The Art of Todd McFarlane: The Devil's In The Details The Art of Todd McFarlane is basically a placeholder for the real
Todd McFarlane to talk to you one on one to encourage you to pursue your artistic dreams. Simply put, this book comes in 3 parts. It's one part autobiography, one part art book and one part instructional when
Todd gets into explaining the thought process about some of the pieces he has done over the years. In a way, this book is very similar in style and structure of another coffee table book:
Icons: The DC Comics & Wildstorm Art of Jim Lee. But what
Jim leaves out of the book,
Todd includes everything from his formative years. This is where the motivation and idea of
The Art Of Todd McFarlane comes to the forefront.
There is something exhilarating to have a superstar of
Todd's stature to collect and print in a book all of the drawings leading up to his big break in the Comic Book industry. He is driving home the idea that even the biggest stars have to start somewhere and he is no exception. The drawings, by his choice of words....are crude. We all can relate because we all drew just as bad as he did. But it was his desire to just keep pushing forward and not taking 'no' for an answer. He got plenty of rejections trying to get his foot in the door. He even makes it a point to show the rejections letters that he got, once again pointing out he wasn't immune to having people slam his art at the time.
But the main thing most people are going to want to check out this book is for the art, namely his
Spider-Man run and then later his
Spawn stuff. It's pretty damn cool to basically see a timeline of
Todd's stuff all in one book from his first submissions all the way to and beyond his more revered art pieces. It's just mind boggling to see his transformation from such humble beginnings. I love the book for sure. But I did feel like that I was missing something. Yes, the book is a whopping 400 pages long, but I wanted even more art. Call me greedy, but it is what it is. Also, the last few pages deal with
Todd's foray into directing music videos and his toy company. It's an 'autobiography', so I get why it needs to be included. But from the art side, those pages would have been better spent on more art.
Anyway, if you're a fan of
Todd McFarlane, Spider-Man, Spawn or Art Coffee Table books, this is the one to get. I highly recommend this as a
Buy.