SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE The art of The movie
Web design
released OUT NOW! 192 pages | Hardback
Author ramin Zahed Publisher Titan Books
It’s only fitting that the visually groundbreaking animated Spidey film should get a beautiful art book to go with it, and this doesn’t disappoint. Even without the text, this would feel worth flicking through, such is the level of invention flowing throughout new Spidey Miles Morales’s big-screen debut. From early concept art to finished designs, character sketches to cityscapes, the filmmakers’ ambition to push the limits (and dimensions) of what a Spider-Man movie can be is evident throughout – New York City, the monstrous Green Goblin and the grotesque “giant black hole” that is the Kingpin, in particular, feel like genuinely fresh spins on old classics.
In fact, in such exulted company the words were always going to struggle to compete, and here they’re purely there for explanation. There’s an impressive level of contributors – including filmmakers and a foreword from Morales’s co-creator Brian Michael Bendis – but, aside from a few excellent tidbits of trivia (there can’t be many superhero movies so heavily influenced by Cubism) this is definitely one book where the pictures shout the loudest. Richard Edwards
The blond haircut of the film’s first Spidey was modeled after Brad Pitt’s look in the 1992 film A River Runs Through It.