Spawn is the first Black superhero ever to feature in a major motion picture — one year before Wesley Snipes featured in Blade. That fact serves to illustrate Spawn is one of the most overlooked and most popular Black superheroes in history. That juxtaposition merits investigation. So does the idea that the first mainstream superhero or antihero broke through as the angry, violent demon monster that fits a retrograde and heinous stereotype of Black men.

Perhaps it’s best to start with why Spawn became an animated TV show in the first place, and that is because the comic book it was based on was a smash hit from the jump.

The first issue of Spawn was terribly popular, selling 1.7 million copies ranking fifth behind titles featuring Superman, WildC.A.T.s, Venom and Spider-Man. It remains popular today.