Hellspawn: The Complete Collection

Last week, I read Bouncer, The One Armed Gunslinger, which was a very good western. If you like Jonah Hex then you will like Bouncer. I had lots of free time this week so I decided to read one of the thickest collections on my book shelf. That was HELLSPAWN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, written by Brian Michael Bendis and Steve Niles, illustrated by Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith, published by Image.

This collection contains a six-issue arc by Bendis and a 10-issue arc by Niles. In the opening arc, Spawn is more of a secondary character, as Bendis scripts a loosely connected set of stand-alone horror stories. Niles builds off a subplot from Bendis’ run and opens with an extended battle between Spawn and Cy-gor (his gorilla arch enemy). After that, Niles turns in a wicked tale of an attempt to make Hell on Earth with Spawn as its king.

This book collects issues #1-16 in a nice oversized hardcover format for $40. It works out to $2.50 an issue, which was the actual cover price back in 2000 when it was published. In that sense this is a great buy. And, getting to see Wood and Templesmith’s art in an oversized format is really cool, too. Buuut…  after that it’s kinda questionable.

In terms of story, Bendis wrote the first six issues, which varied in quality from excellent to bad. Unfortunately, they read in the same order so that you start really excited and end somewhere south of "can I have my $2.50 back?" But the stories that were good were very good and full of typical Bendis dialogue but with a harder, nastier edge suiting the material. Bendis doesn’t do a lot of horror work so it was interesting to see how he handled it.

Steve Niles writes issues #7-16 and they were generally very good, too. Niles is an accomplished horror writer so the quality you expect is present. My only quibble is the ending, which isn’t bad but it’s not exactly great either. It just kinda ends. I can’t remember if the series was cancelled or if Niles was just done with the story so I don’t know where to lay blame. Overall, the story was good and far enough removed from the original Spawn series to make it interesting.

As for the art, well it’s unfettered Ashley Wood. Either you love his stuff or you don’t. In this case it appears he was given free reign to create images and he creates some fantastic images. They don’t always connect up with the words on the page but hot damn do they look pretty! This was more of a problem during Bendis’ arc. The color palette is black, brown and an occasional red/yellow… which was mixed with brown. You need to read this book in a well lit area because the details are lost in anything less than that.

Once Niles come on board Wood settled down into more normal art. Well, as normal as he gets. Ben Templesmith replaced Wood for the last six issues and his work is always great. Templesmith’s art was less stylistic and artsy than Wood’s. He was still experimental but he achieved greater success matching words and pictures. Even though there were problems with the art, I really, really enjoyed looking at it. It really is an incredible collection of pictures.

This is a book that’s definitely flawed. I really liked the art and the price point, and all things considered it’s really good. But the story was just okay. If you have a little extra cash, and want to see some really amazing pictures, then then this is the book for you.

- David Lee