No Todd McFarlane interview would be complete without talking about his world famous toy line. He tells us what's coming up this year and the new concepts they have been working on.

Todd is really a great guy and we had such an interesting conversation. Be sure to check out the first half of this interview here where he talked about who he would like to cast as Eliot Ness and his new Spawn feature.

Here is what he had to say,

Todd McFarlane Interview Part 2

Q: Going back to Torso, you obviously have the rights. How did Don Murphy get involved?

TM: Let's back up and I'll walk you through the whole thing, just so you get the overview of it. Brian Bendis and Marc Andreyko are doing this cool graphic novel that is being published at Image Comics. Image Comics is a company that I am co owner of, you know, I get my monthly book and I look through it. As I get older I am less sort of enamored of typical American superhero stuff 'cause it's sort of everywhere and sorta easy to do in terms of writing it and drawing it, you know. So I've always been intrigued, for a guy who made his career doing superhero comic books at the end of the day I want to watch opposite kinds of movies. I don't want fantasy. I want gritty kinds of movies. Stuff that I can go yeah, I want to watch LA Confidential, I want to watch The Usual Suspects, I want to watch the Insider, I want to watch stuff that is fairly believable with a little bit of Hollywood put on top of it.

So all of a sudden I start reading a couple of the Torsos and I go wow. I get in contact with Brian. Brian at that point is beginning to do some work for me and his career is really starting to take off and he is now Marvel's top writer. We take the property over to Miramax for a while, they hold on to it for a while and then it doesn't work out.

They do their Miramax thing with it. And then the rights come back up and I had gotten involved with Don Murphy on a couple other things. I talked to him about Spawn and we dealt with some other TV pilots and things like that. So Don was intrigued with it and he had just finished up that movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and so he just had it and said I have a guy that I know that I want to take it to, which was Bill Mechanic.

Bill had just set up shop recently having left the head of Fox studios and we took it to Bill. Gave the pitch to Bill and Bill bought it. And so, just as time went by we were trying to push this thing. We went through one option and went through another. Really, Bill is the guy here. I can't take that much credit. Bill is the guy who has been pushing this rock uphill. He's the guy that has a relationship with Fincher. He's the guy that has just been pounding the studios. From his perspective and mine we thought of it as a no brainer. Everybody knows Eliot Ness, it's a brand name. You've it based on a true story. Arguably Americas ' first serial killer under the nose of Eliot Ness and it's a story that most people don't know because of the politics that were involved in the story and this is just before the outbreak of World War II. But this is a national story that somehow got lost in the annals of time and we thought wow. I even walked him through the teaser trailer because I was thinkin' are you kiddin' me. Especially then all you gotta do is put a star on it and you got it.

Based on a true story.

The guy who put away Capone.

America's first serial killer.

Comes Tom Hanks or whoever you end up putting in that role and it's done. Are you kiddin' me, people would go to that movie right now. So, it's been a long and frustrating, you know getting to this point but we're here, you know it's Hollywood . It is what it is.

Bill was able to go in there and figure out a way to get the studios to have an A list writer who has made movies that they like, that's a big deal as you know. And attach an A list director, get them to sign contracts so they get financially pregnant with them right. Now all of sudden, see it's too easy for them to walk away from a guy like Todd McFarlane. They could give him a little bit of money and go nee nee nee.but all of a sudden you start signing pay or play contracts and you're pregnant. That doesn't mean this movie can't get put in turn arounds or whatever else, we've seen that. But, it just means there is more incentive the more heavyweights you got in there. Bill Mechanic was able to put some heavyweights on. Once we get a first draft I am sure we will get very aggressive trying to find a lead man. If we can do that, we will have all the pieces so that if something doesn't work out, another studio we'll easily be able to find.

Q: What new projects do you have lined up with your toy line right now?

TM: We've got the second series of Napoleon Dynamite coming out. The first one just hit at Christmas you know, that's one of the cult favorites. We're actually negotiating a couple of huge licenses that hopefully they will say yes to in the next week or two that would cover my 2007 schedule. Sports are always going, for baseball, basketball, hockey and football. We started a line of military toys that is starting to grab hold, it's starting to expand. We got this line, this Dragon series that's doing pretty well for us, this in house line that dealing with some of the big fantasy elements. We will be rolling out a lot more of the Corpse Bride product that we just sort of introduced this year, or last year since it's January, so more of that. Spawn's always coming out. We got the music stuff always rolling out. We just signed a deal with, well next week, we just signed a deal with one of the biggest TV shows on right now. And so, we also got the Simpsons coming out and I am probably forgetting a few. Our hands are full (laughing) I don't have idle hands, don't worry about me.

Q: Regarding the music stuff, since KISS was your first line, am I to assume that you are a big KISS fan?

TM: Yeah, I mean I am a fan a KISS in that my brothers were a bigger fan than I was. They collected all the albums so I never had to buy any, I just listened to theirs. I'm a fan of anybody that lives in sort of a shark infested industry and actually can have a 20 years career at it. So, I admire that KISS go, you know, plenty of people can make the argument they're not the best musicians you've ever heard but they have been able to survive for three decades almost now. Where some people can't even live in those shark infested waters for even a year or two. They've been able to figure out how to survive. My fandom of people is just knowing how hard it is to get to the consumer in the first place and then how much harder it is to just be in front of the consumer for a long period of time. I applaud that, whether I am a strict fan of them or not is less than going oh my gosh you got there, you got to the Holy Grail, you know God bless you. I don't have any criticism for anybody that puts out product to the consumer.

Q: Any new music stuff coming out like Van Halen or anyone?

TM: We are looking at a couple bands. I think we got the next guy coming out, Billy Idol. We are doing these 3D versions of some of the albums because some of the bands when you say you want to make a figure of them there is a bit of a knee jerk, oh I don't want a toy, that's silly. So we've been chasing some of these bands down and we know we are never going to get them but we can get their album cover. So we know we just started this line that is rolling out this year that is taking as many classic movie covers and one sheets too and do these 3D severely embossed versions of them. Because again even in Hollywood movies there are people who will not give you their likeness and so I will never get the likeness of certain people but if the movie poster doesn't have their image on it then you can do the movie poster. It's the next closest thing I can get. Again when you are a beggar you don't get to choose too much you take what you can get. So we sort of invented that so we are going to see how the movie poster and album cover thing comes along here.

Q: When do we hear about the first one? TM: I think the first one comes out in about a month or something. Q: Which is the first one? Can you say that? TM: Yeah it's Led Zeppelin, it's their blimp blowing up, black and white blimp. After that we've got a Sex Pistol cover.

Stay tuned to the IESB for further updates!