1. Comic Book Industry
Todd MacFarlane was born in Calgary (in Canada) March 16, 1961. When Todd was a teenager he saw comics drawn by the top artists of the 70s. Some of them were Mike Golden, Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson, and soon to follow, Arthur Adams.
As a child, Todd had no intentions of being a comic artist. Todd played baseball all throughout his child hood. Todd eventually played professional Canadian league baseball. A scout from the Seattle mariners saw him and recruited him to play for their minor league team. Unfortunately Todd got an injury which ended his baseball career.
Also another big hobby of Todd's was drawing comics. He had been doing that since high school. He graduated from college in 1984 with degrees in fine arts and graphic design. After that he started to pursue his career in comics. Things were not moving to smoothly when he received about 700 rejection slips from publishers.
Afterwards, he went to Marvel comics and did the Hulk for a little more than a year. He started drawing the Hulk at issue # 330. He also got reviews and became a big favorite of fans. Todd also did many projects with Marvel and DC comics.
Soon after Todd was assigned with Spider-Man starting at issue # 298, he redesigned the characters and it then became the top selling comic title. Among the creations he made at Marvel was Venom (with David Michilinie), a character that is now one of the most popular characters in comics. They introduced venom in issue #298.
In1992 Todd and other artists created a new comic company called Image Comics. This was the company were he created the famous comic book character spawn. Later on in 1994 Todd started to form his own toy company called Macfarlane toys. MacFarlane toys are some of the most successful toys ever produced.
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