250's for America's 250 · Day 22: Spawn #250

Publishing: Thursday, July 2, 2026 · Image Comics · On sale: January 2015

Main cover by Todd McFarlane (with variants by Greg Capullo, Skottie Young, Jock, Sean Murphy, and Philip Tan)

See full issue details on the Grand Comics Database →

The second of our indie milestones — and a reminder that Image's flagship has quietly become one of the longest-running creator-owned superhero books in history.

The issue

A triple-sized 250th-anniversary issue and the cataclysmic climax of the Jim Downing era. Downing makes his final stand against his own symbiotic costume while the fate of New York City hangs in the balance — and from the wreckage comes the long-awaited return of the original Spawn, Al Simmons, setting the stage for the next era of the title. Marvel/DC aside, Spawn reaching #250 made it the second creator-owned independent title ever to do so, after Cerebus.

Who's in it

• Jim Downing (Spawn) — making his last stand against his own costume as the current Hellspawn.
• Al Simmons — the original Spawn, making a long-awaited return from the wreckage of Downing's climactic battle.
• New York City — effectively a character in its own right, its fate hanging in the balance throughout the anniversary storyline.

Behind the book (creators)

• Writer: Todd McFarlane
• Interior art: Szymon Kudranski
• Main cover: Todd McFarlane
• Interior letter/color credits not fully confirmed — verify on the GCD.

Meet the creators

Todd McFarlane shot to fame drawing a wildly popular run on Amazing Spider-Man in the late 1980s before co-founding Image Comics in 1992 alongside a group of fellow superstar artists seeking creative and financial control over their own work. Spawn, his creator-owned flagship, has run continuously since Image's founding and remains one of the company's cornerstone titles decades later. McFarlane also built McFarlane Toys into a major action-figure company, expanding the Spawn brand well beyond the comic page.

Szymon Kudranski brought a moody, painterly, heavily-shadowed art style to this stretch of Spawn, suited to the book's horror-inflected tone. His atmospheric approach has also appeared on titles for DC and other publishers, marking him as one of the more distinctive visual stylists to work on the character.

What it's worth

A modern milestone. The standard cover is plentiful, so raw NM copies trade $8–$20, and CGC 9.8 standard-cover copies generally fall in the $40–$80 range. Signed copies (McFarlane, Capullo) and scarcer variants command meaningful premiums.

Where to read it (collected edition)

Reprinted in Spawn Compendium, Color Edition, Vol. 5, which collects roughly Spawn #201–250.

Part of "250's for America's 250" — counting 24 milestone #250 comics down to the U.S. 250th on July 4, 2026.