When Spawn creator Todd McFarlane introduced NYPD detectives Sam Burke and Maximilian "Twitch" Williams, they were generally perceived as being bumbling, shuffling supporting characters, who served as foils for Spawn. They helped move the action along, but not a lot else.

McFarlane, though, apparently felt like there was more to them and to that end turned writer Brian Michael Bendis loose on them. This was, of course, when Bendis was better known for his crime comics like Goldfish, Jinx and Torso, and even his then-recently-launched Powers rather than his Marvel work that followed.

It was, in hindsight, a brilliant move on McFarlane’s part.

Bendis quickly established that not only did he know these characters, he knew them very well. Angel Medina did a great job with the art on the “Udaku,” story arc, and that was followed by the first Bendis-Alex Maleev collaboration and eventually it lead to them working together on Daredevil.

The Bendis run on the characters was followed by McFarlane himself. The original Sam & Twitch series was followed by another, Casefiles: Sam & Twitch, written by Marc Andreyko (the first story arc done by Andreyko and Scott Morse is not to be missed and we hope it will be collected soon in hardcover or paperback form). There has even been another mini-series: Sam & Twitch: The Writer.