Darn, That ‘Motion Comic’ Name Is Sticking
Yet another company jumps on the “motion comic” bandwagon…
Eagle One Media sent out a press release announcing that they were producing “animated motion comic productions” of Street Fighter (formerly a video game) and Voltron: Defender of the Universe (formerly an anime series) to air on Syfy starting September 28.
Since the Eagle One website prominently pushes their cartoon DVDs of the same titles, I guess I know where they’re getting the content. I find it amusing that, although they mention that the DVDs were based on Udon (Street Fighter) and DD Publishing (Devil’s Due? Voltron) comics, they’re sort of irrelevant at this point. Anyone interested in these limited animation videos will likely come from the other, more popular media incarnations, not from comics that were themselves licensed properties.
6:01 pm
What are these nitwits trying to pull here? The first Voltron “motion comic” DVD came out two years ago; the second about a year and a half ago. The Street Fighter one came out over six months ago. They are not making these now; they’ve ALREADY MADE THEM. Either the copywriter shouldn’t be writing copy or he’s trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. The only thing BRAND NEW about these “motion comics” is that they’ve managed to trick an idiotic cable outlet into putting them on television.
As an aside, they’re not jumping on the bandwagon — Eagle One BUILT the bandwagon, but back when they tried to get it rolling, nobody wanted a part of it. Dig around on their website; they’re the ones who made all those CrossGen, Ultimate Marvel, and Daredevil “motion comic” DVDs nobody wanted that littered anime DVD sections for years in the early 2000’s.
These AREN’T animated cartoons. These are comic books — actual comics, which you can go out and buy and read yourself — with the panels all cut apart and thrown up on your TV screen or monitor with limited animation and actors doing the dialog. A cheap-to-produce way to convert pre-existing work into another bloody revenue stream. The only one I’ve ever watched was the one that came free with the standard version of Michael Bay’s Transformers movie on DVD at Wal-Mart; heaven knows I’d never pay money for one. If I want to watch a cartoon, I’ll watch a cartoon; if I want to read a comic book, I’ll read a comic book. I have no interest in a lazy bastard format in-between.