Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse (BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE has been delayed indefinitely) ***Spoilers***

PliggaNease

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Awesome movie. I loved every minute of it. Great vocal performances, especially from Bryan Tyree Henry.

One of the funniest parts was when the first meet Spider Man Noir and depressed Peter Parker is like "Where is the wind coming from? We're in a basement!" LMAO!!!
 

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Is Miles Morales Finally Getting His Due As Spider-Man?
By Abraham Riesman@abrahamjoseph
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Miles Morales, the new Spider-Man, in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Photo: Sony Pictures Animation

The late Stan Lee was fond of saying that Spider-Man resonated with wide swaths of humanity because anyone, regardless of color, could be under the mask. But there’s a more direct way of talking about race in the context of the character that is more compelling. A couple of years ago, I interviewednovelist Walter Mosley about comic books. At one point, the lifelong geek was talking about the early adventures of the first Spider-Man, Peter Parker, and he said something that’s rattled around in my head ever since, which I’ll quote in full:

The first black superhero is Spider-Man. He lives in a one-parent house — it’s not even a parent, it’s an aunt. He has all of this power, but every time he uses it, it turns against him. People are afraid of him; the police are after him. The only way he can get a job is by taking pictures of himself that are used against him in public. [Newspaper chief] J. Jonah Jameson says to him, ‘Go out and take a picture that shows him with his hand in the cookie jar, that shows him stealing and being a villain.’ That’s a black hero right there. Of course, he’s actually a white guy. But black people reading Spider-Man are like, Yeah, I get that. I identify with this character here.

Peter Parker is, indeed, white, but Mosley was onto something: More so than most superheroes, for the reasons he listed, the Spidey archetype lends itself to commentary on what it means to be a person of color in America. How lucky we are, then, to have the opportunity provided by Miles Morales. Introduced in comics in 2011, the character is an Afro-Latino teenager who was, much like Peter, bitten by a fateful spider and granted spectacular abilities. Initially, he was part of the so-called Ultimate universe, a dimension parallel to the mainstream Marvel world that was more narratively experimental. There, Peter died and Miles took up the Spider-mantle. When the Ultimate imprint ended in 2016, Miles was ported over to the conventional Marvel universe, where he’s played second fiddle to Peter but still held the spotlight in his own monthly adventures.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. These events are the culmination of a remarkable seven-odd years in which the character has gone from nonexistence to being a megapopular comics icon. But there’s a paradox at the heart of Miles Morales, one that his legions of fans — especially fans of color — hope these newfound opportunities will resolve. Put simply, Miles is the rare character who is largely beloved for his potential more than for his existing stories, especially when it comes to the matter of race.

The grievances that Miles’s adherents have with the character’s portrayal run the gamut from specific narrative points to general social tone-deafness on the part of the people who bring the character to life. When I ask Miles acolyte Anthony Otero how he felt when he first learned that there would be a Spider-Man who, like him, is African-American and Puerto Rican, he waxes nostalgic: “It made me feel phenomenal,” he recalls. That was then, this is now. “I still love the character, don’t get me wrong,” he says, “but it’s the way he’s written that I’m not a fan of.”

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Cover of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man No. 1. Art by Sara Pichelli and Justin Ponsor. Photo: Marvel Entertainment
Something that Miles fans cited over and over again to me was their love-hate relationship with the character’s co-creator, writer Brian Michael Bendis. One of the most accomplished and influential scribes in the history of the superhero genre, Bendis had been the primary writer of Spider-Man’s Ultimate-universe adventures from their inception in 2000. He couldn’t be reached for this story, but he told me a few years ago in an interview for my feature on the Ultimate experiment that Miles’s origin lay in an official creative retreat held by Marvel around the turn of the decade. The topic of conversation turned to an evaluation of what the Ultimate team had done well or poorly over the years.

“In those conversations of what we did right or wrong, we’d come about the idea of Peter Parker being of a different race,” Bendis, who is white, recalled. “That if you really look at the origin, there’s no reason that character wouldn’t be of color — the fact that maybe it makes more sense.” After all, Peter comes from New York’s outer boroughs, which are astoundingly diverse in the present era. So the decision was made to shake things up by giving Ultimate Peter a hero’s death (he comes full circle from failing to save his Uncle Ben by succeeding in saving his Aunt May) and having Miles take over with the help of Peter’s allies soon afterward. “No one was asking for Miles, and you’re asking Miles to replace in people’s hearts something they really liked and that you took away from them,” Bendis said. “That historically doesn’t always work. In fact, it rarely ever does.”

In this case, it did work. Co-created by artist Sara Pichelli, Miles made a debut cameo in a comic called Ultimate Fallout, then swung into his own title, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man. Sales spiked and fans were abuzz about this somewhat radical development. Fan and former Marvel employee Bon Alimagno told me about his feelings upon reading Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man No. 1: “What I remember about reading it is that I was finding a new home within my Marvel fandom,” he says. As a Filipino-American comics reader, he felt a kinship with this fictional kid of color who was making such a splash. “A lot of that is a credit to the way Bendis writes his stories.”

Bendis was Miles’s primary writer from his first appearance up to Bendis’s amicable departure from Marvel earlier this year. In that time, he and his artistic collaborators crafted tales in which Miles struggled with self-doubt and the burden of legacy, gradually growing in confidence thanks to his skills and instincts, as well as the support of a wide and diverse circle of companions, ranging from his Puerto Rican mother to his Asian-American best friend, Ganke.

Devotees I spoke to repeatedly identified a trio of stories as highlights: his origin saga, wherein he finds out his uncle is supervillain the Prowler and witnesses his death; the one where Miles fights Ultimate Venom, who kills his mom; and the interdimensional crossover, Spider-Men, in which the mainstream Peter Parker teams up with Miles. There was also praise for a cute moment in the mega-event mini-series Secret Wars, written by Jonathan Hickman, in which Miles saves the multiverse by feeding a supervillain a cheeseburger.

However, that’s about it, when it comes to favored comics stories from before this week. Indeed, readers tended to get most animated not while talking about the yarns they liked, but rather about the ones that ticked them off. Some disliked the death of Miles’s mom, feeling that it was a gratuitous example of “fridging,” the phenomenon in which female characters are killed off as a way of motivating a male hero. Others took issue with the fact that Miles’s black father and uncle were both portrayed as criminals or ex-criminals. Even more people were pissed about the fact that, once he was incorporated into the mainstream Marvel universe, he lost a lot of his mojo by virtue of being the junior Spidey. Most just felt that Miles’s stories were way duller than they had hoped they’d be when they first fell in love with the idea of the character.

But one moment particularly drove people up a tree. In the second issue of 2016’s rebooted and Bendis-written Spider-Man — the first monthly series that Miles starred in after his merging into the main Marvel dimension — a vlogging celebrity sees through a gap in Miles’s costume and excitedly records a video about how there’s a “black Spider-Man” and that he’s “def color” (an odd bit of phrasing). Miles bristles at the designation while watching the video with Ganke. “I don’t want to be the black Spider-Man,” Miles says. “I want to be Spider-Man.”

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Excerpt from Spider-Man No. 2. Art by Sara Pichelli and Justin Ponsor. Photo: Marvel Entertainment
Right away, there was a significant backlash to the storytelling choice. As comics critic J.A. Micheline put it on Twitter, “[H]eads up white writers: don’t write characters of color whose take is ‘I don’t want to be defined by my race.’” A subsequent tweet followed, reading, “Even if that is a feeling that some/many PoC have, think for a fucking second about the power dynamics involved in you doing that.”

That bit of dialogue still stings for lots of Miles’s devotees, especially nonwhite ones. “It was tone-deaf,” says Jonathan Hurrell. “It just seemed off, in a way.” Alexis Sanchez, co-founder of the site Latinx Geeks, agrees: “As a person of color, as a Latinx person, I know that being called the whatever-race superhero — we don’t see it as a negative thing because you’re kind of taking this prominent position,” she says. She also takes issue with the fact that, in that same scene, Miles describes himself as “half Hispanic.” “Most likely, he’d say ‘Latino,’ but more likely, he’d say ‘Puerto Rican,’” she opines.

That gets at another problem that Miles’s fans have with his portrayals: the perceived insufficiencies of the way his Latinx-ness has historically been depicted. “Throughout Bendis’s run with Miles, there has been no real look at his Latinx identity,” says Alejandro Jimenez, a writer who once penned an essay on the topic. “When they draw a meal, it’s always meatloaf and mashed potatoes and peas despite the fact that it’s clear his mom is cooking and his mom is Puerto Rican. There’s almost no Spanish spoken in the book other than by his abuela, and that Spanish is really weird. I don’t mean you need to do certain things to be Latinx or Hispanic, but when a white person is writing this, you need to think critically about what is actually being said and done and put on paper.”

Ergo the cautious optimism about Ahmed’s new comics run with Miles. The writer is a vocal and insightful analyst of issues relating to race and says he wants to bring those ideas into his work on the series. “At some point, Miles should be written by an Afro-Latino writer,” Ahmed tells me. “I try to know my limitations. But, in plain language, there will be a bit more to that stuff and his Puerto Rican side, and I think my Miles will definitely be cognizant and embracing of his blackness.” The first issue is out and it features Miles speaking Spanish and briefly commiserating with his mom about the detention of immigrant children. It’s not a ton, but it’s a start.

There’s another bright spot that has emerged in recent months: Insomniac Games’ acclaimed PS4 video game Marvel’s Spider-Man, which features Miles in its story, occasionally as a playable character. Insomniac’s creative director, Bryan Intihar, is proud of their decision to include him. “A lot of people identify themselves with Miles these days, and seeing that in an entertainment property is pretty powerful,” Intihar tells me. “We’re representing them, hopefully in the right way.”

If the sampling of fans I spoke to are any indicator, they’ve succeeded, even though there’s not much in the way of direct interrogation of Miles’s racial identity in the game. “Insomniac did a really good job incorporating Miles into everything and making him more common for people to know,” says Terrence Sage. “This is probably people’s first real — if they don’t read comic books — moment of, ‘Oh, so this is Miles and he’s a Spider-Man, too.’ They’re making him more commonplace everywhere now.”

That’s true, and nowhere more than in Into the Spider-Verse. The film features a team of Spider-powered heroes, but Miles is very clearly the lead character, stepping into the crosshatched long underwear after his universe’s Peter Parker dies. According to the movie’s directors, Miles has been the intended star going back to the original treatment from filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Per co-director Bob Persichetti: “When Sony approached them and said, ‘Hey, would you guys be interested in doing an animated Spider-Man film?’ they initially said no, and they took a couple of days and came back and they said, ‘Actually, we’d like to change that answer. We’ll do it if we can tell the story of Miles Morales.’ And the studio said yes. So he really became the catalyst for everything else that was in the movie.”

When it came to the delicate matter of race in the film, the creative team opted to leave everything unspoken. “Miles’s family dynamic presented us with such a rich base to build story on and character on that I think we handled it just by diving into that and trying to make that feel textured and as authentic as we could,” says co-director Peter Ramsey, who is a person of color. “It erased a lot of the burden about having to make any greater statement about race because simply portraying characters of color in more than two dimensions and getting past the usual tropes and issues helped us say, ‘Hey, it’s a story about people.’ Which is, to me, a statement in and of itself when it comes with dealing with characters of color. That’s all audiences of color want. We don’t want to keep watching the problem of the week, or stories about ‘Isn’t it so tragic that you happen to be this skin color?’ We want to see stories about real people that have the depth and the power and the subtlety of any other story you’d see in the mainstream.”

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A Miles Morales cosplayer. Photo: Pat Loika
Sure enough, Miles’s background is at once very visible and wholly hidden in Into the Spider-Verse. He speaks a little bit of Spanish in the film, but for the most part, his racial identity is never addressed as either a boon or a hindrance. If you’re looking for a complex investigation of ethnic dynamics, you won’t find it. But what you will find is the first truly great story to star Miles Morales. I won’t spoil any of the plot points, but suffice it to say that Into the Spider-Verse is arguably the best Spider-Man movie to date, and Miles’s unique mix of shyness and burgeoning sense of duty shines through in ways that make him a delight to watch.

The road to this moment has been rocky, to be sure. There’s an uncharitable way to assess Miles’s awkward first few years of existence, summed up by Jimenez: “If you didn’t have the movie coming out and Saladin Ahmed writing the new book, you could very much look back on it and be like, ‘Marvel did this wild publicity stunt for eight years where they said they were gonna have a black and Puerto Rican Spider-Man and then killed him off without him ever appearing,’” he says. In other words, he doesn’t think Marvel, prior to the movie and the Ahmed run, had done a good job of enacting meaningful representation. He remains somewhat optimistic, if acerbic, adding, “I appreciate what Bendis has done in introducing Miles Morales, and I’m looking forward to seeing someone else give him a definitive run on the character.”

But if you want to be more generous, you can simply say that Miles’s journey has only just begun. Seven years is a short time in superhero fiction, and the character’s explosion in popularity in that span is remarkable: Just take a walk at any comic con and you’ll find many people in Miles’s distinctively colored costume, which one certainly can’t say for most non-Deadpool superheroes introduced in the past 25-odd years. Clearly, something profound resonates with his fans, something that transcends their problems with the specifics of his characterization. In some ways, Walter Mosley’s prophecy of a black Spider-Man has come true, and now it’s just a matter of whether the gatekeepers at Marvel know what to do with him.

“Whether you are African-American, Latino, of mixed race, or whatever you might be, I think everyone can find something to relate to with Miles because of his moral center,” Alimagno says. “But especially people of color can, because someone who still retains that moral center despite everything else going on around him? That’s such a special story to tell.”
 

playahaitian

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Saw this in the theater big screen surround sound...

just WOW...

gotta go AGAIN now cause all these kids wanna see it ONE MORE TIME!

as a father?

that scene with Miles talking to his dad through the door?

Messed me up.

my little girl grabbed my arm and I told her

don't I tell you the same thing? You got that spark that's why I push you.

She said

I know, I love you dad.

@4 Dimensional you GOTTA see this.
 
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After Spider-Verse, Miles Morales has a new team and new direction
Miles Morales: Spider-Man is a perfect jumping on point for new readers
By Susana Polo@NerdGerhl Dec 16, 2018, 9:12pm ESTSHARE
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is finally out in movie theaters — and right on cue, Miles Morales’ new ongoing comic series hit shelves everywhere this week.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man is the character’s first new series since his co-creator, Brian Michael Bendis, exited Marvel to start work at DC Comics, and the new creative team has started strong. Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garrón’s first issue retells Miles’ origin, reintroduces his family and friends and restates Miles’ particular relationship to the maxim of every Spider-Man: With great power comes great responsibility.

Polygon sat down with Ahmed, who is also set to take on Ms. Marvel in 2019, to chat about where the new series is taking Miles.

Polygon: Miles Morales has reached a significant height of popularity for a character so relatively new to the Spider-Man mythos. What do you think has put him in that place? What makes him compelling?

Saladin Ahmed: I think it’s because he bridges the old and the new in a really special way. I think there are a lot of ways in which Miles’ story touches on all sorts of classic superhero and classic Spider-Man and classic Marvel beats and retells all sorts of familiar elements of a story that people have latched onto and loved and reinterpreted for decades. But he does it in a way that’s very much about the 21st century and what America looks like now. He just has a different name, a different face, and is from Brooklyn rather than Queens and is maybe a little hipper, you know, more of a 21st century teenager, than Peter was. And so I think he’s a perfect figure to bridge that gap.

Where are we picking up with Miles in Miles Morales: Spider-Man?

When we get to issue one we’re at a place that’s very friendly for new readers, but also familiar for folks who have been following him for a while. We’re at the start of a new school year at Brooklyn Visions Academy for Miles, and it’s sort of a return to his roots as a high school superhero.

This first arc, and really the first little while in the series, is not going to be about big cosmic events. Miles is just coming off of a multi-dimensional Spider-Verse event — in Spider-Geddon, in the comics. And he’s going to be going very much in the opposite direction in his own series, very local. It’s going to be about him starting a new school year and having to deal with challenges both as Spider-Man and as Miles, as a teenager in high school, trying to just live life. But, of course, because he’s a superhero, life doesn’t leave him alone.

You’ve told me previously that he’s taking a new artistic enterprise on at school.

Yeah, he’s in creative writing class. He has it first period [laughs], and he’s keeping a journal as part of his class and it’s starting to spark something in him. And so we’ll see that play out a bit. And there’s also the fun thing of him putting all his secrets into a notebook, which, you know ... [slyly] Hmm, that could pay off down the line.

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Miles and his friend, Judge, in Miles Morales: Spider-Man #1.
Saladin Ahmed, Javier Garrón/Marvel Comics
Yeah, I imagine that’s a little tricky when you have a secret life as a superhero.

Well, there are plans there...

You were a novelist before becoming a comics writer, is that where that comes from, that you wanted to bring writing into the book?

Sort of, but not really. You know, the Marvel Universe doesn’t really have a writer superhero.

I mean, there’s Jessica Jones, sort of, but she’s more of a journalist [in the pages of the series Pulse]. We’ve had photographers, we’ve had lawyers. But I think it’s interesting — I’ve taught creative writing to young people, so certainly I’ve drawn on some of my experience there — but I think it’s actually kind of a natural fit for Miles.

I mean, [correcting himself] Kamala has — I shouldn’t downplay the fact that Kamala writes fan fiction. But Miles is specifically going to be working on poetry in this class. So it’s somewhat from me, but I also think it’s a useful plot device and an interesting way to get his feelings out on the page. I think Miles is probably a kid who doesn’t necessarily spend a lot of time sitting around thinking of about his feelings the same way Peter does. And so this is the thing that forces him to do that.

Is there anything from Miles’ background that you wanted to push more into the fore in your series?

Yeah, definitely! Again, I really want to dig into the question of Miles as a high school student, so we’re going to have a lot of fun adventures with that. But there’s also the question of Miles’s family. We’ve seen a fair amount about his dad, but I think his mom, Rio, is going to become a pretty important figure — as is his uncle Aaron, the villain Iron Spider is going to come back in a pretty big way.

I’m really just [revisiting] all aspects of his community, school, family, the people who live in his neighborhood. I want to revisit all of that at the same time, but still telling fun, punchy superhero stories.

Have you seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse yet?

Despite being very much on inside here at Marvel, I very deliberately avoided any chance to get any glimpse of a script or the film, because I wanted to put these first few issues of the comic to bed as their own thing and get them in. And also I’m really excited to see it with my kids and kind of wanted to do it fresh with them. So we’re going like regular civilians on opening night, Thursday. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers. It’s hard, when you write Miles Morales, but I’ve managed to avoid most of the spoilers. Everything I hear is wildly enthusiastic from people I trust and I’m just totally geeked.
 

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Into the Spider-Verse Almost Gave Spider-Man Noir Some Really Inappropriate Things to Say

Julie Muncy

Yesterday 10:45am
Filed to: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
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Spider-Man Noir is good at slang. Really, no, he is!
Image: Sony Pictures
Nicolas Cage is a delight as Spider-Man Noir in Into the Spider-Verse, perfectly channeling the goofy, unsettling aura of a noir hero turned spider dude. And he was apparently fun to write, too. Maybe, maybe a little too fun.

In a long, involved Q&A with Collider, the film’s creators—Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Chris Miller, and Phil Lord—dropped some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits about working with, and writing for, Nicolas Cage. Which included making up slang to put in the hero’s mouth. Sometimes, uh, not particularly good slang. Here’s what they said:

ROTHMAN: We loved working with him. And obviously, he had fun with it. You do tend to over-prepare for Nic Cage because it’s kind of like “What would be funny to make Nic Cage say?” You end up writing an extra 20 lines just to like hear him say it even though you know it’s not going to be for the movie. In the movie…what does he say? “Biscuit-boxer”?. We literally had him record like 50 different weird slangs. Like, “You turtle-slapper”.

RAMSEY: A lot of them would have gotten us an NC-17 rating.

ROTHMAN: We literally had him record something and then it was in the movie…And then someone bothered to google it and it turned out to be a filthy, pornographic act, and we had to spend a lot of money.

PERSICHETTI: It wasn’t from the 30s at all.

Yikes. Between this and John Mulaney apparently swearing up a storm in the recording booth, there’s a wild R-rated cut to be cobbled together. Release the Swear Cut, Sony. You owe it to your f—Hahahaha, sorry, I can’t do it. I can’t even pretend to be that kind of person.



Into the Spider-Verse is out now. I hear it rules.
 

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Learn more about the different Spider-heroes from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

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Marvel Comics (3)
CHRISTIAN HOLUB
and NICK ROMANO
December 17, 2018 at 07:54 PM EST
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse might feel more comic-like than any other comic book movie ever made. Producers Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and their animation team have the characters move through panels like on a page, complete with captions, narration, and onomatopoeic sound effects.

Each of the Spider-heroes featured in Into the Spider-Verse — Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), and, of course, Peter Parker himselves (Chris Pine and Jake Johnson) — originated in the pages of Marvel comics, and many of them first met in 2014’s Spider-Verse comic event (which very loosely inspired the plot of the new movie). Though they have their own personalities in the film, any viewer wanting to spend more time with these characters would do well to check out the comics they first appeared in. Into the Spider-Verse should already have fans in the mindset for panels and pages anyway.

Below, check out EW’s comic reading guide to the various Spider-people. Many of the comics discussed are available via digital subscriptions to Comixology Unlimited and/or Marvel Unlimited.

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Marvel Comics
Miles Morales
Barack Obama’s rise to political prominence prior to the 2008 election made Axel Alsono, the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics at the time, think for a second: “We acknowledged that maybe it was time to take a good look at one of our icons,” he said. Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino Spider-Man, debuted in Ultimate Fallout #4, a storyline set in an alternate universe from the main Marvel saga. Peter Parker was subsequently killed in the Ultimate universe with 2011’s Death of Spider-Man, and Miles took the reins.

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Co-creator Brian Michael Bendis said Miles’ appearance was influenced by that image of Donald Glover wearing Spidey PJs on Community, hence the fan push to get the Atlanta Emmy winner in a Spidey movie.

Writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Brian Stelfreeze released the first issue of a brand-new Miles Morales comic series earlier this month, but Ultimate Comics Spider-Man from 2011 was the earlier solo outing for the Brooklyn hero, getting into his origins, his unique abilities, and one reality-bending story. — Nick Romano

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Marvel Comics
Spider-Gwen
Spider-Man has always been a testament to the power of a cool costume design, but Gwen Stacy might have beaten him at his own game. Steve Ditko’s red-and-blue webbed outfit helped make Spider-Man one of the most iconic characters of the last century, but Robbi Rodriguez’s white-and-pink hoodie costume is already making Spider-Gwen one of the most unique heroes of the modern zeitgeist.

The proof is in the fact that Gwen’s superhero name changes with basically every appearance. Into the Spider-Verse calls her Spider-Woman, while her ongoing Marvel comic is titled Spider-Gwen, and the Marvel Rising animation franchise tags her as Ghost Spider. Clearly none of that matters; so long as she’s got that white hoodie and pink webbing, everyone knows she’s ready to fight crime in style.

In the traditional Spider-Man mythology, Gwen Stacy is a tragic figure, a former girlfriend of Peter Parker’s who was killed by the Green Goblin in one of the most heartbreaking moments in Marvel history. In Earth-65, however, Gwen was the one who got bit by a radioactive spider, embittering her best friend Peter until he turned himself into the monstrous Lizard in order to “be as special as you.” Spider-Gwen then killed the Lizard to save her school from his attack, not realizing it was really Peter. Peter thus became her “Uncle Ben” figure, a loved one she couldn’t save whose loss motivates her to try harder and use her powers to protect everyone she can — while hopefully redeeming herself in the process.

Since she first appeared in an issue of the 2014 Edge of Spider-Verse miniseries, Spider-Gwen’s adventures have been written by Jason Latour and illustrated by Rodriguez. Their ongoing Spider-Gwen comic is a delightful and engaging read that should be read from the beginning — though it’s worth noting that “the beginning” can be hard to note since Spider-Gwen first launched in the midst of Marvel’s 2015 Secret Wars event. That comic reshook the Marvel line and restarted every series with a new number-one issue, so Spider-Gwen volume 0: Most Wanted? and Spider-Gwen volume 1: Greater Power both contain issues labeled Spider-Gwen #1-5. That great running gag from Into the Spider-Verse is extremely true: Every comic publisher is always trying to “start at the beginning,” one more time. — Christian Holub

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Marvel Comics
Spider-Man Noir
Back in 2004, Marvel published a line of “Marvel Noir” comics that reimagined the publisher’s iconic superheroes as gumshoe detectives and femmes fatales. The Spider-Man addition has endured thanks to his inclusion in all things Spider-Verse, but the original comics by David Hine, Fabrice Sapolsky, and Carmine Di Giandomenico also hold up well on their own.

Set in 1933 at the nadir of the Great Depression, Spider-Man Noir stars a Peter Parker whose heroic values were instilled in him by the socialist philosophies and labor activism of Aunt May and Uncle Ben. That kind of idealism is even less of a match for this cynical setting than “with great power, there must also come great responsibility” is for all the other eras of Spider-Man. Nevertheless, this noir-ified Peter still tries in his own way to do some good for the common man. Dressed in an all-black outfit, Spider-Man Noir contends with an array of morally dubious characters, from Norman Osborn’s gang of circus freaks to drug-addicted journalist Ben Urich and enigmatic nightclub owner Felicia Hardy.

The original four-issue Spider-Man Noir miniseries is available on Comixology Unlimited and Marvel Unlimited. The sequel miniseries, Spider-Man Noir: Eyes Without a Face, is a little harder to find but very much worthwhile thanks to a story that further develops its noir universe by exploring the racist attitudes of the ‘30s and the rise of fascism. — C.H.

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Marvel Comics
Peni Parker & Sp//dr
Give a rockstar a comic book and he’ll give us a unique superhero.

Gerard Way, the frontman of My Chemical Romance, was given his own issue as part of the Edge of the Spider-Verse miniseries of 2014, which introduced different takes on Spider-Man from parallel realities. On Earth-14512 in issue #5, Way and artist Jake Wyatt gave us Peni Parker, a Japanese-American orphan teen who doesn’t actually have any superpowers of her own.

Her father piloted the Sp//dr, a giant robotic suit of armor powered by a radioactive spider at its core. When he died, Peni’s adopted “Aunt May” and “Uncle Ben” informed her only she could take the helm of the Sp//dr next, given her genetic similarities to her dad. So she let the spider bite her, forging a telepathic bond between teen and arachnid, and she followed in her father’s footsteps.

While an interesting spin on the traditional Peter Parker origin, Peni didn’t have too large a presence, though she did appear again in issue #2 of the crossover comic Edge of Spider-Geddon, released this year with the return of Way and Wyatt. — N.R.

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Marvel Comics
Spider-Ham
As the comic book marketplace of 1983 fell into paranoia over a rumored chain of Marvel comic book shops in their foreseeable future, two mad geniuses started laughing about the ridiculousness of such a prospect. One joke led to another and soon Marvel’s Tom DeFalco and Larry Hama were riffing about how their corporate overlords could get into the plushie business in order to compete with their retail competitors.

Thus, Spider-Ham was born. Peter Porker, a spider bitten by a radioactive pig, was the product of a riff between two writers anthropomorphizing classic comic heroes (Captain Americat was another one).

Marvel Tailes Starring Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, which still lives digitally through Comixology, was the debut issues of this publishing absurdity, but its Howard the Duck-level of popularity brought a 2007 spoof One-Shot ofCivil War (the clash of Iron Ham, Deviled Ham, Ant-Ham, and more) and a 25th anniversary special in 2010 (in which Spider-Ham battles the Swinester Six). — N.R.

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Adam Kubert
Peter Parker/Spider-Man
There have been many incarnations of Peter Parker over the years. If you want to get familiar with the original conception of the character, you’d do well to read some of the original Amazing Spider-Man comics by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and John Romita. The more contemporary Ultimate Spider-Man series by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley is another classic run, one that brought Peter into the 21st century and in turn, paved the way for Miles.

But to really get into the headspace for Peter B. Parker, the older and schlubbier Spider-Man played by Jake Johnson in Into the Spider-Verse, your best bet is the recent Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man series by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Adam Kubert. Zdarsky nails Peter’s sense of humor, which has been integral to the character since Lee, but specifically plays it as the comedy of a jaded hero who’s been there and done that a dozen times already. As an added bonus, the first arc heavily features Kingpin, the giant-sized villain of Into the Spider-Verse. Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man Volume 1: Into the Twilight is currently available on Comixology Unlimited. — C.H.

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Marvel Comics
Spider-Man 2099
He doesn’t get much screentime in the film, but Spider-Man 2099 definitely makes an impression in Into the Spider-Verse. Maybe that’s because he’s voiced by pop culture heartthrob Oscar Isaac, or maybe it’s because of his intimidating costume, but either way, he’s definitely an interesting riff on the character.

Just as Spider-Man Noir came out of a line-wide “Marvel Noir” initiative in the early 2000s, so too was Miguel O’Hara first born in the ‘90s as part of the “Marvel 2099” line, where all the classic characters were reimagined in a far-future cyberpunk setting. One of the few Spider-people unrelated to Peter Parker, Miguel lives in the far-future Nueva York and works for the chemical company Alchemax in the original Spider-Man 2099 comic. When he discovered his colleagues were doing dangerous experiments with imprinting genetic codes onto human DNA, Miguel used the experiments on himself and earned spider-like abilities. But one of his most impressive resources is his holographic personal assistant Lyla (for LY-rate L-ifeform A-pproximation), voiced by Greta Lee in the film.

Like Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Man 2099 outlasted the other characters from the same publishing initiative. Years after cyberpunk went out of style, Marvel started a new Spider-Man 2099 series (written once more by Peter David) that brought Miguel into the present day with interesting and at times hilarious results. — C.H.

https://ew.com/movies/2018/12/17/learn-different-spider-heroes-from-spider-man-spider-verse/
 

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Spider-Verse Star Shameik Moore Wants to Play Live-Action Miles Morales
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse star Shamelik Moore has shown interest in playing the live-action version of Miles Morales. Moore voices the character Miles Morales in Sony's upcoming animated feature, which will focus on Morales discovering that there are several different dimensions with other Spider-People. As of right now, there are three Spider-Man film universes, only one of which officially includes Miles Morales.

Sony's live-action Spider-Man films so far haven't had any mention of Morales, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe hinted at the inclusion of the character in Spider-Man: Homecoming. First of all, Aaron Davis, played by Donald Glover makes an appearance in the film. Davis happens to be Miles' uncle - who becomes the villain the Prowler in the comic books - but there was another Miles Morales easter egg in the movie. One fan found a red and black Spider-Man mask hiding in the end credits of the film. While Miles is clearly a big part of the animated Spider-Man films, it's safe to assume he'll show up in a live-action film at some point.

Related: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Premiere Honors Stan Lee

While Moore's Into the Spider-Verse will be starting it's wide release tomorrow, MTV has revealed the actor is up for playing the live-action version of his character. When asked if he would want to play the live-action version of Miles Morales, Moore responded, "Most definitely. I definitely want to be the live action Miles Morales. I understand that he's a young kid, but hopefully you know, they can play with time and put me in there. But I'm thankful for the opportunity. I would love to be fighting Venom as Miles, with Tom Hardy. You know what I mean? That would be great. I would love to play on screen with my favorite actor out right now".

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While Venom's mid-credits scene teased Venom 2 with the introduction of Woody Harrelson's Carnage, the post-credits scene included a clip from Into the Spider-Verse. While this might tease that the live action and animated movies take place in the same multi-verse, it was likely just a way to get people interested in seeing Into the Spider-Verse. With that in mind, Into the Spider-Verse has been getting incredible reviews, so even if fans don't get a live-action Miles Morales right away, they can expect to see him again in another animated Spider-Man movie.

Miles Morales was created seven years ago, first appearing in Ultimate Fallout #4, so compared to other decades-old Spidey-related characters, he's still new. That being said, Miles Morales has become a fan-favorite in the past few years, and is likely to show up in a live-action movie sooner or later. Even though Moore isn't as young as Miles Morales is supposed to be, he's still only 23 years old. Likewise, Tom Holland is playing a high school version of Peter Parker in the MCU, yet he's 22 years old. While there hasn't been any casting information for a live-action Miles Morales, or even the confirmation of the character outside of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Moore shouldn't be out of the running for the role just yet.
 

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Chris Miller & Phil Lord Interview: Into the Spider-Verse
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Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the dynamic filmmaking duo responsible for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie, and the live-action comedy 21 Jump Street and its sequel 22 Jump Street. They are also producers on Fox’s Last Man on Earth and Cartoon Network’s Unikitty! The pair's most recent project is developing, and being producers for, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Screen Rant: I think you guys made the best animated film of the year. I think you guys made the best superhero movie of the year.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller: Oh, man.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller: Oh, wow.

Screen Rant: For sure, one of the best movies of the year.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller: That’s very high praise. There are a lot of good movies.

Screen Rant: So, when I talked to Jake [Johnson] a while back during Tag, and he told me that he had never seen the full script. Has anybody, with the exception of, any of the cast I should say? Have they actually seen the full script?

Phil Lord: That's a great question.

Chris Miller: I don't think so.

Phil Lord: I don't know.

Chris Miller: Maybe Shameik [Moore], maybe Shameik.

Phil Lord: There was a script. We might have given it to Jake. I don't remember.

Screen Rant: He said he didn't. He never got the full script.

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Phil Lord: I guess not. I guess it was just like, “Hey, here's an act.” Originally it was like, “Hey, will you just lay some of this stuff down, so I could show everybody how great this is going to be?” And he was like, “Sure.” And we sent him like 30 pages.

Screen Rant: Really?

Phil Lord and Chris Miller: Yeah.

Screen Rant: Because even during New York Comic Con, he said that he was still doing additional like audio.

Phil Lord: Yeah. We recorded for two and a half years.

Chris Miller: Up until a few weeks ago we were, or even like a week ago we were stil jamming a little things in. We never stopped, never stopped.

Phil Lord: It informs the process. You see what they do, and you go like, “That was really cool. We should rewrite this whole scene. So, it's more like that.”

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Screen Rant: One thing that I absolutely loved in this film too, is that you took all these different Spider-people and they were almost different genres of animation. Because you had Peni, the anime, obviously. You had Noir, this old timey kind of noir. What went into informing that decision? That you wanted to go in that direction?

Phil Lord: It was like the first call, was to the production designer going, “I think we could make a movie with multiple animation styles all living in the same frame at the same time.” He's like, “No, you're never going to get away with that.” And it was like, “I'm going to write it so that we have to do it that way.” [chuckles]

Chris Miller: Yeah. And so, it was right from the very beginning. That was the ambition of the movie, was to be able to, obviously to feel like you're walking into a comic book and you're surrounded by a world that feels like nothing you've ever seen before. And because sequential art is done in so many different styles, and you want to feel the hand of the artist and it, it just lent itself to saying like, “Oh, in different universes, they're rendered in different styles.” And bringing them all together shows how different we all are. But then what we all have in common.

Phil Lord: And it's right over the plate for us. We really liked the idea of like individual artists all coming together to create something new. Right? And it's such a good metaphor for what's happening in the movie. All these people from different walks of life, they all have their own style, and they all are interpreting this persona in a different way.

Screen Rant: Talking about something new, that art style blew me away. Obviously, I've never seen anything like that before. What went into that?

Phil Lord: That was the idea. Can we make something that no one's seen before?

Screen Rant: Well you did it.

Phil Lord: It's easy to say and hard to do. Right? And so, the whole time, for at least year, we just kept saying, “Nope, that's too conservative.”

Chris Miller: You were like, “Look at this beautiful sort of impressionistic concept art painting. Let's make it look, not just inspired by this, but look exactly like this, but moving.” And they're like, “Yeah, let's go for it.” But you're not 100 percent sure how to do it. And it took a lot of smart people figuring out a process that involved both CG animation and hand drawn 2D animation. And a bunch of crazy new like texture renders for lighting. And backgrounds that had like halftone dots, hatch marks, line work, all sorts of crazy stuff, coming together to make every frame looked like it was a painting.

Phil Lord: And unwinding some of the stuff that is stock, that we've gotten used to doing in an animated production. So, we would go through early lighting passes and turn stuff off. Turn all of these studio lights off. Light it with that window and like a bounce card. And that's it. Because we said like, “We want the movie to be at a heightened exaggeration.” But you know, because that's what an illustration is. But we want it to be at a heightening of something that you can observe. That's based in like looking at these people and what their lives are like. What Brooklyn looks like. What it's like to be in a dark room with all the lights off. We don't want to goose anything.

Chris Miller: And it was something that was just really, really slow. Because it took a week for an animator to animate one second of footage. Normally, they could do at least four plus seconds. Which was about four times as complicated and challenging to make this movie on every step of the way. It was four times harder.

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Screen Rant: Wow. It's super refreshing to see that. Because you're so used to seeing like this Pixar style now. But it's super refreshing to see something different. I really liked that. Obviously, there are Easter eggs in this film. And I don't want to go too deep into there, because I won't spoil anything. But the Seth Rogan Easter egg, I kept trying to catch it. What was the billboard?

Chris Miller: It says, “Hold your horses,” and he's a jockey.

Phil Lord: Yeah. If you get a chance to talk to Rodney [Rothman], he'll tell you about it because it was his passion. What's getting these alt-universe things in Times Square. And he wrote to Seth and Evan Goldberg, and they had an idea that Rodney wanted to do, and they approved it. And then the next morning woke up and change their minds. And wrote, “Wait Rodney, hold your horses, we want to rethink this thing.” And he says, “Okay, good, thank you. And now I'm going to call it, Hold Your Horses. That's going to be you as a jockey in a series of films.” And now it came true.

Chris Miller: The idea, obviously, because it's another universe and the multiverse we wanted to show any chance we could that this world is slightly different from the world that we know. And so, throughout the movie there are little hints of like, “it's like the thing you know, but different.”

Phil Lord: Like Planet Inglewood.

Chris Miller: Exactly.

Screen Rant: How freeing was it, or how much freedom did you have with the Spider-Man characters? Were you guys able to do kind of what you wanted to do? And how far were you able to take it? Did the studio jump in and say, “Oh, well we don't want to…?”

Phil Lord: I think the only limitations were the decisions that we put on ourselves. We wanted to get the story right. So, we didn't want to mutate a lot of the details of the characters origins. But we did get to slam them together, in a way that they've never been slammed before. And having Spider-Ham in the same frame as Spider-Noir seemed like an opportunity only we could get a chance to do.

Chris Miller: And the only real limitation, it didn't come from the studio, it came from the story itself, which wanted to be Miles’ story. Miles Morales is coming of age. Is turning into the person that he's going to be. And so, whenever it got too a diffused with other characters and ideas, it lost our focus on the person that we were following. And so, at the end of the day, we always had to keep coming back to Miles. Because that's what we really cared about. So, we fit as much as we possibly could in this story while still having it be Miles’ journey.

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Screen Rant: The Stan Lee cameo, it almost had, It had me like a little....

Phil Lord: It's really sweet, right?

Screen Rant: And I know that you're the co-writer on this film. Was that the only kind of iteration you had of Stan throughout this process?

Phil Lord: That's a good question. We wrote a lot of drafts. And I'm trying to remember if we had another one. It was always the ambition to include Stan. And I think we finally landed on this. And this was really the one idea. He had to do something that was formative for Miles. And we knew it had to be warm and a tribute to Stan and the work that he's done. But it couldn't just be like, “Oh, it's a cutesy thing. Like he's the bus driver.”

Chris Miller: It had to have something that advanced the plot. And was at a really important emotional moment in the movie. That was the discussion.

Phil Lord: It really needed to be at that frame in the film--

Chris Miller: And I can't remember who came up with the idea of that being a shop owner and having that--

Phil Lord: I think Miles was always in the costume shop and somebody had the idea, maybe Bob [Persichetti] that like, “Oh, it's got to be Stan that gives it to him.”

Chris Miller: And we were like, “That's the perfect thing.” And Stan was super excited to do it and was really happy with it. The directors showed him his character design and he loved it and—

Phil Lord: I just went back and looked at the footage of him doing the recording. Which is like him at his desk, in front of a microphone, and like saying those lines. It was just like a really sweet guy.

Chris Miller: And he was so happy to be involved. And was so supportive of the project. And been so supportive of us for years. So, we're going to miss him.

Phil Lord: And it's really sad to see him go, but it is also, you know, it's happy sad. Because you're looking at the body of work and what it meant to people. And what he and Steve Ditko accomplished. And what they said to other people. It's basically like, “You're not alone.”

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Screen Rant: Well, I mean, I almost felt like Peter Parker, you guys. It was like me. It was like you looked at my life and said, “I'm going to make his life.” But you guys did a great job. Are you guys coming back for the sequel? Or the spinoffs?

Chris Miller: It’s still early.

Phil Lord: Certainly, that's the idea. But you know, we we want to be a part of this going forward for sure.

Screen Rant: I certainly hope you guys are. Thank you so much for your time.
 

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Creating A Stylized Universe for Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’
Sony Pictures Animation head of character animation Josh Beveridge helps bring comic books to the big screen with a hand-crafted illustrative visual style that breaks all the rules of traditional CG.

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 3:12pm
In 2D, 3D, CG, Films, People, Technology | ANIMATIONWorld | Geographic Region: All



Voted the best animated feature by the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics, ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ swings into theaters this Friday. All images © Sony Pictures Entertainment 2018.



What if you were given carte blanche to make an animated movie not just based on a comic book, but with the stylized look and “feel” of a comic book? And, what if that comic book centered on a radically different Spider-Man universe that introduced a teenage kid from Brooklyn named Miles Morales as a completely new and contemporary hero? For the filmmaking team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, best known as directors of Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie and the 21 and 22 Jump Street films, the opportunity to tell an alternative Spider-Man story in a revolutionary new way was one they couldn’t pass up; their new film, the extraordinarily engaging and visually stunning fully animated web-slinger action-adventure, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, hits theatres this Friday.

For the production team at Sony Pictures Animation as well as Sony Pictures Imageworks, that opportunity, that underlying premise of creating an animated film that felt like a comic book, became their mission as they set out to recreate both the graphic look and print-style feel of old-style, 1960s Spider-Man comic-books. The task was both daunting and exhilarating at the same time. How do we bend the rules of state-of-the-art CG animation production technology to visualize not just one, but six different brand-new Spider-Man universes and Spider-People, never represented on film, no one exactly the same, all at some point having to overlap and integrate into the same reality? How do we combine CG with hand-drawn animation techniques to make an animated film that doesn’t look like anything audiences have ever seen before?

For the filmmakers, that meant breaking the traditional CG rules and developing a new, unique visual language, rich in stylistic elements, shapes, colors and movement, where the hand of the artist is visible in every frame, and where the hand-drawn look of 2D animation is integrated with and made art directable within the volumetric world of 3D CG. The opposite of photorealism. Pushing CG tools to make the imagery and characters feel more snappy, more illustrative. It also meant assembling the largest team of animators the studio has ever employed, over 170 artists, with nine leads, working primarily in Vancouver, with some located in Culver City, all needed because the show’s technical complexity pushed their typical weekly work output from four seconds of animation down to only one.








For head of character animation Josh Beveridge, that meant a complete rethink of how he and the animation team approached character movement and the visual style of the action, moving away from the more traditional CG animation techniques he’d used on Sony films like Open Season, Surf’s Up, Cloudy 1 and 2, Arthur Christmas and Hotel Transylvania 1 and 2.

“Our big challenge was creating that balance between looking cartoony and realistic,” he notes. “To deliver the best representation of comic books to animated life, we had to break and overhaul our way of looking at things. We did about a year of testing, developing a couple test shots on what we thought would be some of the most challenging areas to solve. We didn’t have an absolutely clear idea of what the character designs were, or even what the movie was going to be about. It was just look testing, and it helped us prove many of our visual ideas. We wanted it to all hang on the same singular concept: bring a comic book to life. So, our boundaries were, don’t emulate reality and don’t make it a cartoon. It’s somewhere in the middle that picks from both of those aesthetics.”

According to Beveridge, comic books and animation go hand in hand. “Animation is such a sister medium to comic books,” he explains. “They’re both mediums where you can tell any kind of story. You’re not limited to only one type of visual. They’re both absolutely whatever you envision them to be. They’re only bound by the limitations of an artist’s imagination. They embrace visuals that can’t exist in reality. Our mission was to make the audience feel like they were reading a comic book while watching the film -- make the film feel like a comic book come to life. That opened us up to all kinds of challenges and opportunities to problem solve and rethink how we normally produce animation. Are we just doing something that way because we’re used to doing it that way? Is there another way?”

For the production team, the search for a workable design language and animation style, that could properly convey the story’s emotions, led to some daring but risky decisions. “Testing new approaches freed us up to get a little trippier and little bit bolder,” Beveridge continues. “That meant we were going to make this world and our characters look more graphic. Everything would have a texture that looked a little bit like a deconstructed graphic, with hard edges, that had to feel like it’s made out of ink, to remind people of a comic book medium. That led us to determine that nothing could be soft. Everything had to be crisp. It had to feel like it was carved in print. It had to snap!”








From tests and visual design studies, two major decisions were made: no motion blur, and the animation would primarily be done on twos. Motion blur is a technique where you blend frames to simulate the dynamic blurring that a camera catches when objects move rapidly. A more traditional CG animated film is animated on ones -- 24 images, each held for one frame, for every one second of film. Animating on twos means every image is held for two frames, with only 12 individual images used for every one second of film. The impact on how movement, especially fast-paced action, is animated is tremendous. But it provided the desired illustrated visual style for the film, where each frame appeared as its own distinct image, like a panel in a comic book. And its own distinct challenges for the animators.

“Turning off motion blur meant we had to move characters differently, because one of the things that really betrays this aesthetic is when things are smooth,” Beveridge recounts. “Computers make perfect arcs that you could never draw. You can tell a machine is solving more than the artist is. And that led us to the decision to animate the film on twos, primarily. We made it so that every animator could go in and out of being on twos in every moment, based on what they felt was best for that particular performance.”

Having the option to move between animating on ones or twos gave the animation teams tremendous creative freedom. “One of the animation tricks we learned on this film was to never just do one trick, to always be changing the trick,” Beveridge continues. “There’s no hard and fast rule on how to animate… only use this one particular technique. We just wanted to keep people on their toes and keep them guessing. There’s never a technical limitation of what we had to do. It was always a creative choice of whether or not the character was on twos and how that would solve for the camera. It just was a feeling we were chasing.”

Another feeling the teams were chasing was the distinctive line work, especially in faces and motion, that exemplified the comic book graphic style. According to Beveridge, while some of the ink lines were built into the rigs, much of the line work involved individual artistic decisions on manual placement. “For most of the movie, the majority of the characters from Miles’ and Peter’s universe had a lot of ink lines already built into the rig. But we also built in all kinds of tools for every animator to add ink lines, hand placed in 3D space, because it turns out there’s more exceptions to the rule than rules themselves for where they belong,” Beveridge observes.








“And then, by not having motion blur, we had to lean on old school, traditional hand-drawn animation techniques,” he continues. “So, a lot of the movie is even more entertaining when you frame through it and see the fast actions happening, how we solved spacing between two poses with floating limbs and deconstructed edges, little eroded action lines, like those two streaks from a comic book. Even the lighting team found an offset print technique for making trailing edges. Again, the goal being everything needs to be crisp and clear. Like pop art.”

Creating the film’s distinctive line work was truly a group effort. “For line work, every department played a different part,” Beveridge remarks. “There’s no one group that handled line work. So, emotional acting lines, yes, those were built in to the rig. We had ways of adding more for the exceptions. We controlled a lot in animation. But then the effects department built a really cool system for making drawn lines track on form edges, ones that don’t really describe the acting but describe the shape of things. Like a nose or a jaw line, you always need those, but they’re not acting lines. They have really clear iconography, so effects owned lines like that. Then the comp team found all of these ways to edge detect and make them all integrate. So, everyone was adding a different piece to the puzzle. With all of these different ingredients, none of them are the same; there’s no one trick. It’s constantly changing.”

Beveridge also noted that the production didn’t use toon shading like some might suspect. “We didn’t use a toon shader, though there’s definite parallels. Some folks would probably describe it that way. We wanted the production value to be obvious that a lot of the film was really hand crafted. There wasn’t a shader that just did all the solving for us. There were really, really complex shaders, but those were always changing and being hand dialed for different solutions as well. So, that’s an ingredient too. But there was no silver bullet.”








One of the film’s highlights is the stylistic action posing of the Spider-People. “Each of the film’s Spider-People were designed to be part of the same family without any direct reference to a particular artist’s style,” Beveridge comments. “And what makes them Spider-People are the acute angles their limbs strike, these straight, aggressive angles. Spider-People are unique from other heroes in that they’re low center-of-gravity characters. They’re always in this somewhat hunched arch. Instead of having their center of gravity in a puffed-up chest -- how high and tall they can be -- they’re low, they’re wide-base and stable. So, whether a Spider-Person is young, a veteran, a pig or an anime girl, they all have the same low center of gravity when they’re in their action mode.”

For Beveridge, the sheer enormity of the project was the biggest challenge. “This was such a massive undertaking,” he concedes. “The amount of work, the number of characters, was enormous. Personally, for me, one of the big challenges was just how high our goals were. We were shooting for the stars, trying to make the most impressive thing any of us could imagine. Not only that, but the complexity was incredibly high. And we didn’t want to leave anything on the table, so we were working on this right up to the bitter end. And, the choice to animate without motion blur, on twos, with several different visual aspects all in one movie, were all big risks. There was no example we could point to that showed, ‘Yes, this will work because of this.’ So that was an emotional challenge, because it was risky, knowing how high the stakes were and how many people cared about this film. It felt like a massive responsibility. So, we didn’t want to disappoint. There are a lot of strong opinions out there. We knew people were paying attention.”

Ultimately, Beveridge concludes, the reward of seeing such a fantastic early response to the film makes the inherent risk that much more worthwhile. “One of the lessons I’m taking away after completing this project is that in art, it’s a really good thing to not be sure if you’re making the right choices. It means you’re doing something bold. So, for a lot of us, we didn’t know how good what we were doing was or how people were going to respond. It was a risk. You live with that fear. So, to get the response we’ve gotten so far, is kind of incredible.”


https://www.awn.com/animationworld/creating-stylized-universe-sonys-spider-man-spider-verse
 

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Spider-Verse Producers Excited About Spider-Ham Spinoff Potential
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Spider-Ham may yet star in his own spinoff film, if the producers of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as to be believed. The animated Spider-Verseadaptation doubles as both an origin story for Miles Morales and an introduction to an entire multi-verse of realities, each of which has a web-slinger (or two) to call their own. In addition to Miles and modern-day Peter Parker (both of them), the movie features appearances by Gwen Stacy aka. Spider-Gwen, the black and white Spider-Man Noir (Peter Parker from the 1930s), Peni Parker and her Sp//dr suit, and of course, Peter Porker aka. Spider-Ham.

Strange he may seem, Spider-Ham has been around in comic book form since his introduction in 1983's humorous one-shot Marvel Tails Starring Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham. The character has since appeared in major Marvel comic book events, cartoon TV shows, and even several Spider-Man video games over the years. What's next? Well, potentially, his own animated film, by the sound of it.

Related: 10 Best Spider-Men NOT in the Spider-Verse Movie

Spider-Verse producers Amy Pascal and Avi Arad were interviewed by Vanity Fair about Spider-Verse and the potential of spinoffs for each and every web-slinger featured in the film, right on down to Peter Porker himself. When asked about the idea, Pascal responded “Of course! You can imagine how much the kids love that character". Arad was similarly direct when asked about the possibly of a Spider-Ham solo movie, saying "Yeah. We want piggy".

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It's no secret that Sony intends to spin multiple films out of Spider-Verse; the studio is already working on one such spinoff, in the form of an all-female superhero movie featuring Spider-Gwen, Spider-Woman, and Silk (among others). However, as noted in Vanity Fair's writeup, what's great about Spider-Verse is that no two such spinoff films need look or feel the same, given how different - stylistically and in terms of genre - the movie's web-slingers are from one another. A Spider-Ham movie especially lends itself to a zany Looney Tunes-style adventure in the vein of the Spider-Verse sequences that explore Mr. Porker's backstory and his equally cartoony fight scenes (not to mention, the... unusual corner of the multi-verse he comes from).

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While there's obviously the risk of a Spider-Ham spinoff being a one-note joke taken too far, it's worth reiterating that the web-slinger has a fair amount of comic book mythology for a movie to draw from. Much like The LEGO Batman Movie, a Spider-Ham spinoff could combine meta-comedy based around Peter Porker and his rogues gallery (which, yes, includes villains like Kingpig and Raven the Hunter) with a more heartfelt and layer narrative that fleshes the character out into a fully-developed protagonist. Like Pascal said, a Spider-Ham film would certainly go over well with the juice box crowd, if handled right - and after seeing what Spider-Verse accomplished with the character, it's probably an idea that a lot of adults are down for, too.
 

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Platinum Member
It’s ridiculous how WELL MADE this film was. It might even be a black director that gave it the spark it has. Miller and co did a fantastic job.

I’m going to go see this shit again tomorrow with the kids. Theatre full of white kids and their parents too. It just deserves to get so much more.


oNE
 

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
It’s ridiculous how WELL MADE this film was. It might even be a black director that gave it the spark it has. Miller and co did a fantastic job.

I’m going to go see this shit again tomorrow with the kids. Theatre full of white kids and their parents too. It just deserves to get so much more.


oNE

Crazy crazy...

one of my family posted what I said about my experience watching the movie with my little girl and ONE of the WRITERS told her to THANK ME!!!

sidebar...

I CANNOT find those Miles Morales sneakers ANYWHERE (well for UNDER 350)
 

Darth Furious

Master
Platinum Member
Crazy crazy...

one of my family posted what I said about my experience watching the movie with my little girl and ONE of the WRITERS told her to THANK ME!!!

sidebar...

I CANNOT find those Miles Morales sneakers ANYWHERE (well for UNDER 350)

CRAZY SHIT! WOW...

I remember having this same feeling after seeing Dredd.

I couldn’t tell enough people about that little film and what it did for 3D and even the sound design. We were in a theatre full of geeks and it just wasn’t enough to punch it over the edge. Besides The Raid, I have never seen an action film like it since.

Another recent film that was overlooked was Game Night. It was just SO well written and shot like a crime thriller and unlike ANY comedy Ive seen in years but they opened up in the path of Black Panther and that was all she wrote.




AMAZING. Thank you. I’m bout to read this right quick before i get to partying... well, sleeping really. Lol

oNE
 

HAR125LEM

Rising Star
Platinum Member
It was the BEST Spider-Man film since Sam Raimi's "SPIDER-MAN 2".

And I absolutely loved that The KingPin was modeled on Bill Sienkiewicz's design

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Helico-pterFunk

Rising Star
BGOL Legend
http://baldmove.com/bald-movies/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-2018/





http://baldmove.com/category/bald-movies/







We have seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and declare it to be one of, if not the best Spider-Men movies of all time. Amazingly fun, incredibly inspiring, spectacularly stylish, and endlessly imaginative, Spider-Verse expands the franchise in entirely new directions while maintaining the magic that makes Spider-Man great; the moral obligations of an average person who is blessed with great power.

Please enjoy our spoiler-free review of the movie as well as a discussion of upcoming films and trailers, but if you want to hear our full, spoiler-filled analysis you'll have to be a Club Bald Move member!






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