Todd McFarlane is finally making Marvel collectibles

More than 30 years after he left Marvel – never to return – Todd McFarlane is revisiting some of his most iconic Marvel images via a new line of action figures our from McFarlane Toys, made in collaboration with Marvel. 

In addition to McFarlane’s work, the line will recreate memorable images by Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Steve Ditko and John Romita, among others.  The posed figures are set within an environmental base and will include a diorama backdrop – and will be available in both 1:10 and 1:6 scales. Some will come with extras like signed comics.

The 1:10th scale posed figures will celebrate various great moments in Marvel history, including memorable covers, by Lee, McFarlane and more, including Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, and Deadpool. Each figure is based upon some of Marvel Comics’ most memorable covers. This collection is slated for release this summer.

The 1:6th scale figures will focus on McFarlane’s own iconic Marvel imagery, including McFarlane’s Captain America pose from the  cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #323 and a Spider-Man figure in a classic pose that only the Toddster could execute. These figures feature a reprint of the original comic in addition to the environmental bases and  diorama backdrop.

McFarlane sat down for an exclusive interview with The Beat and explained more of the background of the line. In the PR McFarlane mentions that fans had wanted this for a long time – and so did he.

“I’ve been asking them for a long time, all the big brands, and it seemed like I was sort of the little kid off in the corner wasn’t getting a lot of it. For decades. I couldn’t quite get there. And for me, the holy trinity are Marvel DC and Star Wars.” McFarlane tried to get these brands on board, and after a few years, “we got the DC Multiverse, but Marvel was still one of the elusive pieces of that puzzle.”

One of the problems is that Marvel’s toy licenses – like all big IP licenses – are all for specific sizes and scales – and they have a great partner in Haspro – so  finding a loophole was tough. But eventually McFarlane came up with an idea. After working with Disney on a different toy line, “the relationship started to grow a little bit stronger,” he recalls. “So I sort of brought the subject back up. And then jokingly, I was going, “Hey, I know how we can carve it. How about if it’s just based on nothing but Todd McFarlane’s art, and then it comes with a Todd McFarlane autograph, I can guarantee you that that won’t be replicatable.”

This idea cracked the code – but it wouldn’t just be McFarlane: “It ended up expanding to be bigger than that. I have an affinity for other books and artists and characters and, you know, covers and moments and events. I’m a geek.”

As mentioned, he other creators – Romita Sr, Ditko, Lee, Liefeld– are classics. But McFarlane also wants to keep it open for contemporary takes. “I can do my own artwork. And I can also do some of the things I think are relevant throughout the history of Marvel comic books, I can go back to Stan and Jack stuff. But what are the things that are seared into our brain for the new generation of people who are collecting. They gave me a pretty wide path. So we’ll see, I’ll experiment with size and price scale.”

Do all of these beloved images translate well to 3D action figures? Spidey is always in some pretty wild poses in the comics. “I think I think all of them pose their own problem. What does it look like once you spin it? If you do this in 3D and turn it you’re seeing it at angles you never saw before. So it’s all brand new information. But there shouldn’t be on a lot of these, because we’re going to use source material artwork, not necessarily exclusively covers, but art and panels”

We’ll have more from our exclusive Todd McFarlane interview next week! In the meantime, you an watch the whole thing on You Tube: