The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

“I think I know why they sent me here first.
They know I’m ready to kill anyone I can get my hands on.”

A future of comics. Just watch it first. It’s the Spider-Woman Motion Comic Trailer

Notes on this trailer. The opening credits show some serious production value and wicked sense of design and intent. The music matches in tone, I’d love to see if each issue/episode has a theme at the start, and if that theme would ever become available. I like it, a lot. I also like the voice of Spider-Woman, very well spoken. This thing gets me very excited about the whole project.

This is just one future of comics. I do not think that this will replace comics at all. I do believe that in the near future we will see more mini-series’ come out straight to trade instead of monthly floppies. As for series’ in monthly, I think the constant fanbase does like that weekly hit, so it’ll stay for this foreseeable future. This Spider-Woman launch in motion comics is an interesting premise.

Brian Michael Bendis is writing the words and Alex Maleev is creating the pictures. They both do what they do pretty well, though I consider Maleev to be a slightly bigger draw for me, I don’t really read much of Bendis’ stuff per week, but Maleev is a draw to make me add this to my pull list without another thought. The series will come out as a monthly comic, but it will also have the comic coming in a motion comic form as well.

What is the motion comic form? It is the comic book art put into motion, but this seems to be done in a different way than has ever been seen before. I can remember the old comic shows where it was a cut out on a Paddle Pop stick moving around the screen and it was not great. But at least it was a step to where we are now, so let’s not completely rag on it. Now, we have more technology to get things done. The Astonishing X-Men first issue was put into motion, but was still relatively static; it seems to have been a precursor to this. Look at the camera moving in the clip, or the way that the scenes have a dynamic flow, like Spider-Woman flying down onto whatever that large structure is, looks to me like a football stadium each time I look, but feel it could also be the S.W.O.R.D. headquarters thing.

In creating this series the creators have pre-thought about it being extended to the motion comic medium. Maleev has said that he takes it into account when planning the pages and looking at the angles of the images and the pacing of the panels. The comic should come across as any normal comic, I assume, but the motion comic will be something completely new, or so I am promised. From looking at the trailer, it’s not a movie, but it’s not just a cut out Spider-Woman moonwalking across the page either. The voice talent underwent serious auditioning processes and the use of colouring looks like it will be what drives a lot of the story as well.

For anyone that has been checking my site at all for like the last year, you will know that I am very keen for this Spider-Woman comic. Why? Well, this series looks to me like it will encapsulate and epitomise everything that I love about comics. A lot of the following assumptions are mostly taken from my experience with Bendis and Maleev handling my favourite character, Daredevil, very well for a few years. The writing and tone of the comic should be serious. I like my comics to be relatively serious, or at least adult, as much as a slowly aging fanboy can consider himself adult. There will most likely be an overall story arc of Spider-Woman working with S.W.O.R.D., the intergalactic law agency of Earth, and Spider-Woman has plenty of reason to want to work with them. The Skrulls (shape-changing aliens) took away a large chuck of her life, I’d be pissed too. But I wouldn’t be able to do much about it except piss and moan to my mates over beers and maybe drunkenly write about it here. That’s not Spider-Woman, she has blasts that come out of her hands, and excellent athletic ability, and she can also emit a pheromone that makes people kinda dig her vibe. She should be able to do something about it all, and I hear her first mission has her tracking down some runaway Skrull in Madripoor, only the coolest fictional port in the Marvel U. Those are some good reasons, but here’s the best one.

Maleev is a phenomenal artist. Look at that entire trailer again, I’m about to, and it’s all his design and hard work. He makes it look like everyone has been creating comics with chewed up crayon drool while he is gracing the page with multi-coloured feathers from angels’ wings; except Marko Djurdjevic and Justin Greenwood, those guys are as harsh as Judd Nelson. Maleev takes a character, someone who dresses in tights, and he makes them look real world, and cool in that real world. Daredevil is a guy in a red horned outfit, and yet Maleev made him look like an absolute bad ass. He will do wonders with the Spider-Woman costume that is already great to look at but will develop better under his watchful eye and hand. He also draws a mean Jessica Drew, the girl below the mask. The thought of Maleev then getting his hands on the seediness of Madripoor, Skrulls and HYDRA, the Marvel U terrorists of top note, is all face melting in possibility, like a Jack Black guitar solo.

The comic also has some wicked colouring, which the page above shows so well. I would buy this coloured page and hang it on my wall as art, it is splendid indeed. The flourescent bile colour really sings in ways that break up a comic page like I feel has never been done before.

This comic has a little bit of everything that makes me want to be able to go out and buy it right now, but alas I cannot. It comes out September I believe, with the motion comic available first through iTunes in August. I wonder and hope that the motion comic will be available here in Australia, I’d like to at least get to sample one.

Posted on August 6th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: comics