Bianka Bermudez

December 3, 2021
ENG 4121
Dr. Andrew Strycharski

Leaping into the Spider-Verse: Final Essay

Ever since Marvel put the blockbuster movie industry in a chokehold, there have been a

slew of live-action adaptations for sequential-art (the official term for comic books, graphic

novels, manga, and so on) back to back. The success of the Avengers (2012) changed

superheroes’ influence on the movie industry, in both debatably good and bad ways. Comics rose

into the limelight, but these weren’t the comics with unique art styles, panel constructions, and

screen tones that many avid fans had grown to love. This isn’t about Avengers (2012). Instead, it

is about how the movie industry had begun to forget that there are certain charms and qualities in

animation and illustration that live-action movies could never hope to replicate. It is about how

after three different live-action versions of Peter Parker’s Spider-Man saga— all full of heart in

their own right— Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter

Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman still manages to top all of them in capturing the spirit of what it

means to be Spider-man, and most importantly, tell a good coming-of-age story.

Spider-Man was created in the 60s and intended to be an outcast. In order to portray this,

Peter Parker, as Spider-Man, was made a “nerd” with a penchant for STEM. In the 1960s being a

“nerd” was an outcast trait, seen as unlikeable and undesirable, as if there was something

fundamentally wrong with the person. This day and age however, a white cis-heterosexual man

who is good at STEM isn’t an outcast— he’s a future Silicon Valley employee. Peter Parker will

always be Peter Parker, but the spirit of the “outcast” that Spider-Man is supposed to hold did not

age with him. This is where Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino geek, comes in, with an animated

origin story that is a love-letter to the comic book medium itself. Everything about this
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combination in Spider-Verse results in the perfect storm of an outcast hero story that asserts that

the real idea of what it means to be Spider-Man is that anyone can be him.

One of the most fascinating things about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is its use of

frame rates. The average amount of frame-rates for television and movies is twenty-four frames

per second (FPS) which means that there are twenty-four images per second happening in any

shot. This is because twenty-four FPS is very similar to how humans naturally process visuals in

the real world and generally is good to look at. Frame rates are important because they change

how visuals are processed; a higher frame rate will look smoother and crisper, and a lower one

may look choppier. What makes Spider-Verse unique is that for a vast majority of the movie it is

almost entirely animated at twelve FPS— half of the usual standard. As a result, Miles Morales

and company lose the effect of motion blur and look snappier, their blocking more pronounced

and eye-catching— less like ordinary people, and more like comic-book characters in motion,

negating the idea that art exists to imitate real life. There is another reason for this odd-choice in

frame rate, however— Miles’ inexperience as Spider-Man.

If Miles’ first go at web-slinging from tree-to-tree looks awkward and wonky— that’s

because it’s supposed to be. The low-frame rate manages to capture that Miles still does not

know how to Spider-Man; he is a teenager who feels as if he is merely cosplaying in a much

greater hero’s role, one with the grace and shiny upright heroism that he believes he does not

have yet. Everyone has an idea of what Spider-Man is supposed to be, but superficially speaking

the most popular depiction of Spider-Man is a hot-in-a-nerdy-way white man who can take on

villains in a fight, no sweat. In Miles’ case, this is true in his world too, where, not too long ago,

there was a Peter Parker who fit that exact description before he faced an untimely death. Miles’
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being Afro-Latino is one of the many ways that Spider-Verse is able to assert its motto, “Anyone

can wear the mask. You could wear the mask.”

Although Spider-verse takes place in Miles’ world and is about him, he is one of the

many “Spider-People” in the movie, alongside five others, three of which have their own distinct

visual art style different from that of the main movie. This is a technique that would not be

possible in live-action, simply due to the nature that people cannot exist in different “art styles”

in real life. Peni Parker is a young Japanese school girl rendered in a mix of computer-generated

and 2D drawn hybrid, and Spider-Ham is animated in a completely hand-drawn method. Spider-

Noir, much like his name sake and unlike all the others, is always in a moody black-and-white no

matter the color of the world, like the noir films he is inspired by. While Miles is the one who fits

into his own universe the best, for the first half of the movie the difference between himself and

the others doesn’t make him feel at home, but rather enhances the feeling of isolation that he has

among the other “heroes” and not being enough.

The different styles also serve to prove an idea from Scott McCloud, the author of one of

the most important texts in relation to the study of creating and analyzing comic books,

“Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.” In it, Scott McCloud says, “[...] when you look at a

photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the
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world of the cartoon, you see yourself.” There was a lot of hard work put into making this vision

a reality. As Sony began to develop what would eventually become Spider-Verse, the creative

team behind the movie saw adapting Miles Morales’ story as an opportunity to do something

truly unique with the medium. Throughout every department working on the animation, a motto

came forth from this design philosophy: “If it ain’t broke, break it,” a line coined by Sony VFX

supervisor Danny Dimian. New programs were written for the specific intent of making special

effects appear 2D instead of the typical 3D, for rendering shadows and darkness in halftones and

line hatching, and, most impressively of all, for allowing ink-line drawings to be superimposed

over the CG character model without being anchored to it. This, like the other effects, was to

give the illusion that Spider-Verse was a comic book come to life, complete with the hand-drawn

touch of a physical illustration that was (and is) unlike any animated movie of its kind.

The audience finally gets the catharsis they deserve at 1:21:00 in the film when the

famous “leap of faith” scene begins. The tension has been pulling taught as to when Miles’ will

be able to step up and help protect his city. All the techniques that the film has set up reach their

climax as the sound of the orchestral remix of hip-hop track “What’s Up Danger” by Blackway

and Black Caviar starts revving up for Miles’ to jump off a high-rise building in an attempt to

swing successfully for the first time. The tension is amped up visually in the way that the film

intersperses animated panels— like a comic— closing up on the details of Miles getting ready to

jump. The audience can see everything. The buildings, how high up he is, the force of the wind,

and a unique view of Miles from both the side, and from where one would see him from the

bottom looking up. The collection of panels turns Miles’ leap into something akin to the majesty

of a “splash page” in comics— an image that is meant to hook the audience and almost bleed out

of the page, the way this scene almost bleeds out of the screen.
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The script puts it best:

The scene is also accented with the stylized comic-book typography of sound-effects,

Miles’ triumphant “WOOOO!” as he swings from building to building, visualizing his euphoria

for the audience, and like a wink to spider-man veterans they even include the iconic spider-man

web-slinging “thwip” sound effect as well, to make it official: Miles is Spider-Man.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a celebration of animation, illustration and a long

history of comics. It is not only an incredible visual feat, but it is also an important step in the

representation of diverse heroes and stories that assert that anyone, no matter their race, gender,

sexuality, or creed, can be the protagonist of their own story. In its creative use of colorful and

fresh visuals and its unique cast, Spider-Verse has managed to leave a mark in history as a film,

animated or otherwise, that was bold enough to do something never before seen— bold enough

to take a leap of faith.

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Works Cited

● Desowitz, Bill. “'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse': Breaking the Rules of Animation.”

IndieWire, IndieWire, 15 Dec. 2018, https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/spider-man-

into-the-spider-verse-breaking-the-visual-rules-of-animation-1202027410/.

● MasterClass. “3 Standard Frame Rates for Film and TV.” MasterClass, MasterClass, 17

Aug. 2021, https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-frame-rates-affect-film-and-video.

● McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, HarperPerennial,

1994.