Last week, when Barry Bonds was just a swing away from surpassing Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs, employees at the Tempe, Arizona, offices of the McFarlane Co. were busy answering calls from reporters asking if their chief executive, Todd McFarlane, was planning to buy the recordbreaking ball.

There is certainly reason to think he might yet: McFarlane is one of the most avid baseball-memorabilia collectors around, having shelled out $3 million for Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball in 1998, and $500,000 for Bonds' 73rd home run ball that broke that record in 2001.

But on that morning, the calls had to wait. McFarlane, a barefoot, jeans-clad executive, had something more important on his mind: a disembodied head in a jar—or rather a drawing of one.

"I see it. You don't need a scream," he barked into a speakerphone, as he contemplated a bloody rendering in one of his company's comic books. "Somebody gets impaled. If it's drawn right, I can see the pain."

While McFarlane may be best known as a rabid baseball collector, the 46-year-old entrepreneur has legions of fans of his own. McFarlane created Spawn, the most successful—and perhaps one of the most gruesome—independent comic-book series ever produced. A 1997 movie based on the comic grossed $85 million and paved the way for McFarlane's next business venture, a toy company specializing in action figures for adult and young adult collectors.

That company, once housed above McFarlane's garage, has grown into a $50 million-a-year business, with more than 200 employees in three countries. His company has transformed and expanded the market for action figures by creating figurines with greater detailing and finer artistry, modeled after subjects from the worlds of sports, television, and rock and roll, as well as from comic books.

"He pushed the limits in terms of content, sculpting, and paint application," says Justin Aclin, senior editor of ToyFare, a magazine for consumers and collectors. "He raised the bar and changed the toy industry."

McFarlane's baseball collecting, meanwhile, rather than being an expensive distraction, has helped open doors for his company's expansion.

Without the publicity from his purchase of the McGwire home run ball, McFarlane says he may never have won a licensing agreement with Major League Baseball in 2000 to produce its action figures. And without that agreement, he would not be selling tens of thousands of action figures for the N.H.L., the N.F.L., or  the N.B.A.

Indeed, before he bought the McGwire home run ball for a record price of $3 million, baseball wasn't paying much attention to McFarlane. Carmen Bryant, former vice president of licensing for McFarlane Co., says she sent packages to Major League Baseball pitching an action-figure deal almost weekly.

"They sent them back unopened every time," recalls Bryant, who is now McFarlane's director of public relations. "They wouldn't even talk to us."

"There's times you have to buy yourself into the poker game," says McFarlane, sitting in his cramped, paper-strewn corner office on a recent day. "I wanted to do sports figures. I figured they'd say, ‘Who is this kid? He does action figures? Oh, he spent a lot of money-bring him in.' 

"If you look at the intangibles, it actually works from a marketing perspective. How do I know that? I bought [the McGwire ball] in 1998. It's 2007, and you're asking me about it."

McFarlane Toys now produces at least 40 Major League Baseball figures out of the several hundred new action figures it introduces a year.

Among the figures his company is producing are 20,000 commemorative Barry Bonds "756" action figures, which began rolling out of a warehouse in Sacramento, California, the minute Bonds broke Hank Aaron's record last week.

That ball, caught by 21-year-old college student Matthew Murphy (who emerged from the fray scraped, bleeding, and bruised), is estimated to be worth at least $500,000. It may end up on McFarlane's shopping list "if it's a reasonable price," he says.

"But 756 isn't the ball, it's a ball," he says. "The ball that I'd be interested in is the last one he hits before he says the words ‘I retire.' I'll save my money for the ball."
 
In McFarlane's opinion, questions about Bonds' possible steroid use will fade with time and that the ball will have value as long as Bonds' name is in the record books.

McFarlane is the first to admit that there was more to his spending spree than just marketing and business savvy. He has had a lifelong passion for baseball.  

After graduating from high school in Calgary, Alberta, McFarlane attended Eastern Washington University on a baseball scholarship. After college, a scout recruited McFarlane to play outfield on a semiprofessional, summer-league team in British Columbia. He made his big push for professional baseball in 1984, trying out for the Toronto Blue Jays farm team in Alberta. It was only after his coaches placed him 26th on a roster of 25 players that McFarlane turned to his other passion: comic-book monsters.

Broke and newly married to his high school sweetheart, McFarlane received scores of rejection letters before finally landing work. He joined Marvel Comics in the mid-1980s and quickly became its top artist, winning thousands of geeky fans in the process.

It was McFarlane who revamped Spider-Man in the late 1980s, giving him a more stylized appearance, and doing away with Peter Parker's bell-bottoms. Soon McFarlane's Spider-Man surpassed X-Men to become Marvel's top-selling title.

But McFarlane chafed under Marvel's controls. One day in 1992, he drew a villain being killed with a sword thrust through the eyeball. He was told to tone it down. And that was all for McFarlane.

"I guess we're all just wired different," he says. "I just got to the point where I got tired of people telling me what I can and can't do in my life."

McFarlane persuaded six of his colleagues to leave Marvel and form an independent company, Image Comics. Then he began drawing a murdered secret agent reincarnated by the devil as a dark superhero, known as Spawn. The debut issue sold 1.7 million copies, a record for an independent comic publisher, and McFarlane became a rich man.

"We're not built as artists to think about the other stuff," McFarlane says. "But I found that if you don't learn business, you're not going to have opportunities to drive the art."

Spawn sold anywhere from 750,000 to 900,000 units a month for much of the 1990s, generating as much as $800,000 a month in profit for McFarlane, according to Larry Marder, president of Image Comics at the time, and currently head of McFarlane Toys. That left McFarlane with plenty of cash for his next venture.

McFarlane found that venture after inking a deal to turn Spawn into a movie starring Martin Sheen. Toy companies wanted to license the figures in his comics. But the deals they were offering would have denied McFarlane creative control. McFarlane says he saw the same corporate shackles he had seen at Marvel-and the same opportunity.

With the proceeds from Spawn, McFarlane used sophisticated machines to scan figures and hired sculptors to replicate faces. He also had a bit of luck: At the time, many companies were moving manufacturing to Asia, which cut his costs and allowed him to pour more resources into quality.