As of June 2023 I have just finished watching this for the first time and while it obviously is very dated it is still better than most comic adaptions, including both animated and live action of the past 20 years.
Tl:dr I read a quote comparing it to batman TAS and that is fair. Obviously made around the same time they share an aesthetic but at times spawn is willing to delve into darker subject matter that is off limits to batman. Seasons 1 and 3 still hold up as some of the best animated adaptions we have season 2 is basically just dead air, entire episodes go by with nothing at all happening, literally no story progression, character or world building, just bloat.
Ramble:
I admit I have not read spawn so I don't know how accurate this is and how much was changed or tweaked to better translate to the screen, since Todd McFarlane worked directly I am going to assume there were no drastic changes, but maybe due to the process translating from page to screen the story telling is a bit wierd, a bit poorly paced in places, I won't give specific spoilers but there are times where spawn contradicts himself within 2 minutes of screen time,there are also episodes where really nothing happens and others that play out like a 90's action movie, there are times where he makes choices that make literally zero sense and are guaranteed to come back to bite him later.
One thing I will say is that the voices take more getting use to than the dated animations. Keith David as spawn is fine but for some reason 98% of the other characters in this show whisper like they were early adopters of asmr. I am not quite sure why they have literal beings of hell like violator whispering but it does come across very strange, a violent, gory, lore centred around hell and a soul bargain and for some reason humans and hellish nightmares alike refuse to raise their voice above a barely audible whisper and can threaten each other, talk about murder and torture but the whole time talk as if they are trying not to wake a nearby baby but at the same time having shoot outs, rocket launcher battles, grenades hurled around the place and one particular location becoming a small scale warzone on an hourly basis and that's all just standard procedure.
This is something that was lost on me, throughout the watch I failed to understand why the voice actors were given that direction or how at no point over 3 seasons did anyone find it odd, but I guess it is just a stylistic choice that is lost on me.
Tl:dr I read a quote comparing it to batman TAS and that is fair. Obviously made around the same time they share an aesthetic but at times spawn is willing to delve into darker subject matter that is off limits to batman. Seasons 1 and 3 still hold up as some of the best animated adaptions we have season 2 is basically just dead air, entire episodes go by with nothing at all happening, literally no story progression, character or world building, just bloat.
Ramble:
I admit I have not read spawn so I don't know how accurate this is and how much was changed or tweaked to better translate to the screen, since Todd McFarlane worked directly I am going to assume there were no drastic changes, but maybe due to the process translating from page to screen the story telling is a bit wierd, a bit poorly paced in places, I won't give specific spoilers but there are times where spawn contradicts himself within 2 minutes of screen time,there are also episodes where really nothing happens and others that play out like a 90's action movie, there are times where he makes choices that make literally zero sense and are guaranteed to come back to bite him later.
One thing I will say is that the voices take more getting use to than the dated animations. Keith David as spawn is fine but for some reason 98% of the other characters in this show whisper like they were early adopters of asmr. I am not quite sure why they have literal beings of hell like violator whispering but it does come across very strange, a violent, gory, lore centred around hell and a soul bargain and for some reason humans and hellish nightmares alike refuse to raise their voice above a barely audible whisper and can threaten each other, talk about murder and torture but the whole time talk as if they are trying not to wake a nearby baby but at the same time having shoot outs, rocket launcher battles, grenades hurled around the place and one particular location becoming a small scale warzone on an hourly basis and that's all just standard procedure.
This is something that was lost on me, throughout the watch I failed to understand why the voice actors were given that direction or how at no point over 3 seasons did anyone find it odd, but I guess it is just a stylistic choice that is lost on me.