The following contains major spoilers for King Spawn#26, on sale now from Image Comics.
Ever since his introduction to the world of pop culture, Al Simmons, better known as Spawn, has been firmly rooted in his place as a comic book icon. Unfortunately for him, achieving such status has come at the expense of not just his own life, but very nearly at the expense of his immortal soul. In fact, for what might be the first time ever, the greatest Hellspawn of all time has revealed exactly what his true self looks like, and it is more heartbreaking than anyone could have possibly imagined.
With war in Hell reaching its breaking point and Al Simmons stuck on Earth, the infernal antihero is forced to take to extreme measures in seeking out a way back to the deepest pits of the underworld. As seen in the pages of King Spawn #26 (by Todd McFarlane, Javi Fernandez, Ivan Nunes, and Andworld Design), this means cutting a bloody swathe through the city in search of a being known only as the Visage. Despite appearing to be an otherwise ordinary elderly woman, the Visage is in fact something akin to Spawn's very own Watcher. Though she and her kind are bound by an oath of noninterference, the Visage is willing to help Al reach his destination in exchange for getting to know who he truly is. And, beneath the symbiotic superhero and the vision of his former self Al projects lies the most broken soul in the entire universe.
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Long before he was a member of Hell's army, Al Simmons was a decorated Marine with a loving wife and a beautiful home. In spite of Al's work being inherently violent, that side of himself was one that he never brought into his marriage. After years of service, Al moved onto the Secret Service and Central Intelligence Agency, putting him on the radar of C.I.A. Director Jason Wynn's covert U.S. Security Group. While Al frequently argued with Wynn after being recruited into the organization, he maintained his efficacy on the battlefield during the missions handed down by the latter. Rather than continuing putting up with Simmons' frequent insubordination, Wynn decided to have Simmons assassinated in the field by fellow mercenary Jessica Priest in a moment that would have decades of repercussions across multiple dimensions.
Upon his death, Al famously went to Hell where he would make a deal with the demon Malebolgia. In exchange for Al's service as a part of Malebolgia's army, he would be given both the opportunity to see his wife Wanda one more time and the power to take revenge on the people who cost him everything. By the time Al made it back to Earth, however, it was far too late to ever try and reconcile things with Wanda, as the time between his death and resurrection was so great that she had already started a new family including her husband Terry Fitzgerald and their daughter Cyan. With that, a formerly despondent Al became a font of undying rage and unrelenting vengeance, kicking off a career that has claimed more lives than anyone could count.
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Although there is no question that Al's time as Spawn has been largely defined by his desire to see various villains suffer in their last moments, it has been a long time since he attained the vengeance he originally set out to claim. At this point, years have passed since Al was able to get his revenge on the people who orchestrated his death. Better yet, he has even helped Jessica Priest find her own place as an infernal superhero in the form of the current She-Spawn. That isn't even to mention the fact that Al has completely come to terms with Terry and Cyan's place in his life by letting go of his disdain for the former and openly embracing the latter.
These profound bouts of growth have helped to make Al into a better version of himself than he ever was in years past. At the same time, they haven't undone any of the damage that has been inflicted upon his soul in all that time. Al may have been a sort of superpowered corpse previously, but today his true self is something infinitely more tragic. Surprisingly, the pain he has endured on so many levels and the scars he bears that serve as a constant reminder of the worst the universe has to offer have only driven Al to let go of that much more of his original hatred. Instead, he has traded in his personally held resentments for a sense of duty that surpasses both the devilish and the divine, one rooted in making sure no one else ever suffers through anything like what he did.
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No matter how imposing Al's demeanor is or how gruesome his tactics, the sad truth of his existence is that his mission stopped being his a very, very long time ago. Whatever revenge he sought in regard to the life he lost has been won and forgotten to make room for a seething hatred for Malebolgia and his fellow demonic overlords. When Al finished with them, he moved on to the next worst threat, and so on until the present day when Spawn has inserted himself directly into the middle of the war between Heaven and Hell. For the longest time, this seemed like a natural place for his trajectory to land him, whereas now it is painfully obvious that Al cares far more about preventing any future victims than he does actually stopping any living villains.
As counterintuitive as that may seem, this dichotomy in thought has been evident throughout Al's recent endeavors. So far, Spawn has begrudgingly joined forces with his old nemesis the Violator and numerous other figures who can best be described as villains. While that would have once been unthinkable, the Spawn of today has become acutely aware of how much damage the greater Powers That Be can do when left unchecked, and the best way to let them get away with it is to let the most painful chapters of his past dictate the actions he takes in the present.