Artist catalog & profile

Todd McFarlane

A defining architect of the modern superhero cover—and the artist whose web-bound Spider-Man crouch anchors CoverLineage’s largest catalog.

36 covers1 IH1 1 WD1 1 XM1 1 WW72 2 AC1 4 ASM316 7 ASM300 13 SM1 1 AF15 2 B423 2 H340 1 DKR1

Artist Profile

A career in context

Todd McFarlane broke into American comics in the mid-1980s before his kinetic line, exaggerated anatomy, and densely rendered webs transformed Spider-Man’s visual vocabulary. His run on The Amazing Spider-Man led to the launch of Spider-Man in 1990, whose first issue became one of the era’s signature publishing events.

In 1992, McFarlane co-founded Image Comics and created Spawn, extending his influence from drawing and writing into publishing, toys, film, and entertainment. He remains closely involved with the expanding Spawn line and McFarlane Toys.

CoverLineage noteMcFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 image is unusually fertile because it is both character-specific and instantly portable: swap the figure, alter the web, preserve the crouch, and the visual quotation still reads. Its descendants reveal how a commercial image becomes a shared piece of artistic grammar. Action Comics #1 connections now include The Amazing Spider-Man #306, Spawn #228.

Catalog connections

Across the archive

This artist appears in 12 indexed catalogs. Explore the lineages below, then open individual covers for edition details and credited roles. The Dungeon Crawler Carl title catalog can overlap with the composition catalogs.