29 Years Later, the ’90s’ Most Iconic Superhero’s Animated Sequel Outshines the Original — and We Need It Back

Every time I see how mainstream R-rated superhero stories are now, I think about the one that got there first and never got its proper due. Yep, I am talking about HBO 's animated Spawn, which hit in 1997, did the thing years before everyone else, and still deserves better than cult-classic footnote status.

The ground Spawn broke

The late '90s were not exactly friendly to adult animation. Outside The Simpsons and a few copycats, cartoons for grown-ups were niche at best. Dropping a grim, gory, serialized comic-book adaptation into that world was a swing.

Todd McFarlane's Spawn premiered on HBO on May 16, 1997, adapted from McFarlane's Image Comics series that launched in 1992. It became one of HBO's earliest adult animated series and even picked up an Emmy in 1999 for Outstanding Animation Program (Longer Than One Hour). Not bad for a show that spent a lot of time in the shadows.

The story they told

At the center is Al Simmons, a CIA assassin who gets murdered and sent to Hell for, well, all the things that land you in Hell. He makes a deal with the devil: serve him and you can see your wife again. Classic mistake. Simmons comes back to Earth as a monstrous Hellspawn and discovers five years have gone by and his wife has moved on. Instead of a tearful reunion, he gets a curse and a mission, skulking through a rotten city with powers that feel more like a burden than a gift. It is not a feel-good watch, which is the point.

The movie that did not help

Same year, different vibe: the live-action Spawn movie directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé tried to bottle this and face-planted. Despite a flashy cast - Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen - it was a critical mess and bombed at the box office. The HBO series, meanwhile, had a moody score, stark, stylized (sometimes almost abstract) visuals, and a bleak tone that actually fit the material.

Spawn was early to a party that did not start until 2016

Plenty of projects nudged the door open over the years, but mainstream audiences did not fully warm to hard-R superheroes until Deadpool in 2016. After that, the floodgates opened.

• Early outliers that saw it coming: Defendor (2009), Super (2010)
• The big turn: Deadpool (2016)
• Movies that kept it rolling: Logan, Deadpool 2, Joker
• TV that ran with it: Harley Quinn, Legion, Titans, HBO's Watchmen, Gen V, The Boys
• Animation finally got rowdy in prime time: Invincible - which, for context, was Prime Video 's second-biggest show in April 2026 - is the kind of ultraviolent, adult cartoon that would have been a tough sell back in 1997

Meanwhile, The Boys is heading for the exit

The Boys season 5 will soon wrap up the show’s seven-year run, but adult superhero TV is not going anywhere. That is the funny part: the landscape Spawn predicted is now standard. It just arrived about 20 years late for Spawn to capitalize on it.

So what does Spawn deserve now?

For a show that helped draw the map, Todd McFarlane's Spawn has mostly lived as an influential curio. The series proved that a dark, adult, animated comic-book story could work on premium cable long before it was fashionable. It earned the hardware, nailed the mood, and built a template that others later used to get rich.

It is overdue for a real revival - something that treats the original as the foundation it is and gives this world the scale and visibility the current market finally supports. The audience is clearly there now. Spawn was just early.