Todd McFarlane has been talking a lot at New York Comic Con. Seriously, people just can't get him to stop. But then again, why would they try?

Tonight at his own panel, Todd talked about being more excited for Spawn #301 than #300 as it will beat his fellow Canadian Dave Sim's record. Of course, Dave drew every issue of Cerebus – at least, the foregrounds. But Todd stated that he is planning to draw at least a chapter of Spawn #300.

Todd talked about the recent auction of the cover art for Amazing Spider-Man #328 selling for $660,000 as being funny because he'd exchanged that artwork with the seller for some baseball cards (which he'd also done for the Spider-Man #1 cover) he didn't seem overly bothered by this. But he did go on to explain that he was disappointed in the literal coverup that happened in the image on that cover (below), which was actually Spidey punching the Hulk in the nuts, not (as is accepted) in the gut. It was, of course, a pretty ballsy move.

He says he was disappointed in the lightweight Venom look in Spider-Man 3, but was happy with the BIG guy in the Venom film. Todd thinks Hollywood is still not up for dark superhero films. Regarding Spawn, it sounds like his team want it to be properly scary, to focus on Renner's character, so that it's then a shock that Spawn appears. They also want the transformation to be something strange. He also believes that it *won't* need a huge FX budget and thinks the thing they have is brand new, he's certainly not done it in comics.

Todd is selling Spawn as a movie trilogy, with different thematic visuals for each one. He doesn't think that the BIG big bads will come until much later … possibly even the 3rd film. And it has to be R rated.

As for the thing he'd tell his younger self, it was 'not to get into toys'. Considering McFarlane's influence on action figures is still one of the largest in the industry and current figures owe much to what he developed around the Spawn brand, and beyond, it's hard to imagine that market if such a conversation had taken place…

Thanks to Eliot Cole who sat through the panel and reported back for Bleeding Cool.