At last weekend’s New York ComicCon, Marvel Comics editor Joe Quesada announced that the company is working on bringing a series of “motion comics” out in the next several months. And first up could be the X-Men and Spider-Woman.
The Motion Comic format would feature traditional panel-based structures that are set in motion. Instead of thought bubbles and dialog boxes, the dialog would be spoken. Best of all? The original artist’s drawings would be used to compose the digital books, as opposed to facsimile drawn by an animator.
Fans may already be familar with the motion comic concept. DC has used it to recently to create a motion comic version of its popular “Watchmen” series. The comic series is available on iTunes and will be available on DVD before the movie hits theaters next month.
“It became very, very evident to me that as technology moves forward, there will come a day where we’ll be able to not just create animation based upon our comic books and our characters and stories that we’ve told, but there will come a time when eventually we’ll be able to take existing comic art, the flat, static art, and be able to animate it,” said Quesada. “So [now] we can put out a product that is not quite a comic book and not quite animation, [but] a wonderful hybrid that incorporates all of our great talents.”
A release date for the first set of comics hasn’t been confirmed, nor has pricing. The comics will be available on iTunes.
Saw the preview for Astonishing. It looks pretty neat. So how are those of us not enslaved to iTunes supposed to watch the darn thing?
Didn’t we use to call ‘motion comics’ cartoons?