Sunday, October 2, 2016

Reviews #6 - Spider-Woman: Agent of SWORD (2009)

Review: This 5-episode mini-series is based on the aftermath of the Secret Invasion storyline in Marvel comics from a few years back. Now, herein lies one of the big issue with the series; it assumes we all know what exactly happened in that storyline. Myself, I know some of the bullet points but not everything. Those who do not know about the Secret Invasion will be completely lost.

            To sum it up, the Skrulls, an alien race of shapeshifters, infiltrated the Marvel Universe and impersonated several important members of government and superheroes. They slowly began a worldwide takeover and Spider-Woman was captured and impersonated by the Skrull Queen. This is the basic scuttlebutt of the story without going into too much detail. This series picks up afterwards, where Spider-Woman is recruited to hunt down the remaining Skrulls.

            The visual style is very different than any sort of traditional animation. It’s more like a motion comic. In essence, it is all still pictures where certain elements move. It’s a style that works in certain moments but not in all cases. When it’s a grand well lit scene it looks good, but when it’s a dark closed in area it becomes difficult to tell what is going on. The voice actors become key in helping narrate the story. The main characters, especially the voice actress playing Spider-Woman, do a great job at this and she in particular kept me interested. However, some of the smaller characters had really annoying voices and felt like caricatures more than actual characters.

            The story is a confusing one. It feels like you’ve been inserted midway through a series and don’t know how you got there or where you are going afterwards. Characters appear that we are supposed to recognize but there is very little explanation of who they are or what their connection to Spider-Woman is. Unless you’re a well versed comic reader from this time period, you will be confused as well. The ending is something that feels like it would happen midway through a story, not the conclusion to the whole series. In essence, it is treated like a comic book series where it is assumed that the reader knows what is going on

            If you are a fan of the motion comic art style, this series could be interesting to you but make sure you read up on the Secret Invasion storyline beforehand because you will end up confused and only understanding certain parts of it.


Score: 6/10

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