had set a record on one of the books. I helped take over, artistically, Amazing Spider-Man. It was sitting at, like, number 22 in the sales chart. They came and they went, "Hey, Todd, if you wanna draw it, cool," because I had just finished a run on The Incredible Hulk that you had mentioned. And they said, "Whatever you wanna do," 'cause it's sort of in the dumper. Spider-Man's in the dumper. In short order, at some point, Amazing Spider-Man became number one or two every single month in total sale. To the point then that they were like, oh... And it, it, it's really what catapulted my career. And, and just so you know, all the things that I was doing artistically to help move it from number 22 to number one, I was getting pushback from the corporate entity up above and the executives up above and the editor-in-chief up above that, "You can't do what you're doing, Todd. You're messing with the icon. That's not how we do it." Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen-

   15. TFTim Ferriss25:22

       [laughs]

   16. TMTodd McFarlane25:23

       ... as an old man now, the single greatest danger you are gonna meet in your life is status quo. It is the thing that they are gonna fight and battle you against more than any other thing in the world. And what's staggering about what I just said, which is a truism, is that there's only two 100 percenters in the world that I can give you. One, we're all gonna die. Hate to break it to you, it's just a matter of time. The second is everything is gonna eventually change, otherwise we'd be living in caves right now. Change is part of the human condition, and yet every day you run into systems that are crushingly holding on to status quo, or holding on to yesterday. And, and for those of us that are wired to think about tomorrow, we become the rebels. We become the outcasts. We become the people who are rocking the boat, who are just, "Todd, why don't you just, you relax, get along?" All the things that they're gonna tell you. And what I'm saying that happened to me has happened to millions of people throughout history that wanted to do something different. Not better. Let me be very clear. Not better, different. So when I was doing my different Spider-Man, I wasn't doing it 'cause I thought I was better. I wasn't doing it because I thought what they were doing was worse, which is how they took it. I was doing it because I'm a young kid with a career, and I need to figure out how to stand out in a sea of people that are doing the exact same job as me, and there's only one way. I've gotta be a little bit different. So I started doing some funky, fun little stuff on Spider-Man, and guess what? The fans liked it. And more importantly, it was enjoyable for me to draw because drawing is a lonely occupation, like a novelist, where you sit in a room for 12 hours a day with you and your thoughts. That's your day. And if you can't entertain yourself, it's a long day. So I was coming up with crazy little silly things I was putting in the book. They were having a heart attack. I was getting called on the carpet.

   17. TFTim Ferriss27:41

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane27:41

       As the sales are going up, they've... I, I, I finally quit Spider-Man. They go, "No, no, no, because you're selling so many books, we'll give you a n- a new Spider-Man book." They were gonna do a fourth Spider-Man book an- anyway, so they could have one every week of the month. So they gave it to me. I've never written before. I'm going, "You're gonna give it to me? I've never written before." But I, I, I gotta write, which is why I quit. I go, "I wanna write, and, and that's because I don't wanna draw other people's stories. I wanna tell my story." And-

   19. TFTim Ferriss28:08

       Hmm

   20. TMTodd McFarlane28:08

       ... they said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And that book set a record. It's in the Guinness Book of World's record for the, for the most sales by a single creator. I also own that record on the other side with Spawn. I own the corporate and non-corporate record for a single issue by a single person, done. Now, I'm not saying that to-

   21. TFTim Ferriss28:25

       Hmm

   22. TMTodd McFarlane28:25

       ... brag, I'm just saying that as a fact, so that now that guy who's setting records, when he comes into the office in New York from Canada, little Canadian hick, you would think that they-

   23. TFTim Ferriss28:38

       [laughs]

   24. TMTodd McFarlane28:38

       ... would say thank you, not fuck you, right? And instead-

   25. TFTim Ferriss28:42

       [laughs]

   26. TMTodd McFarlane28:42

       ... they're calling me on the carpet going, "Todd, you've gotta stop doing this and this and this." All the things that got me and their books were there. And I remember having these bizarre conversations with the editors going, "Dudes, you don't have to like me personally. You don't have to like my drawing style. You don't have to like anything I do. You hired me for one job, sell comic books. You guys are in the commerce business. Don't you realize? You're a money-making machine. You wanna sell books. I do that better than anybody that you employ. Why are we continuing to have these conversations?"

   27. TFTim Ferriss29:21

       [laughs]

   28. TMTodd McFarlane29:22

       And they wore me out, Tim.

   29. TFTim Ferriss29:23

       [laughs]

   30. TMTodd McFarlane29:23

       They wore me out.

6. 29:25 – 35:51

   The Comics Code and the last straw.

   1. TFTim Ferriss29:26

      Was there a particular moment when you knew? It seems like you had basically in your back pocket the plan to eventually go out on your own because you had all these characters you developed. So what was, what was the day or the conversation where you're just like, "Fuck this, now is the time. I'm splitting off"?

   2. TMTodd McFarlane29:43

      I remember with clarity. Comic books have this thing in the corner called the Comics Code, and the Comics Code was created because in the late '50s there was the whole Wertham scare that comic books were degrading the youth of s- of, of America, and they had the Senate hearings. And it actually, in a weird way, ended up leading to the, sort of the advent of Marvel comics, 'cause there w- Marvel was a company called Timely Comics, but then they went, "Uh-oh, we don't wanna get caught up in this whole Senate hearing. Let's sorta, sorta whitewash, if you will, our, our, our presentation." And they change their name to Marvel, and their first book out, Fantastic Four. And then after that, here comes Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, and all the other things that we all know, right? But so you can argue that thanks to some looney tune in the Senate in the late '50s- Marvel exists, right? Maybe minus him, there is no Marvel, so we actually, we shouldn't be giving all the credit to Stan Lee. We should be giving it to McCarthy and Dr. Wertham, who was the one who wrote the book, The Seduction of the Innocent, right? So look it up. Anyways-

   3. TFTim Ferriss30:48

      Hmm

   4. TMTodd McFarlane30:48

      ... because of that Comics Code, every now and then they would get you to fix a panel. "Todd, you can't do that." "Why?"

   5. TFTim Ferriss30:54

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane30:54

      "It's the Comics Code." Okay. Now, I used to ask them, "Could somebody actually send me the Comics Code? So instead of having to guess what's in the Comics Code, and then you guys tell me I gotta redraw something, because I have deadlines, and I don't like to redraw and redo anything." And so it's like burning your, your pasta. Then you go, "Ah, man, I gotta cook it and boil the water again." It just, you get aggravated the second time around.

   7. TFTim Ferriss31:17

      [laughs]

   8. TMTodd McFarlane31:18

      So at some point they kept doing that, and then the day came, and then it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, 'cause I'd been doing it for years. And they sat there, and it was this issue, and it was the sideways issue, my last issue at Marvel. [laughs] It was a sideways issue of the Spider-Man book, the one I had, I was writing myself, except for we were doing a crossover with some of the, the mutant X-Men, in, in this case, X-Factor characters, the ones that were sort of Deadpool and Cable came from, those characters. And there was a bad guy, and his name was the Juggernaut, and the Juggernaut was like you couldn't beat the Juggernaut, right? He's a big, giant dude, and he had armor, and you couldn't do it. So my thing was while he's got eye isolates, he's got to look out those eye slits. And so the way that I was gonna get to him was I had one of the mutants take their sword and put it in the eye, and he, and jam it in the eye because then it would be like, "Oh my gosh," right? You'd, you'd catch him off guard, and then if you team tackle him, you're gonna win the day. So I drew that. I still have that page today, Tim, 'cause it's the page that broke the camel's back, right?

   9. TFTim Ferriss32:30

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane32:30

       I have the, I have the unedited version, even better. I, I, I, I don't even have the edited version. I have the unedited version. And so they phoned me up, and they said, "Todd, you gotta redraw it." And I went, "What? What do I gotta dr- redraw what?" "You can't stab somebody in the eye with a knife." And I go-

   11. TFTim Ferriss32:46

       [laughs]

   12. TMTodd McFarlane32:47

       ... "What are, what are you talking about?" "Well, like the Comics Code." I go, "Well, of course you can," because just not long ago there was this great cover. Not only was it in the p- it was on the cover of Daredevil, Frank Miller, and he's got Bullseye on the cover, and he's stabbing Elektra, a character, on the cover. And so I go, "Of course you can stab people." And they go, "Well, yes, you can stab people, but you can't, you can't have a rear exit wound." And I went, "What are you talking about? Did you look at that cover?"

   13. TFTim Ferriss33:22

       [laughs]

   14. TMTodd McFarlane33:22

       "The guy's killing Elektra. It's going in the front. It's coming out the back." "No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, you, no, you can stab them, and it can come out a rear exit wound, but you can't tear the cloth." So if you look at the drawing, you're gonna see that-

   15. TFTim Ferriss33:35

       [laughs]

   16. TMTodd McFarlane33:35

       ... it's like you don't really see the sword coming out. It's like a teepee. It's like a teepee. The back of her costume is like a, it's, it, it's a teepee, but it hasn't cut.

   17. TFTim Ferriss33:44

       Yeah.

   18. TMTodd McFarlane33:44

       So I go, "So I just want to be clear. You can gut somebody, and you can have it come out the other side after you gut them. You just can't rip the cloth, and that won't offend the mothers and the children?" "Yes." "Wow. Okay. Um, so there's no rear exit wound. I'm just stabbing them in the eye." "Yeah, but you know what? People are sensitive to eyes because if everybody gets something in their eye, we all know how much pain that is, and teeth. Because if you go to the dentist and he drills you wrong..." And I'm having this absurd conversation with five or six of my editors, and I'm just going, "What are we... So I just want to be clear. Can, can I stab him in the chest?" "Yes." "In the knee?" "Yes." "In the elbow?" "Yes." "In the eye?" "No." "In the cheek?" "Yes." "In the neck?" "Yes." "In the mouth?" "No." "Wow. Wow." So somehow it just, I was in Bizzaroland. And so at that moment I stopped the conversation because you never wanna have a conversation with anybody where two plus two equals giraffe, right? Never talk to somebody who comes up with that equation.

   19. TFTim Ferriss34:53

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane34:53

       So I said, "Guys, here's, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna send you the page. I'll do a little quick drawing over if you want. You guys fix it any way you see fit. By the way, I'm handing in my resignation. I am done. I am exhausted." I also was a few days away from becoming a father for the first time, and I just went, "You know what? It's time to catch my breath. I don't know what being a dad's about. These guys have worn me out, and alls I do is sell books for them," and I just called uncle. And that was it. That was the day I walked away. Now, did I have a plan B? Of course I didn't, Tim. Of course I didn't. The plan B was I had Spawn as a character, and I just went, "I guess I'll just have to self-publish, right? Not ideal, but okay, here we go."

7. 35:51 – 54:59

   The Marvel Dream Team exodus.

   1. TMTodd McFarlane35:51

      The upside of it was that I was talking to a couple other people. Uh, let me also say, before me quitting, I also was going around trying to create a union. I was like the Norma Rae. I would go, "Come on, man. Power to the people," right? "If we stop drawing, put pencils down, they got nothing to print. We, we, we show them our power." It was frustrating for me when I tried it for a few months that, that the most scared people that will say, "Yeah, let's join together" are those that don't have a job. It was weird to me.

   2. TFTim Ferriss36:28

      Hmm.

   3. TMTodd McFarlane36:28

      I would, I'd, I'd be talking to dozens of people that I knew that wanted to be in the business, that were in the business but weren't getting steady work, that needed a better life, and I go, "Come on, let's just go. Let's just create like a, an enclave of, of people and deal with the whole is better than the parts." And they would say, "No, Todd, I can't, because what if they blackball me?" And I'm like, "Blackball you? What are you talking about? You're not getting any work from them right now." "Yeah, but what if they blackball me?" I go, "So dude, here's what I'll do for you. Right now you have no job, no car, no girlfriend, no house, no money. If you join this enclave, I will promise I will make all of those equal to you, right? You've got nothing to lose other than to go up. Come on, man. I'm, I'm selling more books than anybody else. I'm making more money than anybody else in our industry, and I'm willing to throw it away. You should be 10 times more fearless than me." It was actually oddly the opposite.

   4. TFTim Ferriss37:28

      Hmm.

   5. TMTodd McFarlane37:28

      So during that time, I had been talking to my friends and peers that were also in the industry. A, a gentleman by the name of Rob Liefeld and another one named Eric Larsen, and both of them had that same entrepreneurial, let's just call it rebellious trait in them. And we were always talking, and I remember in one conversation Rob was saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna maybe go... You know, I'm work-" He's still working for Marvel, so is Eric. And it's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go do my own book." And then Eric was on a, the call going, "Yeah, I'm gonna go do my own book." And I, I had just quit, and at some point during the conversation, the topic came up and go, "Well, if you're gonna do your own book on your own, Rob, and you're gonna do your own book on your own, Eric, and I'm planning on it, why don't we do all of them together in the same place? It's never been done." What's happened is people have left Marvel and DC one at a time, or they pushed them out the door. Think of it like a sports team. So you lose a free agent. You'll go get another player. So you lose ano- but what if 10 of your players on a championship team quit the same year? That would be detrimental to that, to that competition of that team. So the conversation was, "Why don't we just join forces?" So all of a sudden, very quickly it was three. Rob, who, super energetic, came up with the name Image Comic Books, and the reason why he came up with the name, so he tells me, is that there was a commercial that was on, uh, TV, and it was, uh, Andre Agassi, I think, and it was a, it was a camera commercial, and he says, "Image is everything." So that was the punchline of the commercial. So he was like, "Let's do Image," right? "If Image is everything, let's do Image," right?

   6. TFTim Ferriss39:13

      [laughs]

   7. TMTodd McFarlane39:13

      So that was it. Image Comics was born. You don't overthink. People think that we come up with all this stuff, and we know what we're doing. No. Venom in and of itself was a happy accident. We can go back to that in a minute if you want to. But, so the three of us get together, and then, and then Rob says, "Todd, I've got a buddy, Jim Valentino. He does some independent comic books. Uh, is it okay if he comes?" And so I g- "What are you talking about? I..." Like, "The, this is a group. The more the merrier." So we've got four, and then we find somebody to help us publish. And we say, "That's it. We're flying to New York, and we're gonna break the news to, to Marvel that we're quitting." Four of us: Rob, Eric, Todd, Jim. Jim Valentino. We fly to New York, and I land the day before. We have a meeting with the top people. Terry Stewart, who was the publishing head at that point, and later at that meeting, I'll get to, was the editor-in-chief who had just happened to be walking down the hall, right? So I've got a meeting with Terry Stewart, the top dog at... And to basically say, "We're quitting. Here's our reasons why." And if it was me, I would close his barn door, 'cause you might have some more people quitting next week or the week after the week after. So we land the day before, and I got to blow some time, so I happened to walk around. I heard there's an auction, somebody selling some artwork. I go to the auction, and Jim Lee, the person you know, you talked about at the beginning-

   8. TFTim Ferriss40:49

      Yeah

   9. TMTodd McFarlane40:49

      ... who's now the head at DC Comic Books. Jim Lee is at the auction, and he's like, "Hey, Todd, what are you doing here?" I'm like, "Oh," and I told him. And then I start giving the sales pitch. Jim, let me tell you one thing. When I have my passion involved, I'm a good salesman. I'm a good salesman. And so I start pounding on Jim Lee, and Jim Lee, at this point, just so you know, is doing the X-Men, and it is the number one selling book. He's doing the number one selling book.

   10. TFTim Ferriss41:25

       Yeah, huge.

   11. TMTodd McFarlane41:26

       The only time I ever got beat was Jim Lee, right? That guy. He was, he was my competition. So, like, I was Magic Johnson, he was Larry Bird, okay? And so we just, we had our rival. But we liked each other, and we got along. And so I tell him what we're doing, and he starts thinking about it, and then, to my surprise, says, "I think I can go with that." Now, this is a monumental moment from my perspective, and here's why, ladies and gentlemen. Todd the rebel leaving was gonna be easy for, for Marvel to basically discount, 'cause they were gonna go, "Ah, that kid's always sort of rocking the boat, and he's always a bit of a pistol. You know what? That's fine." Rob Liefeld had the same attitude, so it's like, "Ah," we were the bad boys. "Ah, so the bad boys left. Good riddance." Jim Lee was the golden child. He was [smacks lips] [laughs] the chef's kiss. He was the guy. He was perfect. If they could clone employees and artists, Jim Lee was the mold. And so t- when Jim said he would go, that was a thunderclap in my head to go, "Oh my God, if the choirboy can go, then that means all bets are off."

   12. TFTim Ferriss42:46

       [laughs]

   13. TMTodd McFarlane42:47

       "And they are gonna have to sit up and pay attention, because not only are you losing the bad boys, you are losing the model citizens." And so Jim then says, "Oh, by the way, I got a pal, Whilce Portacio. You know-" Is it okay if I phone him and, and, 'cause he's looking for work. I think he'll join, too." Shoot! He was doing another X-Men book. I'm going, "What? We're gonna get two X-Men?" The X-Men books are the number one selling book at, at that point. "Bring 'em on." So we got six, and I'm walking now back to my hotel with the biggest grin on my face 'cause I go, "They don't even know what's about to come." And as I'm walking into my hotel, I, I see another sort of peer, a guy by the name of Mark Silvestri. Now, Mark Silvestri to me at that time-

   14. TFTim Ferriss43:31

       Mm-hmm

   15. TMTodd McFarlane43:31

       ... was the best artist. Like, just in terms of skill, Mark Silvestri. So-

   16. TFTim Ferriss43:38

       Don't believe a thing that the, my son is saying.

   17. TMTodd McFarlane43:40

       Yeah, that's my dad I'm taking care of here, Rob. [laughs]

   18. TFTim Ferriss43:42

       [laughs] Yeah, yeah. No problem.

   19. TMTodd McFarlane43:44

       Mark Silvestri's there, and it's about 11 o'clock at night. And I go, "Hey, Mark. What are you doing?" He goes, "Oh, I'm going to bed." "You got, you got, you got five minutes for me?" Right? And so I sit down and, like Mussolini from the balcony, I give him the speech, right?

   20. TFTim Ferriss43:57

       [laughs]

   21. TMTodd McFarlane43:57

       And I give it to him, and he's like, "Oh, my God." He goes, "Todd, that sounds good. And Jim Lee's on board?" "Yeah, he just signed on." "Let me think about it." I go, "Mark, here's the gig. We've got a meeting at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. I need to know if you're in or not by 8 o'clock in the morning." He goes, "So I've gotta, I've gotta go to bed. I've gotta think about it, whether I'm gonna change my entire career, and I've got nine hours, of which eight of them I'm gonna sleep?" "Yeah, that's it." Now, I don't know what he did-

   22. TFTim Ferriss44:26

       [laughs]

   23. TMTodd McFarlane44:26

       ... or how well he slept that night. But in the morning at 7:30, the phone rings, and he goes, "Hey, Todd. Mark. I'm in." Seven. We went to New York. I flew to New York with Rob, with four of us, with four of us, and by the time we walk into that office, we've got seven. Oh, by the way, Mark Silvestri was doing the Wolverine comic book. We had literally the dream team. To put it in perspective for people listening, again, that don't know, there's probably every year about... That year was probably about 6,000, 7,000 comic books come out. But from all companies, right? 'Cause again, Spider-Man comes out once a month, so that's 12. And then you've got three Spider-Man books, that's 36. And then Iron Man's another 12, and 12. And you add it all up. Literally thousands of comic books come out. The people who, like, gathered together to create Image, we had accomplished 44 of the top 50 sales that year. Just to put in perspective who we were. 44 of the top 50 sales of 6,000. We were literally the comic book equivalent of the dream team, the basketball team that was happening in basketball at that time. So I knew this was gonna reverberate somewhere. And again, the stock went down at Marvel the next day. Take a look at it, 'cause CNN reported on it. And we went into the meeting, and essentially it went like this. And here would be a fun interview, is to get Terry Stewart's perspective of it, because not only-

   24. TFTim Ferriss46:01

       [laughs]

   25. TMTodd McFarlane46:02

       ... has he literally lied about it, he will tell you otherwise. But not only has he lied about it, but then 30 years later, I met up with him, and my wife went and talked to him, and he still is spewing the lie, right? And I get it. He's corporate. What's he gonna do? He doesn't wanna say that it was on his watch that all these people left. But here's his lie. And it is, because I've got, I got witnesses, 'cause there's more than one of us in that room, is he's saying we came in and we asked for the copyrights of our characters. What, what are you [laughs] talking about? None of us is that crazy. We understood the dynamics of the business. We would, like, "Yes, give me Spider-Man, and give him the X-Men." What are you talking about? That's his, that's... He's saying he had to let us go 'cause that was our demand. No. No. The way that it went down was simply like this: "We are leaving. There is nothing you can give us that's gonna keep us. And, oh, by the way, here's some of our reasons. If it was us, you may want to do something about those reasons, because next week you may have another seven quitting. I don't understand why you wanna keep having people quitting, but you know what? Do what you gotta do. It's your company, whatever." Now, during that conversation, the editor-in-chief had coincidentally happened to be up on the, on the upper floors. Don't know why. And just came in and whatever. He was a good man, Tom DeFalco. [laughs] The one that used to tell me, "Can't do that, Todd. You can't do that, Todd," on Spider-Man.

   26. TFTim Ferriss47:41

       Oh.

   27. TMTodd McFarlane47:41

       So anyway, at the end of this conversation, 'cause Rob Liefeld, who was in there, and my wife was there, and Jim Lee was there. Rob left because he had to go pick up his girlfriend, so that was classic Rob. Like, "Oh, uh, you guys just finish this world-changing conversation. I gotta go get my wife and gotta grab a burger."

   28. TFTim Ferriss48:00

       [laughs]

   29. TMTodd McFarlane48:00

       So, and this is why I like Rob so much, 'cause he just-

   30. TFTim Ferriss48:03

       [laughs]
8. 54:59 – 1:00:51

   How is Todd’s camel bladder a competitive advantage?

   1. TFTim Ferriss55:00

      Okay, so I just came back from a bathroom break. You mentioned before we started recording you had a camel bladder and that you would talk until I had to take a bathroom break, which was true. So how is, how is a camel bladder a competitive- Advantage [laughs]

   2. TMTodd McFarlane55:13

      It is. And so, 'cause people go, "So what? So why? So you, you don't go to the bathroom." I mean, I, I went to a signing not long ago, and I got there at 7:00, and I signed from 7:00 in the morning to midnight, and I didn't move from the desk where I was signing from.

   3. TFTim Ferriss55:26

      [laughs] What? What?

   4. TMTodd McFarlane55:27

      Now, again, other human beings had to eat and go to the bathroom. So I go, "You better have two teams then. You're gonna have to rotate them." Let me just sort of quickly get out of the way first how you cannot go to the bathroom for 17 hours. It's really sort of easy stuff. If you don't put anything into your top hole, nothing comes out of any of the bottom holes, right? Just, it's just basic.

   5. TFTim Ferriss55:47

      [laughs]

   6. TMTodd McFarlane55:48

      So I don't eat, and I don't drink. That's a whole nother conversation. But, like, they're going, "What? Well, what... How, how do you do that?" That's another conversation. But if you don't put anything... Nothing in, nothing out. Simple. Easy. And I know this to be scientifically true 'cause I've used it to my advantage. Now, because I have a, a camel bladder, two things have happened in my career that I think have been advantageous. One, everybody when I go to the conventions would have to go and take a lunch break. Why? Because they're, they're hungry. They're hungry, right? My wife would tell you I have never uttered those words, "I'm hungry." I eat because science says I need to. My body needs fuel, so I put it in, not because I'm hungry, because I have to. It's an essential ingredient, food. So I do it. But I can outlast you if you gotta go away. So people would take off at conventions and go f- away for lunch or bathroom breaks or whatever. Guess who didn't? Me. And here's why that matters, 'cause there's people in line, and if you've got... At the time of our popularity when they used to open it up, you would have, at times, I'm telling you literally, thousands of people in line waiting for your autograph. First off, in good conscience, I can't have somebody waiting in line for two hours, three hours, and then look at them and say, "Cut. I'm going for an hour-and-a-half lunch break." And the kid's going, "What? I've already been in line for three hou-" Like, I can't do it. I can't look at somebody in the eye. I won't do it. So I said, "No, I'll just figure out how to not do this thing that most humans do." So, and here's where the upside is, is that when all my peers have gone to lunch, then people are waiting in line, and then they're just sitting there going, "Well, that guy's still signing. What's his name? Todd, Tom, Tim, whatever. What's he do? Spider-Man. Well, I like comic books. I know Spider-Man." And guess what happens, Tim? They get in your line. They don't care really at that point about you.

   7. TFTim Ferriss57:36

      Nah.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane57:36

      They just go, "He's signing. The line's moving. I'll get in his line." And then they come up. You've got 20 seconds. You become as gracious as you can to them, and maybe you peel off and you've got a new couple fans, and all of a sudden it's like, "You know, I only collect X-Men, but you know what? Todd was a gentleman, and he was very s- nice, and he smiled at me. He was very kind. You know what? Maybe I'll go buy one of his Spider-Man books or, you know, in the future, his Spawn books." And so that's it. Good, right? I'll always be nice to anybody no matter who they are. Number two, on the business end, and this one is sadly even easier, and it's just pathetic at times. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and Phoenix, Arizona can be 110 degrees. Let me tell you, I'm like a cockroach. I don't care what the weather is, I'll survive. Don't worry about me. I'm good. But here's what I know about other people. They have comfort zones. And so whenever I was in some big legal dispute or contract dispute, I would say, especially to people in LA, I go, "You fly them to me. You fly them to me." Now, this is just the art of war. So my desk is facing a big giant glass window, right? And I know when the sun comes down that window. Now, when, usually when I'm in my room, I bring down the drapes and I put up the AC and I'm comfortable, but when the enemy's coming, i.e. the people I've gotta negotiate with come, right, I make sure that the blinds are up and that I turn the air conditioning so that it's actually stuffy in that room. 'Cause why? I can endure it. I've done it plenty of times. And then they always come dressed in a three-piece suit. Wrong move, guys. Wrong move.

   9. TFTim Ferriss59:13

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane59:13

       And then they come in, and they come into the room, and I close the door, and I know it's gonna get stuffy, and then I put a giant pitcher of water in front of them.

   11. TFTim Ferriss59:22

       [laughs]

   12. TMTodd McFarlane59:23

       And then I utter the words, "Guys, this has been going on far, far too long. Here's the deal. We're not leaving this room until we settle every single outstanding point." And during those conversations, they either pour their own water on a constant basis, 'cause they've got their three-piece wool suit on. I've got my T-shirt and my, and I'm in my, my Nike shorts, and I can just see them getting hotter and hotter and hotter.

   13. TFTim Ferriss59:59

       [laughs]

   14. TMTodd McFarlane59:59

       And they keep having to get more and more water, and at some point nature calls.

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:00:04

       [laughs]

   16. TMTodd McFarlane1:00:04

       And then we get down to the last one, and they go, I go, "I'm not moving on, on point 10. I'm not moving. It's a deal breaker. If I don't get it, this whole deal..." And you know how many times I've had people in my room go, "Fine"? This is how it works. It goes like this, Tim. "Fine, you can have point 10. Are we done?" "Yes." "Are we done?" "Yes." "Where's your bathroom?" The very next thing is, "Where's your bathroom?"

   17. TFTim Ferriss1:00:25

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane1:00:25

       Because I think in my mind that they literally caved in on the 10th point because they couldn't hold it anymore. And if they could have held it, they could have argued longer with me, and perhaps I might have conceded or we could have compromised on that point. But their bladder cost them. Too bad, how sad.

   19. TFTim Ferriss1:00:48

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane1:00:48

       You find your advantages wherever you can get them.

   21. TFTim Ferriss1:00:50

       [laughs]

9. 1:00:51 – 1:19:15

   Career bouncing and double-shifting as a penciler and inker.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:00:52

      Oh, McFarlane the Barbarian, what a savage. Nice work. [laughs] So let's come back to Venom. You mentioned that Venom came together, I think, as an accident maybe.

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:01:02

      Yeah, a happy accident.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:01:04

      Yeah. I mean, this is an iconic character. How did it come together?

   4. TMTodd McFarlane1:01:07

      So we'll go back early in my Marvel career. Like I said- Early in the podcast, if you can keep deadlines, that's a giant value in that, in that industry. So I was showing them that I could keep deadlines. So I knew then that that was gonna be getting me continuous work. So once you get continuous work, the next upgrade is can you draw characters that people have heard of, right? So 'cause the first job I got at Marvel was on a, a book, and it was, like, an obscure book. It was called Steve Englehart's Coyote. And, and it wasn't even Coyote. I was doing a backup in The Coyote. I was doing an obscure backup in an obscure book. It literally was starting in the mail room. But eventually, I, I got a steady job over at DC 'cause they canceled Coyote, and I got a, I got a monthly book over at DC. Unfortunately, Tim, and this is where sometimes one person's break is another person's tragedy. An artist on another book, who was a fit human being, was super awesome artist, I followed him, was a health freak, drank some unpasteurized milk, went into a seizure and had an allergic reaction and died.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:02:20

      Oh, my God.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane1:02:21

      And so I get a phone call and they go, "Hey, Todd, my artist just passed away. Can you come on and help us for a couple months?" And I... At that point, they had canceled Coyote. I... Literally took me years to get in. I was employed for four months, and then they canceled Coyote, and I'm like, "Man." So I sent my samples back to all the people that were gracious enough to give me constructive criticism, except for a thing changed on the resume, Tim. I was now able to say, "I am Todd McFarlane, the professional from Marvel Comic Books." The drawing was exactly the same. It'd only been four months. It was just as horrible as it was four months earlier. Except for instead of being an amateur, I got to go now into the smaller pile, which is the professionals looking for work pile. So I get the job. I go, "Yeah. Woo. I've got some work." The guy who was supposed to take over that book, 'cause I was only supposed to fill in for two months, decided to bail. So after the first issue, they said, "Do you want to take over the book?" It was a book called Infinity Incorporated, and I stayed on that book for two, three years. So when I went over to Marvel, they went, "Okay. You can keep a deadline. Check." The question is you gotta stop doing... And here's a bizarre thing that was happening at Marvel at that point. You gotta stop doing what they called your big dice drawing style, and the only reason it was called that, because on one page in Infinity Incorporated, I drew this page layout, and it was these big giant dice, and then I did panels inside, drawings inside the big dice. And somebody, I guess, in editorial saw that page, and so it was like, "Oh, he's the big giant dice guy."

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:03:54

      [laughs]

   8. TMTodd McFarlane1:03:55

      And the reason I was doing giant dice and doing all these crazy flamboyant layouts in, in Infinity Incorporated, because, Tim, my drawing was mediocre. I knew that. Like, at some point, you gotta be realistic about your skills. I was, I was mediocre, and I had two choices. I could either put mediocre drawings and boring layouts, or I could be flamboyant and baffle them with my BS and get them to look at all this sort of window, window trimming and not sort of pay attention that maybe I'm drawing my I's crooked, right? And it worked, and it worked.

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:04:31

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane1:04:32

       So people were like, "Oh, my gosh." And so by the time I left Infinity, I think I had risen to the point that I was, like, voted the fifth most popular penciler at that point. So I'm like, "Wow."

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:04:42

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TMTodd McFarlane1:04:42

       So I go over to Marvel, and then they say, which was weird because Marvel was always the house of ideas, and at this point they were in... They had flopped with DC, and they were, they were boring. And they said, "You can come, but you can't do the giant dice style." And I go, "So what do you want me to do?" And they go, "We just want you to do, like, a grid." Now let me just tell you, anybody listening, that means you take a piece of paper and you divide it into six equal panels and you go. It is the most boring, easiest thing to do. So essentially they took a guy like me, who I thought was an artistic sprinter, and they said, "Could you put lead boots on?" Shoot. This is gonna be easy, right? I don't know why you want to do it, but it was frustrating because there was no artistic freedom to do it. So I did it. They give me the first job back at Marvel, and they go, "Hey, uh, problem. You usually have 30 days to do a book, right? Once a month. But we're behind the eight ball. We can give you this job, but you only got 10 days." I gave it to them in eight. Was it my best job? Of course it wasn't. But was it done in eight? Yeah. Did it get me brownie points right on the spot? They were amazed I gave it to them in eight days. Boom. Within weeks, they're offering me The Incredible Hulk. Now, once you get The Incredible Hulk, this is the next step in climbing the ladder. All of a sudden... Look, I'd been in the business probably two, three, four years at that point, and when I get The Incredible Hulk, finally I hear the words from my mom and dad, "Oh, my God. You finally made it." And the reason was 'cause they'd heard of the Hulk, right? So up to then, uh, everything I was doing was like, "I don't know if he's ever gonna make it." I was still working at Marvel and DC, it just wasn't for books. But if you can go to the neighbor's, you know, uh, Halloween party and say, "My son draws the Hulk," they've heard of the word Hulk too, so all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, my gosh, your son, he must be good." So you... It's, it's important to have characters that know because it, it helps the relatives in your circle sort of think that you're a bigger shot than you are, even though it's the exact same amount of work and the same pay on top of it. So okay. So you, you get to the next step, and now you're going, "Ha." Now you're just fighting for the next step up, and I'll quickly sort of get you to this. And I know I'm long-winded in all your questions. I wish I was better.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:06:54

       [laughs] I'm into it.

   14. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:56

       Okay.

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:06:57

       You run with it.

   16. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:57

       So I do the Hulk. I'm doing penciling. And then I go, I'm gonna do inking. Because at this point I got fast enough that I could do two books. There weren't too many people that could do two books. I was doing two books. So they give me a second book. The same editor who gave me The Incredible Hulk gives me another book. It was called G.I. Joe: Real American Hero. Right? Now, the thing that's sort of ironic about that is I was living up in Canada, right? And it never really sort of-

   17. TFTim Ferriss1:07:20

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane1:07:20

       I was going, "Wow, if they only knew that this Canadian," and I'm Canadian, "up here in Canada, drawing their real American heroes, this might, this might be a bit of a problem," but nobody's gonna tell, there was no internet.

   19. TFTim Ferriss1:07:30

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane1:07:31

       So I did it, the first issue of G.I. Joe, and I was doing The Hulk. And I get a phone call, and I was going back and forth with this writer, and it was ... We were bashing heads every single page of that. And finally, after the first issue, my editor phones up and says, "Todd, I've gotta let you go." I'm like, "One issue. I'm one issue into G.I. Joe. I'm making my marks on The Hulk," 'cause now I'm, I'm st- I'm now in the top three of some of the voting artistically. And I go, "What? You're gonna fire me?" But let me just tell you it was a relief because it was such a pain for that one month, and that my view of comic books and the writer's view of comic books were so diametrically opposed. I just-

   21. TFTim Ferriss1:08:15

       Where did you guys clash on that? What kind of decisions or what-

   22. TMTodd McFarlane1:08:18

       Well, he probably sees it a little bit differently, but I, I'll just tell you, give you my point of view. I assumed the people that were reading the comic books had eyes and brains. He assumed, from my perspective, they didn't.

   23. TFTim Ferriss1:08:29

       [laughs]

   24. TMTodd McFarlane1:08:30

       'Cause he said it. It's his, his words, not mine. "Assume the reader is an Aboriginal Bushman, and he just came out of the tundra in Australia, and he's never seen a comic book. Your storytelling must be that clear," which basically meant you can't have somebody walk into a house and then cut to them, like, inside the house or even closing the door on the inside. You have to grab the door, open the door, walk in the room, because ... And I just went-

   25. TFTim Ferriss1:09:00

       [laughs]

   26. TMTodd McFarlane1:09:01

       I guess I see the world differently. I assume, silly me, that the people reading the comic books watch fucking TV, go to movies, read books.

   27. TFTim Ferriss1:09:11

       [laughs]

   28. TMTodd McFarlane1:09:11

       They understand how stories are told. And as a matter of fact, on a movie, when you cut scenes, they don't even have a caption in 99.9% of the time. Just, people just know that it's different people in a different setting. It must be a scene cut. You don't have to do it.

   29. TFTim Ferriss1:09:30

       [laughs]

   30. TMTodd McFarlane1:09:30

       But anyways, he had his way of seeing the world. I had my way of seeing the world. Fine, no big deal.
10. 1:19:15 – 1:29:31

    The happy accident of Venom.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:15

       So eventually, now this is gonna get me to Venom. So-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:19:18

       Yeah, to Venom. Yeah, yeah.

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:20

       So then I, I finished the Batman project- And now I'm back down to only one book, so I can do two book. And so again, I, I'm looking for another book, and all the editors at Marvel said, "Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, come and talk to me, but whatever you do, don't go into the Spider-Man office 'cause it's a shambles." Now, you may or may not have gathered that Todd doesn't seem to color inside the lines a lot of the times. And so-

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:19:48

       Yeah

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:48

       ... you don't tell me, "Don't go into that office," right? 'Cause to me-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:19:52

       Unless you want Todd to go into the office. [laughs]

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:54

       Yeah. What are you guys doing? So I went into the office, and it was. He, the editor, Jim Salicrup, at that time, good man, was losing and turning over artists. The books were in a bit of a sales decline. Like I said, when I picked up the book, it was like at number 21, 22. And I said, "Hey, I can do another book," and we had a chat. And I said, "I, I, I wanna ink the book." And they're like, "Well, you know, maybe in a couple months." And I go, "I'm inking the Hulk, right? Come on. Go talk to Bob, the editor, on that book." And, and he's like, "Well, you know, just give me a couple months. You... How about it starting at 300 you can ink the book?" And I'm like, "Yeah, okay, we'll do it." But the other piece of it was, oh, uh, yeah, there's this one other sort of slight problem. Spider-Man's got a black costume, and this is this costume that was created in, for this book called Secret Wars, which is the black costume with the white spider on it. And I go, "That's not Spider-Man to me. Maybe I'm just old school. Spider-Man's that guy in the blue and the red with the s- webs on it, Spider-Man. So can we just get rid of that black costume and, uh, get back to Spider-Man?" And then this is sort of the happy accident. He said, "Well, you know, the editor-in-chief really likes the black costume, and I don't think he's gonna go for that, so he's not gonna wanna get rid of it. He had something to do with Secret Wars and, you know, they, they're kinda digging it." And I went, "Oh, man, I just, I don't wanna draw Spider-Man in a black costume. It's like doing Batman in polka dots. Doesn't make any sense to me."

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:21:32

       Yeah.

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:21:32

       "So what if, what if I come back to you with some designs? We just rip the costume off him. We put it on somebody. I'll create another character. Give it to the writers. We'll just figure it out, and then we still have the black costume, and then we can get the red and blue back on Peter Parker, and it's a win-win-win." He was like, "Hmm, okay, that might work." So I go away. I do the drawing. The costume was alive, so I go, "Oh, it must be an alien." So I created this big, giant hulking alien and gave him the big eyes and the slobbering teeth. And to me it was a gorilla. It was like an alien gorilla, the claws and everything else, and that was a design for Venom. We didn't have a name at that point. I just go, "Here. Here's the new bad guy. Here it is. Go." And they looked at it and went, "Oh, that's kinda cool. We'll give it to the writer." And so they gave it to the writer. They cleared it through upper management. They said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems like a reasonable thing." The writer comes back to me and says, "Uh, Todd, the guy is Eddie Brock." And I went, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." The writer's name was David. "Whoa, David, uh, uh, Eddie Brock? Eddie Brock's a human. Did you see my design? Like, I, like, uh, information I could've used earlier. I would've designed it differently if I knew it was a human that I was putting the black costume on."

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:22:47

        [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane1:22:48

        But I, I sort of liked the design. I thought it was cool and it was giant, and I thought that it would be more formidable for Spider-Man to go up against something that was way bigger than him than another human, humanoid form. And this is sort of the geeky stuff that us creators go through.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:23:05

        Yeah.

    13. TMTodd McFarlane1:23:06

        So I said, "But man, if Bruce Banner, little shit, can turn into the Hulk, then by gosh, why can't Eddie Brock somehow be buried in this costume somewhere, right?" So we never sort of wavered from it.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:23:18

        [laughs]

    15. TMTodd McFarlane1:23:20

        Venom comes out, has a big play in issue 300, Amazing Spider-Man 300. Sales go crazy. We knew we had something on our hand 'cause every time Venom kept coming back, the, the mail... Again, there was no internet, but the mail kept getting bigger, and people were like, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh." And so now fast-forward with hindsight, and Venom is a, a worldwide brand. You know, made a billion dollars for Sony in his movie. So again, there's the happy accident, and if you look at issue 300, if you wanna go buy it, it comes with a couple of things. One, it's an anniversary book. Sales have gone way up on it. One, it's an anniversary book, issue 300 Amazing Spider-Man, goodbye, some of the very first early work of me on Spider-Man and my first inking job on Spider-Man. But more importantly, it's the origin of Venom, right? And so for people, they spend hundreds of dollars. If you get these books, great, it's thousands of dollars so you can get the origin of Venom. I don't consider that book, if you were to ask me, "Is that the origin of Venom?" No. It's the issue, "How do we get that damn black costume off Peter Parker so I can draw the classic red and blue costume?" 'Cause that's Spider-Man to me, right? Venom, I didn't care at that moment [laughs] about Venom. It was like, "Get rid of it." The last page of that issue-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:24:40

        Yeah

    17. TMTodd McFarlane1:24:40

        ... Peter Parker gets rid of the black costume because he has a fight with Venom. Venom goes on his way, and he pulls a box out from underneath the bed, and he pulls out the classic uniform, the red and blue, the one that to me is Spider-Man. And the last page, which I still have today 'cause it was like, "Finally, I'm drawing Spider-Man." 'Cause I d- I did, I started on issue 298. Nope, black costume. 299. Nope, black costume. And every page but one of issue 300. But that last page, it, it was... And it even says, it even says, I think, a caption, and it says, "And a new beginning." And to me, I go, "Finally, I get to draw Spide-" This was, for me, finally. Now, somehow Venom was the byproduct of that, right? Now, here's what should happen, Tim.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:25:24

        Mm-hmm.

    19. TMTodd McFarlane1:25:24

        An employee should come into the office... They should say, "No, he's wearing the black costume. We wanna give you the job on Amazing Spider-Man," one of the granddaddy books of the company. And most sane employees will go, "Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. When is the book due?" I don't know. Todd is Todd, and yi, yi, yi, right? And so-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:25:45

        [laughs]

    21. TMTodd McFarlane1:25:45

        ... I just was like, "No, I need the red and blue costume." But because of some of that arrogance, ego, immaturity, whatever you wanna call it, your byproduct is you've got a character called Venom that now creates carnage and this whole slew, right? So if I was that guy, that, that employee, all of that maybe never materializes. That's the true possibility of that. And then I just take all of that ... Remember Marvel's at their boring storytelling. I start pushing the boundaries of storytelling to make it more, I thought, dynamic. I thought everything we do in comic books is just a Broadway play. You must ... Everything should be big, and you should be talking and, and performing for the lady with bad hearing that's in the last row at the, at the theater. So that's what comic books are. It's bravado. And so I was doing all this fancy storytelling, and my editors were going, "Todd, you can't. You can't. You can't. You can't." And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay." But I just kept doing it.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:26:48

        [laughs]

    23. TMTodd McFarlane1:26:49

        Eventually I was asking them, and I go, "Why can't we?" And they go, "Well, the editor in chief, Jim, Jim Shooter, he doesn't like that." I found that to be impossible to believe. Impossible to believe. Jim Shooter wants vanilla when he can have tutti frutti or a banana split? Hard to believe.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:27:08

        [laughs]

    25. TMTodd McFarlane1:27:09

        So we went and had a meeting one time. My editor, Bob Harras, who ended up being the top dog at DC, I think he still is maybe, and we went into this meeting with Jim Shooter, the editor in chief, where every, every editor was literally shaking in their boots from Jim Shooter. He was like this authoritarian sort of figure. And he ... As we're walking in the meeting, all Bob says is, "Don't ask him about storytelling, Todd."

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:27:34

        [laughs]

    27. TMTodd McFarlane1:27:35

        'Cause he just wanted to say hi to me 'cause I was this new guy on the Hulk, and my career was starting to bud, and he just wanted to say hi to me. It was just a casual conversation. We have a nice, pleasant conversation, and then it's like it ... He goes, "Okay, I've gotta get to my next meeting." And I go, "Yeah, yeah." And as we get up, 'cause I wanted Bob to be moving, I went, "Oh, hey, Jim, just have one, one, one, one quick question. Can I change storytelling? Like, let me just ask you. Am I allowed to have characters burst out of the panels?" 'Cause that was what they ... I was doing with Spider-Man. And they're going, "You can't. You can't." And he was like, looked at me inquisitively and went, "Yeah, sure. Why?" "Okay, uh, but can I, can I do this other thing?"

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:28:13

        [laughs]

    29. TMTodd McFarlane1:28:13

        And he went, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure." And I went, "So, so it's okay for me to, to ..." 'Cause I go, "I think I heard somebody." It wasn't Bob, my editor standing in front of you. This must have been somebody else.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:28:24

        [laughs]
11. 1:29:31 – 1:33:36

    De-Rockwelling the company icon and inventing “spaghetti webbing.”

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:29:31

       Jim Shooter gets pushed out very quickly. I keep doing my Todd thing on Spider-Man. I keep ... And here's what I did on Spider-Man that literally catapulted my career. It was a simple move. They were doing Spider-Man, emphasis on man. I flipped it to Spider-Man, emphasis on the word spider. So when he put the costume on, I thought he was an insect. And I didn't care about anatomy. I didn't care whether it mattered. I just cared about the dynamics of this character looking like a bug man and crawling in a way. And then as part of that, I added more s- webbing on his costume. And then I had to come up with a new way of doing his webs that had been done this way for 30 years. I go, "It doesn't work if you want to shoot it towards camera or if you want to create a false sense of volume," which is the only thing we have as artists. You must give the illusion of 3D given that you're drawing on a 2D piece of paper. So again, all these silly things that would bore people. But I was doing it. And, oh, by the way, it fucking looks cool.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:30:34

       It doesn't bore me. No, this is key. These are important decisions.

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:30:38

       And here's the moment we ... I was talking about earlier. The moment you start messing with anybody's icon, status quo comes into the equation. And I'm now messing ... I probably could have done what I did with a lower tier character, but not Spider-Man. Spider-Man, at this point, again, they're a public company, he is on their checks. Every check's got a little Spidey on it.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:31:01

       [laughs]

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:01

       He's on their, he's on their quarterly reports. He's on their internal memos. And I'm messing with that look, right? And so they came, and they were sitting there. And they took it as I was doing something ... I thought they were doing it wrong, and I was right. No, no, no, no, no. Here is the reality of it, and I've said it plenty of times. I thought that the look that had been presented, the classic look that was there, the one that everybody if you close your eyes you have in your mind if you're a certain age, was literally the Norman Rockwell version of Spider-Man. It was ... perfect. And the best I could hope for as a young budding artist is to do a bad version of that and go, "Man, that's almost as cool as Norman Rockwell's painting." Let me tell you, if you're gonna be a painter, never paint like Norman Rockwell. The best you're gonna get is, "Man, he's almost as good as Norman." That's the best you can hope for.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:31:54

       [laughs]

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:54

       You will never be better than Norman, right? He's already conquered that hill. Go find another hill and make it your own. You can take pieces of Norman Rockwell, but you can't be that exact same look. So I was putting all these different looks together and then coming up with some crazy stuff, and just making the spider part of it. The eyes got bigger, more webs. I reinvented the webbing. I, I made the blue a little bit darker. I, I forgot about anatomy and I put him in these cool funky poses that the readers just went crazy for. And every single time I walked into the offices, what-- So I didn't go there that often. They would call me on the carpet and they would say, "No. No. Stop it. Stop it."

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:32:36

       [laughs]

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:32:36

       Tom denies it, but I'm like, "Tom..." There are moments of clarity in my life, this is one of them, that Tom, Tom DeFalco was the editor-in-chief. He's an Italian guy. And he was giving me heck again, wiggling his finger, going, "You gotta stop doing the big eyes and this and th-," and then he got so mad, I remember his face getting a little red, and he goes, "And, and, and that webbing, those damn spaghetti webbing. You gotta stop it."

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:33:01

        [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:01

        Now, all... Now, from my perspective, ladies and gentlemen, if you're in my head, it's like a Charlie Brown sort of cartoon. All's I heard was, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, spaghetti webbing." And I went, "Oh my gosh, I've got a name for them now." So I was, like, so happy in that moment-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:33:15

        [laughs]

    13. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:16

        ... 'cause Tom gave me a official name for them. They've been known ever since as the spaghetti webbing. Thank you, Tom DeFalco. I think he was cussing me out and giving me heck at that point. I, I wasn't paying attention though, 'cause I was like, "Oh, super cool. I've got, I've got a name for it." He then says in that same meeting, "Todd, you just gotta control this stuff." And my answer was...

12. 1:33:36 – 1:37:46

    Bucking the status quo to become the status quo.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:36

       And anybody is under the age of 30-ish listening, I'm gonna give you a bit of a golden rule. Anybody asks you to do something, especially somebody in authority, always say yes even if you're not gonna do it. It's just way easier.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:33:50

       [laughs]

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:50

       You get out of the room faster. Don't-- no confrontation. Just nod your head yes in agreement and go do what- whatever the hell you want. And I knew that the editors would only circle back, like, every 90 days and look at the books and do their evaluation, and I walked out of that room, not only did I not make the webbing smaller, I'll show you the issue. They got twice as long, right?

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:34:13

       [laughs]

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:34:13

       'Cause they just look cool. I gotta tell you, Tim, they look cool.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:34:16

       I've seen the books. I've seen them.

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:34:17

       Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:34:17

       I've seen them. I have them at home.

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:34:18

       They wiggle their finger at you, and they go, "No." And next time I go to New York they'll go, "No, Todd." But here's what was happening and here was their conundrum. Sales were going up. Sales were going up. And at one point, again, I had that conversation, that it's like, "Tom, what do you care how I draw? What do you care? All you should care about is that I am selling you comic books, and I've r- you gave me the task of moving Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, from 21 up the ranks, and it's at number two right now. Jim Lee and the X-Men were beating us." And, and, and I was at one meeting, it was odd. There was this stranger in the room. I never met him before, didn't know who he was, and he just sat there silent the whole time. He had this big fat book. I didn't know who he was. And then at the, finally at the end of an hour conversation, when I said that, I go, "I'm selling more damn books than almost anybody you employ right here right now," this dude, I found out later, was an accountant. He opened up his big giant accounting book. Tom came behind him. The accountant didn't utter a word. He just pointed at something on his data sheet, and he shook his head yes.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:35:28

        Yeah. [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane1:35:29

        What he just said, "Yes, sales are going up." And you could just see that it was like, "What do we do?" Right? It's working, but we disagree with it because the status quo is getting... Let me tell your audience, here's the bizarro thing in, now that years have passed. Everything they told me not to do on Spider-Man that I was rebellious against, and I just stuck to my guns and I did it, and the sales are... Do you know that if you're a young person right now and you go to Marvel and you draw Spider-Man, do you know what style you have to draw Spider-Man in? Todd McFarlane.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:36:05

        [laughs]

    13. TMTodd McFarlane1:36:07

        So the guy who was told not to create it, I've now bizarrely, as I was going, "No, I'm not gonna draw that status quo. I'm gonna do something funky," my style is now the new status quo. And I don't think anybody should draw in Todd McFarlane style, because the next person, they should be encouraging to do their thing, because it might be five times better than what I ever came up with. I don't understand corporations of just coming up with an idea and glomming onto it so hard. Yes, I'm talking to you, IBM. And then this little dudes in a garage come up with this little computer and they call it an Apple, and somehow they beat you eventually because you become dinosaurs. And this is the thing. There is nobody in the world that's ever made change and everybody liked them, especially the people who were, had the power and the prestige and the money ahead of them. Nobody, if you go to any corporation and you say, "I've got this new idea," you will never hear the words from the people that are the industry leaders, "That sounds super cool. Let us get out of your way so you can just do that on your own unfettered." Are you out of your mind? They will take out bazookas and blades and put down the fucking, the strips and the throwing darts.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:37:35

        [laughs]

    15. TMTodd McFarlane1:37:35

        And they will do everything in their powers to discourage you because they are industry leaders. But eventually they become their own worst en- enemy

13. 1:37:46 – 1:41:28

    Parting thoughts and a promise for round two.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:37:47

       Todd, we are at almost two hours now. I've realized that we've barely scratched the surface. We have established a lot of the background, of course, the personality, the rule-breaking [laughs] , the camel bladder, and we have not even touched upon your personal relationship with Stanley, which is of great interest to me. We have not talked about the toy empire. We have not talked about how any of that started. TV, film, music, Spawn. I mean, there's a long list of things that I would love to cover with you. Would you be open to doing a round two? I think people would certainly be interested in listening to one. Could I convince you to come back for a round two?

    2. TMTodd McFarlane1:38:27

       Tim, you'll find that, like, I'm not shy at opening my mouth and talking-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:38:32

       [laughs]

    4. TMTodd McFarlane1:38:32

       ... to the point I'm always going, "Am I boring people?" 'Cause I actually know all these stories 'cause I lived them.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:38:37

       [laughs]

    6. TMTodd McFarlane1:38:38

       But yeah, I think there are some interesting forks in the road that may be not interesting for my career, but just sort of the human condition of what happens when you get to certain walls.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:38:52

       Yeah.

    8. TMTodd McFarlane1:38:53

       I've been talking about what I had to do in one industry, but now because of that success, what you just mentioned, I, and was able to break into multiple industries and found some of the same sort of repetition and how you navigate the sharks when you're a guppy, right?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:39:16

       [laughs]

    10. TMTodd McFarlane1:39:17

        So, uh, yeah, I'll come back. I appreciate you giving... Hopefully we haven't bored people these two, 'cause they'll go, "Why would I wanna listen to another two?" So I'll, it's your show, I'll let you decide whether that works.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:39:26

        [laughs] Ultimately, I mean, let's call it selfish, self-interested. If I keep it interesting for me, just like you in those 10, 12 hour days, you gotta keep your artwork interesting to you because otherwise, and even maybe still, it can be really lonely. So for me, I just try to scratch my own itch in asking questions about the things I'm interested in. So I'm very interested. I'm sure we'll have plenty of people along for the ride, and people can find you on all the social handles that I mentioned, of course. Are there any other places you'd like to point them so they can find you on Instagram, @ToddMcFarlane, Twitter, @Todd_McFarlane.

    12. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:02

        You can find it. These are hipsters, right? I'm the old guy. Like-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:40:04

        They type in your name-

    14. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:05

        Yeah, whatever

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:40:05

        ... they'll find you. [laughs]

    16. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:06

        People, if you're interested, you can, you can find it. What I'll try and endeavor the next time is to answer more than three questions, 'cause I think that's all you got in.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:40:13

        [laughs]

    18. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:14

        I need to temper and get, like, "Todd, he just asked you how old you are. You don't have to talk about the entire sorta evolution of humanity to get to that answer." But-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:40:23

        [laughs]

    20. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:23

        ... but I think that a little bit of backstory to get to the reasoning why when you make that call at that moment matters.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:40:33

        Oh, yeah. It's critical.

    22. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:35

        Yeah. So we've now painted hopefully some of the personality, so now we can just maybe be a little more varied in the questions, and we can pepper and jump around a bunch of industries, and I can tell you some silly stories about those ones too.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:40:51

        Yeah. We'll get into the trenches, and we can hear more of your art of war stories. [laughs]

    24. TMTodd McFarlane1:40:56

        Right. Today almost killed Eddie Vedder. We'll talk about that one.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:40:59

        [laughs] There we go. That'll be the cliffhanger. And everybody listening, as usual, we will put show notes and links to everything in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And, uh, until next time, don't be afraid of rocking the boat, and consider your upside downside, just like you were talking about those, those artists [laughs] earlier, and Image. It's, uh, human nature. What a thing. And Todd, thank you for making the time today. So to be continued, and we'll figure out a time for round two.

    26. TMTodd McFarlane1:41:28

        Thank you, Tim.

Episode duration: 1:41:49