The Four Color Media Monitor

The Pasadena Star News says Spawn creator McFarlane, who's lived around Pasadena for some time, attended a specialty store event as part of a fundraiser to help people struck by the wildfires that destroyed much of the Los Angeles region earlier in the year:

And there was: Todd McFarlane – known for drawing a run of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” creating the comic book series “Spawn” and co-founding the independent company Image Comics, among other things – was doing his first comic book store signing in 14 years at P Dot’s Comics & Collectibles.

McFarlane was there to support his adopted hometown.

“After 30 years of living in Phoenix, Arizona, my wife and I moved out to Pasadena – we bought a house up in Altadena. Before we could begin to remodel, we were here during the fires,” says McFarlane, whose children live in Pasadena. “It was a harsh day.”

McFarlane, whose home survived the fire, remembered seeing the blaze at the end of his street grow into what he called “Godzilla” before they evacuated.

After that, they couldn’t get back to the house. “You started hearing about how much devastation – to hear about it and read about it is one thing – but when they finally opened it up and you got to see it with your own eyes, it’s shocking.”

Unlike the personal library of the late author Gary Indiana, which arrived in Altadena the day of the fires and was destroyed, McFarlane hadn’t moved in yet, but he says he was struck by how much some families, such as those who’d spent generations in their homes, had lost. [...]

“We wanted to do something to help the local community,” said Lawrence Persky, owner of P Dot’s Comics and Collectibles. “One hundred percent of the proceeds from the autograph fees are going to the Pasadena Community Foundation and the good work they do.” [...]

“It was a tough day for a lot of people,” says McFarlane. “And they’re still dealing with it.”

While I don't care for his Image work, based on how Spawn is about bloody mayhem, I do think it's admirable he's helping the community rebuild itself, and McFarlane's thankfully an artist who does avoid making a political spectacle of himself on social media like some others do. So good luck to him in his mission.

Labels: history, indie publishers, politics