Better late than never, the good people at Comics Should Be Good published my latest installment of “Gimmick or Good?” over New York Comic Con weekend, so for those of you who may have missed my column the first time around, may I present to you my thoughts on Image Comics Spawn #1. Written and illustrated by former Spider-Man superstar Todd McFarlane, I discovered a loophole that has qualified Spawn #1 as a legitimate topic for my discussion of 90s comics with cover gimmicks: in 1995, a few years after the comic was initially released, Image published a black and white cover variant for Spawn #1 as a retailer incentives. Given the rise of retailer incentives comics today, I thought Spawn would be an apt choice.

For a full list of my Gimmick or Good? columns, click here.