r/hulk • u/Dark-Carioca Jade Jaws • Jul 26 '25
Comics Hulk VS Spawn by George Pérez
The illustration above comes from Comics Buyer's Guide #1042 (1993), featuring the Merged Hulk (aka the Professor), Spawn and J.J. Sachs (a character created by PAD and George Pérez) witnessing the carnage.
For context, Pérez illustrated this based on a debate between Peter David (we Hulk fans know him) and Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn, who also worked with Peter for a bit), billed as comics’ Fight of the Century in 1993.
At the time Todd was well-known for trash-talking Marvel, talking about his company Image as though it was the greatest thing in the Universe as well as saying that "writers were not really necessary and that only the artist of a comic book was important".
Peter David wasn't fond of the trash-talk or the latter opinion and would occasionally butt heads with Todd and criticize him, particularly in McFarlane's “But I Digress...” column in the Comic Buyer's Guide, and this eventually led to a public debate scheduled at Comicfest, with George as the moderator picked by both comic book legends.
To make a long story short, Peter allegedly crushed him and George consequently drew the above piece as a representation of how that debate more or less went. PAD intelligently came in with prep work and extensive research while Todd mostly showed off and tried to act cool (which symbolizes their respective characters quite well I'd say :p)
You can find more about this story in this article, as well as the whole debate on video here.
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u/Longjumping-Salad484 Jul 26 '25
bro, this is an incredibly hulking part of history that I wasn't privy to.
I had read scant information about the squabble before, a long time ago.
McFarland's panties in a pinch, his bloviating
you presented a perfect timeline. and before I thought to ask for a video link for the full debate, you already provided that link
thank you. this will be a fun watch
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u/oh_please_god_no Jul 26 '25
Small correction: “But I Digress” was a PAD column, not McFarlane’s.
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u/Dark-Carioca Jade Jaws Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25
You're right, big mistake on my part (a shame reddit doesn't let you edit the above texts)
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u/Agreenscar3 Sakaarson Jul 26 '25
This is a really cool piece of comic history