What if Spawn failed? Todd McFarlane and Daniel Henriques will reopen a 30 -year wound in Dark New Series

And if the most iconic moment Spawn Was not a triumph, but a huge failure?

This is the chilling premise behind The curse of Sherlae JohnsonA new limited series of the writer Daniel Henriques and artist Jonathan Glapiondropping this May from image comics.

This new dark chapter rewinds the clock Spawn #5 – When Hellborn’s anti -hero notoriously made the killer of the baby Billy Kincaid. But this time, the story asks … Spawn has actually saved someone?

For Henriques, this story gnawed him for over three decades. “In reality we don’t know he died,” Henriques said to Comicbook. “What if it is not? What has just done Spawn – or what he did not do, who is actually saving the victim who brought him there in the first place.”

That victim is Sherlae Johnson, the girl found mutilated and linked in the Kincaid freezer. Spawn provides his brutal justice to the murderer, leaves his corpse to the police station and leaves without ever checking the girl. Sherlae’s original comic fate is ambiguous. Henriques saw that ambiguity as a clockwork bomb.

“If Sherlae was still alive, even barely, then what he lived was not a rescue, was a nightmare,” he said. “He would have seen him beat his shit from Kincaid, perhaps this gigantic flash of him who teleported himself, and that’s it, and he has remained to die alone. I was always like, ‘he has to go somewhere, what will happen later?'”

Henriques is not interested in Spawn’s Origin’s retconning or canceling his inheritance, he is trying to complicate. Kincaid has repeatedly returned throughout the Spawn universe, but to his victims? Not so much. This changes now.

This book excavates in Sherlae’s trauma and follows the consequences of Spawn’s actions, or its lack, through a new lens of pain, anger and ghostly revenge.

Even Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn, welcomed this uncomfortable clash.

“The problem with the hero who interprets the judge, the jury and the executioner is, there are branches for this, right?” McFarlane said. “So, we tried to turn those rocks on the Spawn character.

“Do you have to assume that most heroes think they’re doing well, but sometimes you can ask:” In reality, did you get worse? “Since there was no control, it was like” oh, killed the children, I will kill him “and he leaves.

“He hasn’t really dug deeper than that, he was only very simplistic in his actions, which will now cause complications here.”

The curse of Sherlae Johnson Launch Wednesday 2 May with a big 48 -page debut problem. Image comics will also be released Spawn #5 To coincide with the new series because to face the story of Sherlee, you will want to revisit the moment when everything went wrong.