Todd McFarlane on SDCC 2023, the State of the Comics Industry, and His Wild Eddie Vedder Story

By the way, I am a huge Pearl Jam fan. I wouldn't know what that's like.

MCFARLANE: Right, but it's just like “Todd? Eddie Vedder." I'm like, “Huh?” “From Pearl Jam.” “Oh, hi, Eddie. Okay, Eddie. Good talking to you, too.” Anyway, what was happening is that they wanted, at that time, the record label was bugging them to do another music video. They were resistant because that's just who they are, right? This is awesome. They’re a group that doesn't want to be on camera. Like, "No, we gotta do a music video. We don't want to be in our music video.” That was their whole goal. And he said, “Hey, I've been watching the HBO animated show. We now know how we can do this. We'll just animate it. I got a song called “Do the Evolution.” It's about all time, space, and dimension. We need to do all that in 3 minutes. Are you up for the task?" So I'm going, "Time, space and dimension? So from the beginning to the end of time, 3 minutes? Let's do it! Seems like we can pull this off."

The thing that blew my mind out of that initial sort of getting set up [is] he said, "I'm going to send you something that just sort of gives you my vibe." I'm like, "Yeah, okay, cool," and I thought he was going to send me his soundtrack, or he’s going to send me something, or a sample. What he did was, the very next day, I get this thing in the mail, and it's a VHS of my Spawn HBO show, edited to his song, “Do the Evolution.” So, I could see sort of the tempo, and I wish I had it because it was super cool. I was just like, “That's wicked. Oh, hey, Eddie. Who did that?” “I did it Todd.” “No, no, no. But who edited this?” “I did that.” “You edited that?” “Yeah." "You have an editing machine at home?” “Yes, I do. I have an AVID.” "Okay, so rock and rollers get famous so they can get money, so they can buy editing machines. I guess I thought you guys did different stuff with your cash." [Laughs] He was really into the process so that even at the end when we actually did the video, at the end he was like, “Hey, Todd, we're off tour. Is it okay if I come into the editing with you guys and help you edit it?” “It’s your video, you can do whatever you want.

The answer is yes.

MCFARLANE: He's really good, and he's smart. He's a lot of things, right? Even to the bitter end. If you watch that video—you don't hear it all the time because they cut it—but the last sound you hear is crickets, right? It's basically lights out. It's over. But he put the crickets. He’s like, “I wonder if we put the crickets sounds,” and just out of the blue, we fade to black, there's nothing. But then we put it in, and we went, "Okay, if everything's dead, theoretically, so would be the crickets." But it just sounded so cool that it was like everything's still at night, and that's all you hear. So we kept it in. He was doing that throughout the whole video. So there's touches of him throughout that.

The silly, funny story, real quickly, on that one was, every day he came into the editing bay, he was bringing a briefcase. Didn't seem like what rock and rollers did. And then he'd leave, and I'd go, “You got another meeting now?” “No, I'm going home.” The next day he'd come with a briefcase, put it down, and I'd go, “Hey, you going to another meeting?” "No, going home.” And he never opened up the briefcase. On the third, fourth day of editing, because we're getting near the end, I curiously said, “Hey, Eddie, don't mind me asking. I'm not prying, but why do you bring that briefcase every day if you're just going home?” And he goes, “Oh my gosh, Todd, I didn't think you were going to ever ask.” I still, to this day, go, “Well, what if I didn't?” He walked over, and he opens it up, and there's two brand-new baseball gloves—because he's a baseball freak—and a baseball. And he goes, “You want to play catch this afternoon?” I go, “What?” He goes, “Because I heard you went to college playing baseball.” "Yes, I played, back then, baseball." He goes, “I know, I hear you’re good.” He's a baseball freak. “You want to play catch?” I’ll play catch with Eddie Vedder! Super cool.

There happened to be an [unseasonable] heatwave that day. It was about 107 in Southern California. Eddie, classic, dressed in black boots, black pants, black shirt, black leather jacket, and he’s smoking as he's playing catch. I’m telling you. And of course, you know how macho men are, it's getting hotter and hotter—I'm from Phoenix, I'm like a cockroach—I'm not giving in to Eddie.

It's getting hot, but I'm like, “Fuck you, Eddie, I got this.” And then he’s like, “Oh, yeah?" Then I could see, I go, “I think he's going to pass out,” but he would not have given up. And I went, "Eddie, you want to take a break?” “If you do.” I knew the answer [was] I'd better give in. “No, I'm a bit hot," and he's like, “Yeah, okay, fine. Me too.” If I had just been a little more macho, there was a possibility I could have killed Eddie Vedder that day or at least given him a heatstroke. But anyway, I don't know if he would have ever opened up the briefcase that day if I hadn't asked.

Loujoe said:

Awesome! I played catch with EV too. F..king sweet moment in time.