I've shown you the above trailer clip of writer Joss Whedon ("Buffy the vampire Slayer" of course) and artist John Cassady's ("Planetary") motion comic for their story arc on "Astonishing X-Men."
Marvel announced plans to use a three-story former storefront in Union Square Park as a mega-sized screen to premiere the first episode of Astonishing during its inaugural "Marvelfest" event in New York Oct. 28.
Astonishing is the Cadillac of the of the bushel of X-Men comics Marvel releases every month. Whedon and Cassaday's arc re-introduced the X-Men to the masked super hero universe. It was a little off-putting for me at first because I don't think of the X-Men as traditional secret identity-style super heroes. They're really Xavier's private army/security force. Think about it; How often do they save cats from trees or stop bank robberies?
Anyway, Cyclops puts the X-squad back into their costumes to help the characters deal with the more modern issue of having to maintain a positive public image in a world that still fears mutants. Despite my poor job of a plot summary, trust me -- Whedon and Cassaday story presented the characters brilliantly. Kitty Pryde (One of Buffy's character inspirations according to Whedon) tells off former enemy and current teammate Emma Frost as only she can.
But this post is supposed to be about the motion comic... Let's just call the "Astonishing X-Men" motion comic an animated mini-series. The animators who worked on this project make the characters move quite a bit more than artist Alex Maleev's animators on the "Spider-Woman Agent of S.W.O.R.D." motion project. Their mouths even move to go along with the dialogue (unlike the Spider-Woman story). Check out the trailer from Comic Book Resources above.
Don't get it twisted, all of this is fine. While I am a bigger fan of the Spider-Woman motion series, this other style on the X-Men piece may not work for me. I like my image motion to be a little more comic book-ish with subtle motion and all the great audio performances. But I am aware that this project is not made for guys like myself who have read comics for 30-plus years, it's made for that new-fangled iTunes audience who can watch movies on their phones.
And since "Spider-Woman Agent of S.W.O.R.D" topped the iTunes sales charts for animated TV episodes in its debut, it's a safe bet we will see this audience catered to a lot more.
If I hear good things about it I may even buy a few episodes myself.
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