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.