Todd McFarlane's a weird one for me, on the one hand I was young when his stuff came out so he definitely inspired me, but I also have issue with his style in the 90s (I will modify that and say I don't know the most recent of his work that I've seen).   Having said that, I'm checking out a Tumblr of his work and I do love his sense of humour when it comes to homages and the like (and he seems like an interesting guy, too), and I do remember his messed up Wizard of Oz toys and that news bit a year or so ago about how some movie company bought the rights to those toys and would make a movie based on them, but of course you can't actually make THAT movie so it wound up being a Ripley-style Dorothy, which is cool but you didn't need THOSE toys and THOSE rights to get you there, did you?

I don't buy art books any more (no money plus no room), but even if I did I probably wouldn't buy this one, but I would TOTALLY take a good hard long look through it as a trip down memory lane.  But my art tastes lie elsewhere.

Having said that, he did do the best webbing.

Rob Liefeld for the win!!! How NOT to draw like Rob Liefeld

That cover of Spawn is still my favorite of his. I think I still have 10 copies of that. Man, I was on a spending spree win Image Comics exploded onto the scene. Good times....good memories....horribly late. Haha.

There's always his run on Spider-Man. When they created a new title for McFarlane, I thought (at the time) his art was the greatest thing ever, although the stories were just okay for me. His art now is still fun to look at, but it doesn't have that hold on me that it did when it first came out.

I think his Spawn run is definitely underrated and part of the reason is that Capullo eclipse him with his own epic run that also had great stories as well. But people need to give Todd's run a second and third look. People seem to only talk about Greg's Spawn more these days. Both were great in their own way.

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.