http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/Spawn

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Spawn is a Comic Book telling the story of commando Al Simmons, who is betrayed by CIA spook Jason Wynn and murdered by his friend and teammate Chapel (later retconned as Priest, a Distaff Counterpart of Chapel). The character first appeared in Malibu Sun #13 (May 1992), created by Todd McFarlane.

After dying and going to Hell, Al meets a demon lord by the name of Malebolgia, and his Dragon Violator (who goes disguised as a clown in the mortal realm). He makes a Deal with the Devil in an attempt to go back to his "loving" wife Wanda Blake. He comes back as a '90s Anti-Hero with a living costume and Green Goo powers, powerful but finite, and must use those powers to increase the army of Hell and train as one of its lieutenants, called (Hell)Spawns, as Malebolgia, Mammon, and Satan prepare for the Apocalypse. He finds a Mentor named Cogliostro, a retired Spawn who fills the role of All-Powerful Bystander.

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Spawn befriends some bums in an alley, and becomes an urban-based vigilante. He fights Angela, an angel trained to slay Spawns, who he later befriends as she becomes a Defector from Decadence. He also interacts with his former best friend and Wanda's current husband Terry Fitzgerald. After receiving antagonism from Violator (who is determined to see him keep to his obligations with Malebolgia), using his Green Goo powers to save Terry's life by curing his cancer, and presenting Wanda's daughter Cyan with a cursed shoelace, he goes back to Hell and re-visits his former foes. Malebolgia also mentions that his memories may be fake.

Unsure of his past life and having trouble with his costume changing and becoming wild all the time, Spawn starts to interact with former cops Sam and Twitch, and finds out Mammon sent Ab and Zab to release a soul-destroying demon that makes its enemies Deader Than Dead. After resealing that demon, Spawn hand waves his way back to Hell and, with the help of Angela, kills Malebolgia.

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It turns him into the lord of (that piece of) Hell, but he refuses to take Malebolgia's mantle and goes on fighting evil on Earth, with little success. His position is eventually robbed by Cogliostro, who performs a FaceHeel Turn and reveals himself to be Cain.

Suddenly, the whole story suffers a Snap Back and Spawn is revealed to be not just Al Simmons, but actually a mix of thousands of souls that died at the same time Al had. Spawn fights both Heaven and Hell as an independent warrior during the Apocalypse, and at the last minute, he manages to re-create the world. But in doing so, he discovers that, as Al, he intentionally caused his pregnant wife's miscarriage by punching her in the chest. Additionally, she was planning to finally leave before he died. It turns out that his amnesia and current form were actually subconsciously caused by his unresolved guilt, not by Malebolgia. He then retreats to the alleys to live out the rest of his life as The Atoner, having saved everyone but himself. Since then, his universe has evolved into more of an Gothic Punk-focused Crapsack World. Al Simmons himself seemingly commits suicide, and the mantle of Spawn is passed on to a man named Jim Downing.

While Spawn was really popular during the Dark Age, holding the title of best-selling independent comic for 15 years, the writing was full of Retcons and Snap Backs. Spawn's Power Counter that informed the reader of how much Green Goo energy he had left before he had to return to Hell was also abandoned after a few issues, angering many fans. It's definitely gotten much better over the years. There were definite cases of Schedule Slip, but far less so that most of the initial Image Comics (as of January 2010, 196 issues will have been released in 211 months, missing only 15).

Furthermore, the heavily-publicized idea of creator rights surrounding Image in the early nineties was, unfortunately, muddled when creator Todd McFarlane stopped writing and drawing the comic himself, and even had legal problems for using characters co-created by Neil Gaiman (Angela - who eventually was sent to the Marvel Universe because of this - Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn), and which he assumed to have purchased the rights to (Miracleman, who was also sent to the Marvel Universe). However, as of October 2008, he's back with the main series.

Spawn is also heavily invested in The Merch, as McFarlane Toys became popular for being skillfully detailed (and, according to some people, for using higher-quality material) and made the creator a fortune selling hundreds of toys, costumes, clothing, related comics, tatoos, Spawnmobiles (actually, those are just for show) and bumper stickers, amongst others. Additionally, the Spawn toyline had a massive impact on the toy industry, starting the careers of the Four Horsemen and other sculptors who introduced greater detail and articulation into mainstream superhero toys (even though the Spawn toys were notoriously unarticulated).

It later had an animated adaptation for HBO that viciously battered the Animation Age Ghetto, and is often seen as being of higher quality than the comic. The 1997 movie adaptation placed Michael Jai White in the lead role, Theresa Randle as his wife, Martin Sheen as Wynn and John Leguizamo as cartoonish arch-foe Clown/Violator. He's also appeared as a Guest Fighter in a few games: he was an exclusive character to the Xbox version of Soulcalibur II, where he was voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, while Keith David reprised the role when he was added as a DLC fighter to Mortal Kombat 11.

A new Spawn movie is in development, written and directed by McFarlane himself and starring Jamie Foxx, though it's taking a while to get here (McFarlane having made mention of working on it as early as 2015).

Tropes this character is famous for: