Todd McFarlane on the problem with still being relevant

You don’t so much have an interview with Todd McFarlane as you end up having a Todd McFarlane experience. One of comics greatest rebels, co-founder of Image Comics, and creator of countless comic book favorites, McFarlane is never at a loss for words when it comes to talking about the industry — and Popverse found ourselves in the perfect position to talk to him about all of that rolled up into one conversation.

Is that rebellious kid still in there? Are the other rebellious kids still around? What does literally any of that mean? Well let me tell you, the Todd was more than happy to tell me during our brief chat at San Diego Comic-Con.

Popverse: Let me tell you — you are a hard man to get in a room alone.

McFarlane: Yeah. Well you know what? We got a different kind of San Diego on our hands here. All the big shots aren’t here so folks are left with me.

It is very very different, it’s true.

Well the Hollywood folks didn’t come so us second-tier folks get a little bit elevated! So we’re back to it feeling a little more like Comic-Con for a change. That’s how it used to be. I guess it’s kind of a false positive, but we’ll take what we can get, right?

I mean you’re hardly second tier, Todd. But I mean…yeah. Part of what I was going to ask was if this was giving 1990s Comic-Con vibes for you again; folks here and hyped about new stuff and comic books for a while.

There was a time when comic-cons were 100% comics and so — as you can imagine—the comics people were the rock stars. Just like the movie stars are kind of that now. We were the rock stars of comics to this crowd and we got that moment. I know that a lot of people, as it grew — as San Diego [Comic-Con] grew into more a wider pop culture event — some people in our industry got bent out of shape a bit.

And that’s a mild way of putting it!

I understand, really. I think there’s a big social part of it. It was small enough that everybody was at the same hotel and you always ran into the same people. Then at the end of the show day everybody was at the same bars. There’s that social aspect that’s kind of gone now. You have to schedule everything with everyone; get penciled in.

[laughs] Calling your buddy’s assistant to see if they have five minutes to say hello. That type of thing.

Yes! If you want to meet your best friend — look, I know J Scott Campbell. His booth is right over there. It’s eight feet away. We’ve