Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers, the latest Marvel Knights Animation motion comic, came out earlier this week on DVD. The four-episode story was originally released online last spring. Loki (voiced by David Blair) has taken over as King of Asgard, imprisoning his brother Thor (Daniel Thorn), and the story consists of his interior and exterior monologuing. He ponders his role now and flashes back every so often to moments from his childhood where he was downtrodden. People talk a lot […]

Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers is the newest Marvel Knights animation/motion comic project, first released online earlier this year. Based on the trailer, I found it a major step forward for the fledgling medium. Now comes word that the short series will be available on DVD on September 13. List price is $14.97 (although you can already find it much less than that) for four episodes. Note that each ran over 15 minutes, for a total running time about 72 […]

The latest in the line of Marvel motion comics available on DVD — and, for the first time, on Blu-ray — is Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D., out this Tuesday. This one’s a little different, since it was originally created for the motion comic format (instead of being in print first) by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev and released on iTunes in 2009. That makes it older than previous DVDs in this series. And that’s obvious, from the higher percentage […]

Following up the first Marvel Knights Animation/Shout! Factory release, Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, comes another movie tie-in: Iron Man: Extremis. This disc contains six motion comic episodes, each from 10-14 minutes. (The first is 20 minutes long.) The storyline is based on the comic of the same name by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov, a revamp of the Armored Avenger for the modern technological age, where computer chips replace the original transistors and hardware. (It also reportedly influenced the movie, as […]

Debuting on Tuesday, September 28, is a DVD collecting the Astonishing X-Men motion comic Gifted, based on the comic by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday and directed by Cassaday and Neal Adams. I’ve been harsh on motion comics before, but what I saw of it was better than I expected. The disc, list-priced at $15, contains six episodes and a handful of bonus features. The first episode, which is all I watched at one sitting, is 13 1/2 minutes long, […]

As I previously wrote, Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk converts the six-issue comic miniseries by Damon Lindelof and Leinil Francis Yu to six 10-minute-ish “motion comic” chapters. It goes on sale tomorrow, September 10. The level of animation is lighter than I remembered from previous releases. For example, lips are made to move for dialogue, but eyes never blink, and nothing else on the page/screen moves. Movement looks like someone’s dragging paper cutouts around, or it’s done by moving the camera […]

The Marvel Knights line of motion comic DVDs releases its first sequel, with Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous set following the events of Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, the first title released. This DVD is based on the Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous book, collecting Astonishing X-Men #7–12 by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. In that story, the Danger Room becomes sentient and tries to take revenges on its “oppressors” by sending a Sentinel after them. It feels to this viewer as though I’ve come into […]