Definitely Not Left Out

You learn something new every day, or at least, ideally, you’d like to. I was milling around YouTube as I do and I came across a video with Todd McFarlane answering various questions from the internet about comic books. It was part of that series where various personalities answer questions about their lives and their areas of expertise. McFarlane is the creator of Spawn, as well as a co-founder of Image Comics in the early 90’s.  He had previously worked for Marvel Comics and was once a writer and artist for Spider-Man.  I didn’t know that until I saw the video above.  I’ll be honest.  As much as I like certain comic book characters, I’ve never really been a staunch fan of comic books in general.  During my years growing up, I might read a comic book here and there, but I never got into collecting comics, nor reading comics on a monthly basis.  My monthly publication of choice, I’ll openly admit, was and to some degree still is, Mad Magazine.

During McFarlane’s response to one of the questions he was answering, he would take to his drawing pad and begin drawing Venom, one of the many villains in the Spider-Man universe. As he did so, I immediately noticed that he was drawing with his left hand. I felt dumb for a moment, being that I was unaware of this. Being that I’m not big into comics, should I have known this? Should I have known that Todd McFarlane is left-handed? Either way, I was wholly impressed. I am left-handed myself, though I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t draw to save my life. I suppose the only way I draw pictures and create images is with my words. I figure that with my inability to draw, I had to develop an ability to tell stories through other means. Hence why I flocked to the written word. With words, I can paint images and draw pictures in my own way and do so with all of the confidence in the world.

I don’t always draw attention to it, but I am left-handed. I don’t care if people frown upon it, look down on it, or think that this is somehow bad. Truthfully, I’ve never cared about how other people see it.  I’ve never seen being left-handed as anything negative.  This probably has a lot to do with the reality that with this left hand of mine, I have better penmanship than most. I know, at least it’s been my understanding, that lefties in general are supposed to have terrible handwriting. Fuck that. I buck that trend, though I will admit that I’ve come across many lefties whose handwriting is downright atrocious.

Spawn also happens to be one of those characters who I am confident will never undergo any kind of race swap. I just don’t see McFarlane going that route.  McFarlane, a white guy, created an anti-hero who happens to be black, which may have been one of the first things that drew me into the character.  I’ve never kept count, but I don’t know how many black comic book characters there are out there.  I’m not looking to count them now, but all I’m saying is that I just don’t see Al Simmons, Spawn’s former mortal self, being race-swapped and turned into a white man.  That’s the kind of dumb shit that Disney likes to do.  McFarlane has more sense than that.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but I’ve loved a comic book character who was created by a fellow lefty.  Even if McFarlane wasn’t left-handed, I’d still love Spawn as a comic book character.  I just think it’s more satisfying that such an amazing character just so happened to come from someone who is a lefty.

I am proud to be a lefty.  Rest assured that we are out there.  As observant as I like to think that I am, even I miss them in the world from time to time.