Todd McFarlane Discusses His Deal With DC Collectables

Todd McFarlane will be creating some collectibles for DC Comics.

At this years Toy Fair, comic creator and toy manufacturer Todd McFarlane (Spawn) announced a deal with DC Comics. This deal will give his company, McFarlane Toys, the rights to turn some of the world’s most recognizable characters into collectibles.

McFarlane spoke to ComicBook.com about working with DC and Warner Bros.

“Well, the first part is Warner Bros., who owns the right obviously to all the DC characters, had Mattel handling both the master toy license and the collectible side.  They thought that, as that contract was coming up, that might not be the way they wanted to continue to move forward.  They thought they wanted to divide those two pieces to different people.  When they got to the piece of, ‘Hey who could do some really good collectible action figures that’s been doing this a long time?’ then, fortunately, our name was on that short list.  We started having conversations with them and going back and forth and we were able to go in there and have the conversation and win the bid to get in there.  Now we’re keen deep into it.  I think last week we sent off five or six figures that they’re looking at right now.  They’ve already given us approval on a couple other figures.  We’re doing some new designs for some new stuff too.  At times, they’re gong like, ‘Oh yeah! This is perfect.’ The other times they’re going ‘Oh, you know, we’d just like to see it this way.’ So there’s a little bit of collaboration that has to go on.”

McFarlane went on to say that DC expressed their full faith in him to create quality and original collectibles of their superheroes.

“That was always part of the big overarching conversation.  Besides me doing it right–and I can do it right–how much McFarlane can I put into this? They seem to be pretty flexible so far and a lot of this is, ‘Well, show us what you mean by that Todd.  Bring it to us and we’ll make our calls from there.’ So far, like I said, they haven’t said no, they’ve just said bring it.  They’re not saying they’re going to say yes to everything.  They’re also saying ‘Hey, you know what? We don’t know what it is that you’re talking about until we see it artistically.’ I’m hoping that over the course of the next few years that that flexibility is there to have that kind of fun.”

It will probably be a year until the first of McFarlane Toys DC line hits store shelves.  Small price to pay for what will only be masterpieces from Todd McFarlane himself.