IMAGE SPAWN
In December 2002, in celebration of its tenth years in business, Image Publishing released a set of four figures known as 'Image 10th Anniversary Special'. Spawn is, needless to say, one of the four and it subsequently inspired two repaints thus making it 3 official versions for both card and display collectors. The official versions are highlighted in yellow. The image above is from sculptorscorner.com.
For simplicity sake, I would describe him as Image Spawn.
December 2002 Retail Exclusive Image 10th Anniversary: Spawn
The figure was a tribute to retro Spawn, a return to the red ribcage's black suit. It was arguably one of the most articulated and best sculpted figure in Spawndom, featuring articulations right down to its toes. With its long limbs the figure easily surpass a height of 7”.
The Spawn figure came with a cross, an adaptation of one of Spawn most famous pose, atop the church on a cross.
The articulation helps to increase the number of poses this figure is capable of, as this test-shot prototype from sculptorscorner.com shows.
Although at the end it is the standing posture that I used for display.
Among the superheroes (that is if Spawn can be classified as one) Spawn undoubtedly has the nicest cape.
There were many collectors who assume that the super articulated Image Spawn is replicated in two figures released under Series 24 but the picture above begs to differ.
In the above picture, starting from left is Image Spawn, Spawn i088 and the 'masked version' of Spawn i098. Spawn i088 in the middle is noticeably shorter and his highlights are brown instead of red. Spawn i098's legs are also shorter and the red ribcage is painted black.
Image Spawn and his unmasked companion figure.
The 'rare' unmasked version :)
A very kind reader questions me as to the authenticity of this figure. Am so sorry if I caused any confusion, suffice to say, I thought the air quote plus smiley face would be a giveaway. Anyway, do read the first paragraph where official figures are highlighted in yellow. (July 29th 2009)
January 2003 Nurnberg Toy Fair Exclusive: Spawn
No doubting its authencity though is the pewter-washed Image Spawn which was released in January 2003 at Europe’s premier toy fair in Nurnberg as an Event Exclusive by two of McFarlane's official distributors in Europe - PBM Express of the Netherlands and Cosmic Group of Italy.
Well, it may be a souvenir for the trade visitors but not for collectors around the world. When it was released in eBay, this washed Image Spawn sold like hotcakes. And to date, it is still one of my favourite figure.
June 2007 MTCC Exclusive: Necroplasm Spawn
The MTCC Exclusive's Image Spawn released in June 2007 was titled 'Necroplasm Spawn 2' but he bears very little resemblance to Necroplasm Spawn 1 (see Guide on Spawn 1) and is instead an obvious copy of Image Spawn, cross and all.
It is an "interesting" figure but...
...it got such terrible joint. Collectors have to be careful when manipulating the joint otherwise you would end up like the poor guy above, chasing after his own foot.
