15 Superpowers You Didn’t Know Spawn Had

For those of you who have only ever seen the movie or cartoon, Spawn’s powers may be somewhat unknown. Since the recent news that the reboot of the film franchise is on the way, we at Screen Rant wanted to go over some of Spawn’s lesser-known powers in preparation for the film. There are many more than the ones we settled on here, but we threw them around for a while and came up with the 15 we liked the best.

Spawn has the usual superhero powers like super strength, speed, agility and the like, but his true powers come from his imagination, which is really the only limit on what he can do. Over the course of the more than 250 issues published thus far, we have seen him go from an immature character who didn’t know what he was doing to someone with the power to defeat both God and Satan. With that in mind, here are 15 Superpowers You Didn’t Know Spawn Had.

15 He can turn himself into a white guy

When it comes to a character like Spawn who has the ability to do pretty much anything he can imagine, it’s no surprise he might try to heal his scarred visage so that he could be with his beloved Wanda shortly after returning to Earth five years after his death. He attempted in the second issue with somewhat undesirable results. Al Simmons was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed white man when he was killed; he was, in fact, a black man. Unfortunately for him, when he expended a rather large amount of power (nearly 5% of his reserves), he changed into a run-of-the-mill white guy. We’re sure Malebolgia had his laugh over this, but it happened at a time when Spawn was immature and didn’t know the extent of his powers.

In later issues… much later, he would learn to transform his body in more appropriate ways and even returned to Earth in his old body at one point, but back in the early days of his series, all he could manage was the white guy pictured here. Needless to say, Al wasn’t happy with this discrepancy, but he went to Wanda anyway. It is later revealed that the man he transformed into was none other than Jim Downing, the one who would succeed him as Spawn.

14 He can alter his density at will

For a guy who weighs in at between 450 and 500 lbs. (Necroplasm is heavy, y’all!), you wouldn’t think that Spawn would ever need to expend any of his precious energy to increase his density, but he can and he has. In one issue, Spawn was in his beloved alley and needed to stop a car. Instead of flagging it down or throwing one of the many bums standing around in front of it to slow its progress, Al steps in its path and makes himself denser. Since the car was traveling at 67 MPH when it hits him and Spawn doesn’t budge a single inch, we can actually calculate how much he increased his mass using none other than… math!

Don’t worry, we aren’t about to bore you with the details or make you calculate anything! For Spawn to essentially become an implacable wall to a vehicle traveling at that speed, he would have to increase his density to an excess of 8,100 lbs to counter the force of 36,000 Newtons of energy. Most people would prefer to lose mass whenever possible, but our hero Spawn enjoys adding on the weight whenever he deems it necessary.

13 He is a master of hand-to-hand combat and all firearms

When it comes to superpowers, this one is more of a super skill. If you think about it, we let the Punisher play in the superhero realm so it should never be discounted when a character with the powers of a god prefers to get down and dirty with some hand-to-hand combat and the latest and greatest in firearms technology.

Al Simmons was a member of the United States Military and then the CIA before he was killed during a mission to Botswana by his buddy and employer. Before he died, Simmons had already mastered several forms of martial arts and could pick up just about any weapon in the world and use it with deadly proficiency.

Simmons did not lose these skills when he was resurrected and he has used them countless times during his many battles. Because his powers were limited in the first 50 issues of the series, Spawn would regularly raid secret warehouses that he remembered contained weaponry and use them in his fight against beings like Overt-Kill, a cyborg assassin sent by the mob, so he could maintain his limited power reserves.

12 He can teleport

Let’s face it, if we didn’t need to rely on our legs to get us from one place to another, we would try just about anything else. They did it in Star Trek all the time and so does Spawn… well, not all the time, since it apparently doesn’t feel very good. Spawn has been known to teleport throughout the series, whenever he needs to either get the hell out of somewhere fast or get into a place without being seen. He has been shown to do this in more than one way, so it isn’t fully clear how he goes about it. In the example pictured here, he turns himself into a sort of snot that shoots through space to his desired location, where he reforms into his real body.

In some other instances of teleportation, it appears that Spawn can travel through shadows. He might just pop out of a shadowy place where he wasn’t before or disappear into a shadow and reappear in an alleyway somewhere.

Not only can he move from place to place, he can also hop from realities through portals. Whenever Spawn needs to take a quick trip to Heaven or Hell, he has been known to throw out the magical portal or two and step right through it. Frankly, his movement isn’t at all limited when he decides he wants to go somewhere.

11 He has internal organs but doesn’t need them

Spawn’s body is composed entirely of Necroplasm and doesn’t require any sorts of weak human structures like organs to keep him going. It has been theorized that the reason he has internal organs at all is due to his subconscious desire to remain human, even though he is most certainly not anymore. The only way to kill Spawn is to separate his head from his body and that doesn’t exactly work every time either. When Spawn gets into a fight with the Violator for the first time and has his heart ripped out, he could have blurted out something akin to “It’s just a flesh wound” and been 100% correct.

Spawn has taken a lot of damage over the years. He has had limbs torn off, his heart removed on more than one occasion, and he has had his necroplasmic guts ripped out, but nothing ever phases him. Sure, he can become weakened and even pass out, but there really is no putting him down for good. His injuries are always temporary and even though he doesn’t need it, he reforms his heart whenever he needs to.

10 He can draw power from carrion insects

Spawn was particularly cheap when it came to expending energy in the earlier issues. Before issue #50, his power would decrease from a finite level, which was initially set at 9:9:9:9 and reduced every time he healed himself, blasted an enemy, or performed any sort of magic. Because of this, he learned that he was able to use his costume for most of his attacks and defensive tactics (more on the suit in a minute), and also to call carrion insects and other small animals from dark places to transfer their dark energy into his own.

This helped to feed the suit’s need for energy as well as his own and he would often be seen with various insects or worms slithering out of his mouth. It’s good the comics were drawn, rather than photo-realistic, otherwise very few people would have had the stomach to read them. Perhaps we might see some nasty energy transference in the upcoming film, but hopefully, it won’t be as nasty as it is portrayed in the comics.

9 He can sense misery in others

Sure, just about anyone can sense misery in others; we see it every time we take our kids to school, but that’s not what we are talking about with Spawn. He can not only sense great misery in people; he can do it telepathically from great distances and draw that misery out of them. He can even draw out a person’s sins and take them into himself… sort of like a supernatural confession. This power is something of a gift as well as a curse, since it essentially fills Spawn with the misery of others.

This does help Spawn to sense when someone is being attacked or hurt in some way so that he can intervene whenever necessary, which helps him fulfill his heroic nature in helping others, but it takes a toll. The power was given to him by The Keeper, an agent of the Emerald Parliament of Greensworld, which is also where he acquired powers that allowed him to manipulate nature and the Earth itself.

8 He can control nature

Spawn has changed a lot over the years in his quest to regain his humanity. Instead of getting more normal, he has only gotten much stranger. At one point, he came in contact with Greensworld and was empowered with the ability to control nature. This is in stark contrast to his hell-bound powers, which he retained, but moved him up another notch on the race to power and glory for his inevitable confrontation with Urizen.

Urizen was an immortal and incredibly powerful god who existed before Heaven and Hell. His only purpose was to consume souls, so he was sealed outside of reality until the Cult of Urizen awakened him and returned him to Earth. In their first conflict, Urizen quickly and easily defeated Spawn, but soon after, Spawn was given the powers from Greensworld and returned to battle him.

Spawn conjured an entire forest of trees in order to slow Urizen’s progress and then used his power over the Earth itself to consume the mad god and entrap him within the crust of the planet. The only parts of Urizen remaining above the surface were his outstretched fingers remained encased in rock. The site became known as The Demon’s Right Hand and would play a part in future stories.

7 He can breathe and manipulate fire

When you get your powers directly from Hell, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you have some control over fire. Not only can Spawn breathe hellfire at will, he can also control it on, in, and around him. At various times throughout the series, he has been known to consume his enemies in fire, establish fire as a barrier, engulf himself in flames when he wants to be left alone. He also never harmed in any way by heat, flames, or any other such troublesome nonsense normal people have to contend with.

Spawn’s dominance over fire has enabled him to travel into and out of Hell on multiple occasions and he is able to shoot out energy bolts composed of Necroplasm, which look a lot like hellfire itself. At one point, to demonstrate his powers, he essentially pukes hellfire just because he can. He doesn’t require anything to create fire either and can manifest it whenever and wherever he pleases.

6 He can cure the sick and injured

Spawn is usually frugal when it comes to expending his energy, but he has, on occasion, used it to heal the sick and injured. When Al Simmons was Spawn, he came into the hospital room of Twitch (pictured) and touched his forehead after Twitch was nearly killed and essentially braindead. When he did this, Twitch was healed to full and complete health.

Later, when Jim Downing would become Spawn after Simmons, he would travel about healing the sick with his divine powers. He even planned to open something of a hospital facility so that he could heal anyone who came looking for his aid.

Downing’s ability to heal the sick was discovered accidentally. Everyone who shared a room with him when he awoke from his coma was miraculously healed simply due to their proximity to him. Eventually, Simmons returns and retakes the mantle of Spawn as he regrows his powers and his suit, but once he returns to full strength, it is likely he will retain the ability to heal anyone.

5 He can resurrect the dead

You might think that a guy created by Malebolgia, the ruler of the Eighth Circle of Hell, wouldn’t be capable of turning a cold corpse back into a living person but Spawn doesn’t take kindly to his friends being killed and does it anyway. When one of the bums in his alley is taken, and it just happens to be his only real friend Bobby, Spawn doesn’t stand idly by. He magically wills life back into the guy, who then wakes up wondering what all the fuss is about. The reason a Hellspawn is able to resurrect the dead has more to do with power expenditure than anything else, and very little to do with Hell’s desire to retain each and every soul that comes its way.

When Spawn resurrects someone, he uses up a lot of his Necroplasm and reduces his power considerably. It’s a trade-off that weakened him immensely after he did it. The second person to take on the mantle of Spawn, Jim Downing, was able to resurrect the dead as well, albeit accidentally through proximity at first.

4 He can completely regenerate himself

When you go around battling demons and gods, you are going to take a few scrapes along the way. As we previously mentioned, he has had limbs torn off and his heart removed, so repairs became necessary. At one point, Spawn faced off with Batman, who threw a Batarang into his face, splitting it open. Spawn wanted to conserve power so he stitched his face back together with a shoestring, which remained in his head for quite a while. When he does decide to use his powers to repair his body, it takes a bit of energy, but he is able to simply return his body to its supernatural state rather easily.

His first fight with the Violator, where his arm is ripped off and his heart is less-than-surgically removed, ends with Malebolgia kindly healing both of his minions. From that point on, it was all up to Al when and how he wanted to fix his ailments. They didn’t necessarily bother or weaken him, either. Whenever he sustains a major injury, he tends to stand there looking more pissed off than anything else, so his repairs seem to be more about aesthetics than anything else.

3 He can mentally control his chains and armor

One of Spawn’s greatest assets is his costume. A Spawn’s costume is a living symbiote that entangles itself with a Spawn’s nervous system and feeds on their Necroplasm for energy. Al Simmons’ suit is called Leetha of the 7th House of K and is an immensely powerful entity on its own. With his costume, he can manifest and manipulate chains, spikes, armor, his size, and especially his cape, which is one of his greatest tools.

Spawn relies on Leetha constantly so that he can retain his powers. The suite even defends him subconsciously. Whenever Spawn is unconscious or just not paying attention to his surroundings, the costume will protect him in a multitude of ways.

While the suit is energized by Spawn’s limited resource of Necroplasm, it can also feed on insects, bats, the evil tendencies of humans, and even parts of the city itself. If Spawn were out of the picture and the suit just wanted to go off and become a superhero on its own, there is very little anyone could do to stop it — it’s that powerful.

2 He holds around 6,000 souls within him called Legion

Throughout the course of the series, it became known that Spawn contained within him an unknown number of souls who died within the same hour that Al Simmons had. Twitch once estimated that number to be around 6,000 and as Spawn learned of these spirits, he also learned that he could use them in his quest to teach Heaven and Hell a lesson. He called himself and this power The Legion and was able to even grant the powers of a Hellspawn to the members whenever he required allies to fight on his side. Essentially, Spawn was a general in command of an army of 6,000 Hellspawn he could summon at will.

Though the original number was not exactly known, most of the souls of The Legion were lost in battle and only five remained. It took a physical toll on Spawn whenever one of these souls was killed in combat so the reduction to five severely weakened him. Jim Downing was actually a member of the Legion prior to his resurrection and the five remaining members consist of Christopher, Hiroshi, Kumiko, Amal, and Shanti Surendra.

1 He can stop time

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they wish they could just stop all the goings-on around them and take a moment to think. While most of us lack this ability, Spawn does it pretty much without even noticing. While walking and talking with Cogliostro, his sometimes ally and mentor, he stops time around them, so that he could be free of distraction and simply think for a moment. When you have the power to literally stop time and you use it for nothing more than a little peace and quiet, you might want to reassess things.

Regardless of his reasons for doing so, it seems that Spawn can do this whenever he wants and it may be the most significant power he has. If he were to stop time in the middle of a fight, he could pick up his enemies and dump them in the sea without them even knowing it until time restarted again. This isn’t a power that’s likely to surface in the upcoming film and it isn’t one that appeared in the comics more than once, but it certainly speaks to Spawn’s immense power and creativity when it comes to his place in the world.

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Are there are any other little-known powers Spawn has that we should have mentioned? Leave them in the comments!

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