The littlest Spawn has a big bone to pick with all the other characters that share his name. Your Major Spoilers review of Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1, awaits!

SPAWN KILLS EVERY SPAWN #1

Writer: John Layman
Artist: Rob “Sketchcraft” Duenas
Colorist: Robert Nugent
Letterer: John Layman
Editor: Thomas Healy
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: July 24th, 2024

Previously in Spawn Kills Every Spawn: The version of Spawn known as Chibi Spawn feels like he hasn’t been given the appreciation and respect he deserves, so he has devised a bloody and violent plan to rectify this.

SPAWN CON BLUES

Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1 opens up with a montage of a bunch of different versions of Spawn, like Gunslinger Spawn and Medieval Spawn, being killed in over-the-top and gruesome ways. It’s then revealed that these events are just imaginary. Chibi Spawn then introduces himself and begins to explain how and why he decided to start killing the other Spawns. It starts while he is attending a convention of all the Spawns called Spawn Con. While there he receives no visitors to his booth and is then teased by a group of fans who just want to see him dressed up as cutesy versions of other Spawns. He storms out of the convention and heads home. There he gets heat from his mom. While in his room, he decides to set fire to all his Spawn memorabilia as a symbolic statement of intent.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

On paper, Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1 should be a cheeky and entertaining send-up of the decades of Spawn versions and their various stories. In practice, though, it is a grating experience filled with too many attempts at humor that only hit every once in a while. The approach here seems to be trying to emulate a mature cartoon-like Hazbin Hotel, and while it gets the mature part right with ample amounts of violence and language, it lacks charm or a strong central character to act as the vehicle for jokes or humorous situations. Chibi Spawn comes off as an irritating brat who doesn’t create any sort of sympathy or anything else that would make the reader want to see what kind of misadventures await him. A few easter eggs scattered throughout do make for some enjoyable moments for longtime fans of not only Spawn but of Image Comics in general. Also, the 4th wall breaking has a novel feel at times, but it isn’t enough to make this a good read.

DENSE AND CHAOTIC

The art of Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1 is going to be a love-it or hate-it for a lot of people. The best comparison I can make for it is that it feels very much like Johan Vasquez in his Invader Zim era. The characters are cartoonish and erratically proportioned. There’s a strong kinetic feel to this as, from panel to panel, each character appears to be stretched out in various ways that don’t necessarily serve a purpose. Also, each panel is packed to the brim with background elements or flourishes to the central subjects.

In some cases, it works, but in others, it comes off as claustrophobic and dizzying. There’s no doubt that the art here captures the spirit of an early 2000s Hot Topic aesthetic. Whether or not it works with the writing to do anything isn’t as clear.

BOTTOM LINE: A HYPERACTIVE BUT AIMLESS EXPERIMENT

Spawn Kills Every Spawn #1 isn’t a complete failure. But it feels like it was made for a very specific group of readers, and if you’re not part of that group, this isn’t going to hit you at all. There’s a sense that this is supposed to be a bit of an in-joke for people who have been reading Spawn since its inception, but it’s very surface-level and doesn’t do anything interesting with this. There’s a quantity-over-quality approach to humor that makes this feel like an old flash cartoon, and for some people, this is going to be great. But at the end of the day, this issue just doesn’t come together to be something engaging or entertaining. 2 out of 5 stars.

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