Personally I am into theology, the study of gods and religious mythologies interests me, as it is perhaps the hardest of things to bring reason into at times (logy coming from the French logie, itself coming from the Greek logo: meaning reason. Theo is simply Greek for god). Much of this has to do with an interest of all things unexplainable and how they are explained. One unexplainable thing is how Todd McFarlane managed to convince HBO to make a series starring his comic characters.

Blood, dismemberment, mob killings, child murderers, the denizens of Hell, selling one’s soul, the main character digging up his own corpse, oh and Armageddon: hardly the most pleasant of subject matter to start with is it? And the end result is something which although unsettling in many ways, has the ‘maturity’ of everything else I’ve seen which tries to call itself edgy or adult in any way.

In short, if this series didn’t have Spawn’s, etc powers to visualise, one could make the assessment of why wasn’t it done in live-action. Of course the fact that animation can render Spawn’s powers easily coupled with the fact that the live-action movie that was made managed to bomb suggest that someone thought that animation was a more suited medium to use: cause a look at the episode count suggests that the powers that be decided to cancel it.

Being offered the chance to “live again” by an unknown entity after he is murdered, Al Simmons decides to take it. Five years pass and he returns to the surface, not quite in the same state as he was during his past life; more the opposite. Wearing a costume of some demonic substance I forget the name of – and really don’t care enough to find out – Spawn ends up hiding from the living in a alleyway which he comes into contact with members of a local mafia mob. After killing the two mobsters, he and the denizens of said alley become targets of the mob head Tony Twist. Meanwhile a pseudo-intellectual, semi-plot about corrupt politicians, child molesters and miscarriages of justices tries to advert itself; but the whole thing is so awkwardly produced and so unpleasant to watch – in more then one sense - unfold that one wonders why one should bother.

At least the actors put in some effort to infused the otherwise hackneyed dialogue with some passion, although the only characters that drew my interest for any length were the two detectives Twitch and Sam, and even the later isn’t the most pleasant of people, at least he’s honest about it. Wanda is a commendable character, protecting her client from a miscarriage of justice, but that’s more or less it. Both group of characters' investigations are flip sides of the same coin, so the series ends up re-treading old ground and talking about things that have alreadly happened; which doesn't help the excitement factor.

The animation seems stiff, the probably result of Spawn creators having troubles adapting the characters from their comic roots to that of the small screen; more likely it’s a case of having not that much money to work with: which tends to make the art lean on the ‘looks better in stills’ side of things. It a dark show, not only in the tone, but in the fact that most of it takes part during the night, in darken alleyways and the like.

In the end though, Spawn really is missing its soul.