Spawn: Architects of Fear

Spawn Universe

by Arthur Clare, Aleksi Briclot (Illustrator)

An elite group of Angels, known as the Castle of Architects, needs the help of Spawn to retrieve one of their living weapons that has gone amok, the Horsaak-El. For centuries this "weapon" has been absorbing the souls of the damned to keep them from joining the armies of Hell, but now it is preying on the souls of the innocent. To ensure Spawn's cooperation, one of the Caste have placed his brother, Marc, in the weapon's path! From the creative team that brought you Spawn Simony comes this new, original Spawn graphic novel fully painted by one of the worlds premiere artists. Spawn: Architects of Fear also features a behind-the-scenes section, with additional art and commentary about this long-anticipated project.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

64 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 2011

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story: ☆
Art: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about his one. The story seemed confusing, but not to the point of being incoherent. But the best part of this one was the art. Great fully painted art which great atmosphere. It was both realistic and fantastic at the same time. So to reiterate, you have beautiful art with a somewhat weak story. Still, I think most Spawn fans will enjoy this one.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spawn is a great character that suffers from poor writing. If you had this title on pre-order then you would have waited about 2 years for this book to come out (like me). Unfortunately the wait was not worth it because this is another one of Spawn's adventures that features an interesting plot but suffers from poor execution. SPOILER ALERT!

The artwork by Aleksi Briclot is amazing, I enjoy his rendition of Spawn with a skull face rather than a black mask. The environment is very dark and it fits for this type of story.

The story has some interesting characters like the architect angel and similarly uninteresting characters like the humans involved. The link between characters is strange for example why would an angel need to ally with a human? Spawn's brother is also thrown in the mix as a sort of bargaining chip in order to get him to partner with the angel but we've seen this in other story lines; it would have been nice to have a different approach. The resolution is similar to other Spawn stories as well, characters that you suspect to be traitors are indeed traitors and Spawn deals with them, other angels appear and offer him anything for his services and he refuses and gives his wish onto someone else.(Hmm... wonder who that could be?)

[Fiachra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'm just going to reiterate what everyone else here seems to be saying.
The artwork is magnificent, there is great potential for the story. It could have been really great, but the writing is poor and the structure is messy. It doesn't really get it's message across and you have to reflect on it at the end to understand what happened as opposed to knowing as you read, what's happening.

[Miroslav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Visually fantastic - Aleksi's Spawn is a joy to look at. However, the story goes nowhere - it's just one big mess. Really badly written. Also, lettering was problematic - sometimes it was really hard to read the text.

[Jonathan Ball · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strong story, poorly told, but with outstanding artwork.

[Clinton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit average. The art is cool but sometimes lacks definition and clarity. The character's motivations and story are a bit hard to follow. The artistic interpretation of Spawn's face was interesting.