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In case you haven't already heard, Todd McFarlane is paying homage to his earliest days as a comic book artist. Essentially, the iconic creator is working elements of his original ideas for the character that would become Spawn into a brand new story called Spawn '77, which molds a character design he did in 1977 into an all-new, Hellspawn-adjacent addition to his Spawn-Verse. So when I got the chance to chat with McFarlane recently, I wanted to know: what is this new character called within that story?

"We haven't gotten that far," was McFarlane's answer.

Let's back up a second. The conversation I had with McFarlane took place as McFarlane and series artist Mark Spears were still very much at work on creating the new book, which isn't set to hit shelves until this fall. And while McFarlane did have assurances about certain elements of the book - like, for instance, one of its variant covers - the issue of Spawn '77's in-universe name had not yet been decided upon.

"He's called Spawn '77,"  the Image Comics cofounder said, "At some point, we'll have to designate a moniker to the character that makes sense within the context of everything. But right now, we're just being goofy and going, hey, I created him '77? He's '77. We've just been using that over and over and over and over and over."

That said, McFarlane does see the necessity of eventually coming up with a new moniker for the character, pictured above. As to where that name will come from, well, McFarlane had a couple of guesses. 

"I'm sure that fans will probably form sort of dialog around it," McFarlane told me, "That's kind of what happens. Oddly, the fans might actually come up with something that makes me go, 'I'm going to borrow that!' Yeah. The fans can be way more creative and smarter than us creative people sometimes."

Todd McFarlane's Spawn is available now wherever you get your comics. Spawn '77 arrives on shelves September 9.

Interested? Here's where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here's a guide to how (and where) to read comics online.