But sometimes it can be hard to say exactly why this show is one of my favorite things to appear last decade.

Hard for me, but not for writing genius Todd Alcott, who writes lengthy deconstructions of every episode of the show.

Here he is going even more meta, discussing his process for analyzing episodes of the show.

Now, The Venture Bros is a tremendously complex show — things connect to other things on many different levels. Every character, almost every beat, brings with it a whole complex group of associations, both within the show itself and also in regard to the world of narratives that the show was made in reaction to: Jonny Quest, Marvel comics, boy-adventure stories, James Bond, 60s and 70s science fiction and about sixteen million other things. There’s an incredible wealth of associations going on in each and every scene, which adds to the resonance of the show beyond the actual plot of any given episode. So the show isn’t just about what the characters say and do, it’s also about this gigantic cultural conversation between the past and the present, what we as a culture imagined the future to be and how it turned out instead.

He calls it a “show for the ages”, and like most great comedy it will probably be under-appreciated until a little time has passed, especially since some of the more recent stuff is a lot more “heady” than the earlier episodes were. But it’s a true testament to nerd culture in the new millennium.

I’ll be honest, I was skeptical going in. Marvel has been attempting these kinds of “limited animation cartoons since the 1960’s, and they’ve always had their issues.

I love Bendis’ writing, and except where the format blunts some of his usual skills. In this case, there’s no doubt that Spider-Woman is a well written story, with some fantastic art. But on a technical level it doesn’t work. It is proof, I think, that one of the fundamental elements of comics are that they move at the reader’s pace, while video in all its form is something that drags viewer is along for the ride.

One “trick” that comics have always used is the captioned narrator—those little square boxes that fill the corners of the panels. In the 60s and 70s the captions would almost always be used to describe the action directly by some kind of narrative voice. By the 80s their use became more subtle.  What had traditionally been an omniscient point of view was more often used as a version of voice over, and would often provide a counterpoint to the visual action, rather than simple repetition of the scene you were already viewing.

And that narrative, character-based deconstruction is still pretty much the primary use of it today. It’s an effective tool because you can frame the action, and provide some sense of pacing from frame to frame.  Well used, by people like Alan Moore and Bendis, and you can create humor and irony by simply choosing how you break up that narrative tool across the visual panels that sit underneath them.

But what Spider-Woman shows is that what seems subtle and clever in the frozen moments of a comic can come off stilted and ham-handed when put into motion.  Some of Bendis’ witty banter really seems broken here.  More so because it’s easy to see how well it would work on a printed page.

And once they’ve got it in motion, they don’t want it to stop moving.  Every scene in the motion comic features some kind of camera action. I’m guessing that having frames without movement ended up feeling odd, but having everything constantly in motion is a bit disorienting and distracting.

There have been some interesting experiments in putting comics on the web, including this one. It’s an example of why I think it’s it clear that one thing that will survive from print comics as they move to the web is, to greater degree, the user controlled pacing.

That’s a trick that you often see well-used in video game cut-scenes in a number of different ways. Take a look at this section from Freedom Force, and you’ll see quite a few comic elements used effectively in an interactive environment, including talking heads, and different types of narration. Of course, even the more movie-like sections it works because it’s an homage to comics, but not actually a comic book. Spider-Woman’s script suffers from the fact that it needs to work in multiple formats.  Even the Watchmen move, which is probably the most slavish recreation of a comic ever committed to film, rebuilds its scenes to make them work as real-time action. (Although you could do worse than study how Snyder has managed to get a comic book vibe by slowing down the action to create an iconic “frame” of action.)

There’s no doubt that as comics move to the web there’s going to be some kind of web-hyrid “next-generation” of comics that smoothly integrates motion and effects, but Spider-Woman feels like it’s too focused on being a “comic book in motion” to really be leading the way.

All that said, I’ll still be picking up the next issue…

Season 3 begins on June 1st.

Kings of Power is a little deeper, and far stranger…  But they’re always entertaining and very well animated.

The images are amazing, even if they are very gory, bizarre , and slightly NSFW. It’s clear that his imgination is only bounded by the limits of time and space.

If you want something a little more hi-rez you can find the download links here.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to help:

If you can’t hold together you’re narrative hook for the length of the preview, how are you going to manage it for an entire video?

And “The Pixie”?  That’s what you’re going to go with?

Really?

Cut to 40 years later, and we’ve come full circle.  Beyond even the gritty realism of post-modern comics like The Watchmen, we’ve now infused foibles into full-on cartoon characters, turning the ramrod heroes of our youth into drug addicted jerk-offs. The king of this kind of stuff is The Venture Brothers. It’s the tale of a boy adventurer (think Johnny Quest) who is entering into his forties with a trail of failures, two idiot sons, and an addiction to uppers.  As sad as that sounds, it’s also one of my favorite things in the whole wide world, finding humor in the mundane while mixing and re-mixing nerd cliches in constantly surprising ways.

It’s also a type of humor that I thought was almost impossible to duplicate. But it seems like someone else has figured out the formula.  Perhaps not to the same level, but they do seem to have their hearts in the right place, and it’s definitely laugh out loud funny in parts. They’re also excellent and skewering the ridiculousness of internet culture.

They call themselves For Tax Reasons, and I’m going to keep my eye on them.

Here’s their first major offering. It’s called “IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR“.

There was an article a few years back that discussed some of the digital camera tricks that they’re going to be using in this film that could, I think, be more ground-breaking than bullet-time. Unfortunately I can’t find that link.

Suffice it to say it’s about using digital trickery to allow you to move between shots without a traditional “cut”. You can see a great at around 1:50, and again right at the end, around 2:23.

If you know the article I’m talking about please post a link in the comments.

But if you are, then you’ll dig this:

via Engadget

I’ve been thinking a lot about anime’ lately, and I’m not sure that I quite agree with the way they’re discussing Batman in the context of the Japanese heroic tradition, but it does look amazing.

It’s also nice to see that the failure of the Matrix to live up to its hype didn’t manage to totally torpedo this kind of project.