Spawn is coming to Call of Duty season 6

Call of Duty’s next season will summon Todd McFarlane’s Spawn as part of its battle pass — the series’ first to be headlined by a licensed character — and publisher Activision is going all-in on the undead hellspawn for Halloween. Call of Duty’s season 6 battle pass will include two Spawn-inspired Operators and seven Spawn-themed skins when the new season launches later this month.

The games’ crossover with McFarlane’s 31-year-old comic book hero is timed to Call of Duty’s annual The Haunting event, which will run through spooky season.

Al Simmons is Spawn’s human form. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, WarzoneThen, Modern Warfare 3,As a playable operator. Spawn is represented as a classic comic character, with his red cape, his spiked armbands and chain, along with the oversized bandoliers. Spawn will also get a “more tactical” skin, modeled after his “Commando Spawn” look from the comics and toys.

And if you prefer your Spawn well done, there’s a Burned Spawn skin for the Al Simmons Operator.

Activision

Spawn’s friends and foes are also coming to Call of Duty as skins for existing Operators. Here’s the full list, via Activision:

• Creepy Clown (Fender Skin) — Violator, a hell-born demon with considerable power and deviance, has assumed the shape of a clown in order to anger Spawn.
• Violator (König Skin) — Closer to the true form, the cruel and arrogant Violator brings “death on two legs” in the form of a grotesquely headed Operator to further infuriate Spawn.
• Disruptor (Horangi Skin) — Disruptor has many names, but is best known as the crime lord that masqueraded as Al Simmons and killed him.
• Soul Crusher (Vega Skin) — A mysterious rival of Spawn’s, Soul Crusher is an enigmatic figure, using noxious gasses to asphyxiate his victims into submission.
• Nikto Spawn (Nikto Skin) — The Spawn-inspired Operator Nikto has a tactically inspired look with an impressive mask.
• Gaia (Nova Skin) —Gaia has been described as an earthen manifestation of Mother Nature. She is a powerful ancient goddess who seeks to ruin those that would destroy her world.

Here’s a look at the full Spawn collaboration for Call of Duty season 6:

Grid View

Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn and Call of Duty action figures since 2008, told Polygon that his collaboration with Call of Duty was possible because of an established relationship between the two companies. McFarlane Toys began producing Call of Duty figures in 2008. When Call of Duty’s developers reached out about taking their relationship in the other direction, McFarlane went all-in — as McFarlane tends to do.

“Originally, the ask was just for the OG Spawn,” McFarlane said. “And then very quickly, I said, ‘Well, Al Simmons, the guy underneath the mask, he’s lieutenant colonel Al Simmons. His skills were based off his training as a member of a black-ops team. So if you guys want to use that, so it’s not a guy running around in costume and a cape, [use him too].’ They went ‘Yeah, cool.’ And then I said, ‘I also have a version that I call Commando Spawn, [who] is essentially Spawn, saying, I don’t need to use any of my powers. I’m military.’

“Then they came back and asked if they could sort of pepper in a couple of other Spawn characters, just to expand the footprint of the mythology a little bit, as well as a couple other key players doing a little bit of cosplaying.”

McFarlane said he was probably more hands-off than other IP holders, adding that he’s “not corporate” and that he trusted the “geeks” working on Call of Duty to accurately bring his characters to the game.

“Because most of the people that are doing the developing are younger than me, and are already loyal [Spawn fans] they’re already going to pay homage to what I’m doing,” McFarlane said. “I don’t have to do that piece. What would I have to do, oddly, sometimes, is to get them away from their reverence and say, ‘OK, you’re a geek, you know about Spawn. Cool. You can do it. What about those who have never heard of Spawn before? What can they play?’ And so that’s where the Al Simmons and a couple of the other [skins] came in.”

Activision

“As an artist myself, I always like to have as much freedom [as possible]It’s important to be creative, inspired and have ideas. So if they said, ‘Hey, Todd, we got this cool look, but we can’t have a cape.’ I would have gone, ‘Yeah, as long as you guys have done something cool.’ And if they said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this thing and the cape’s going to be 400-feet long. And here’s why.’ I would have gone, ‘Yeah, cool.’ I have to have trust that they know their game and their customer base.”

McFarlane is also keenly aware that the people who play Call of Duty — many of whom were born well after Spawn’s heyday — may not have any idea who Spawn is. And he’s not trying to get the tens of millions of Call of Duty players to become Spawn comic book readers. But he does hope players new to Spawn think he’s cool, and eventually see the long-promised new Spawn live-action movie.

“I don’t expect anybody to go out and start buying any of my [comics or toys],” he said. “That’s not the thing. Where I think there’s potentially a connecting point is when the movie comes out. Then all of a sudden, somebody who’s living in Spain, Portugal, Bosnia, or Czech Republic that was playing a lot of the character in Call of Duty goes, ‘What? Oh, my god. Has Spawn got a new movie? I’m gonna go see it, because I thought he was cool in that video game.’”