Marvel CyberComics
Marvel CyberComics or Webisodes were digital comics produced from 1996 to 2000 by
History
CyberComics were created by
From 1996 till 1998 there was a run of the Spider-Man Cybercomics.
In 1997 Marvel built their own website at MarvelOnline.com and the CyberComics were freely available to all users through registration on MarvelZone.com (due to the contract with AOL).
On September 17, 1999 NextPlanetOver.com (NPO), a now-defunct online comics store, announced a one-year marketing and content licensing deal with Marvel Comics. Terms included a year of run-of-site advertising on Marvel.com. In addition, NextPlanetOver.com was sponsoring monthly CyberComics created exclusively for them by Marvel. NPO was bought out less than a year later and went bankrupt in 2000; the CyberComics were renamed into "Webisodes" and made available at Marvel.com for free without any registration.
The first characters to star in CyberComics were Spider-Man and Wolverine, soon followed by several others. The comics were not only canon to the mainstream but also tied in directly with Marvel's newsstand offerings. They came out on a monthly basis, in four parts consisting of eight pages each.
Using Macromedia's Shockwave software, readers guided the action by clicking through word balloons and following panels complete with animation, sound effects and music. CyberComics were still very much in the comic book or strip genre - the result was a cross between comics and animation.
The Cybercomics were made by taking penciled pages and transforming them through a program called "Electric Image Painter" and form-Z into the digital comics, colored in digitally in Adobe Illustrator. Simple animations were created in Macromedia Shockwave, and Garry Schafer of grimmwerks created the soundscapes which drove the animations. Done at a time previous to mp3 compression as common as it is now, only 4 channels of small, short soundscapes could be used at one time.
Due to financial reasons, the production of new CyberComics ceased in 2000 and Marvel removed them from their website.
Having a huge back-issue archive, Marvel decided to save money by replacing Marvel CyberComics with Dotcomics. This successor would eventually become Marvel Unlimited.
Heroes
- Daredevil (v.1): Protection Racket (In four parts; 1998) Featuring
- Daredevil (v.2) #0: What a Life (A one-shot; September 1998) Written by Kevin Smith, with art by Joe Quesada & Jimmy Palmiotti A preview/prequel to the relaunched Daredevil title in 1998.
- Heroes Return (In five parts; 1997) It took place between issues #3 and #4 of the Heroes Reborn: The Return Limited Series. The Wall-crawler takes on the Green Goliath and encounters the Heroes Return super-heroes! By Tom DeFalco, Casey Jones and Rob Haynes.
- Marvel Milk Maniacs: Race for Destruction (A one-shot; 2000) Starring Captain America, the Hulk and Spider-Man. A promo CyberComic for drinking milk.
- Nick Fury / Black Widow: Jungle Warfare (In four parts) Black Widow race to defuse a bomb buried in the banks of the Panama Canal - without setting off any political landmines. Art by Casey Jones. Read it here! Archived 2010-02-13 at the Wayback Machine
- Joe Kelly, with art by Casey Jones!
Mutants
- Daerick Gross.
- Daerick Gross (In four parts; July 1996). This was one of the two first Marvel CyberComics ever (the other one was with Spider-Man). Pale Flower is playing a dangerous game, with Wolverine in the middle. Can she control a tiger by the tail? Features first appearances by Mongrel and Pale Flower.
- Daerick Gross.
Marvel's Excelsior Theatre
Scoop:
The only "movie" in this "theatre" was called The Secret Adventures of Captain America - Far Flung in the Far East and came out in five parts in 1999-2000. It was conceived by former editor and
Story:
Chasing down a mysterious phenomenon in
Other appearances include
.- Episode 1: Valley of Death
- Episode 2: In the Clutches of the Mandarin
- Episode 3: The Valley of Lost Spirits
- Episode 4: The Road of Frozen Hells
- Episode 5: Fireworks
Review:
The adventure featured numerous "firsts", including a new first meeting of Captain America and Nick Fury; one that is decidedly different than the one featured in the pages of Sgt Fury comic. Much more advanced than the CyberComics, it had music and actors performing their parts and more advanced animation. Oddly the story seemed to take the stand that Nick Fury was somehow opposed to Captain America beforehand, seeing him as some kind of glorified piece of propaganda.
See also
External links
- Excelsior Theatre episodes and a write up of the process
- Marvel Digital Comics Archived 2006-09-23 at the Wayback Machine
- T Campbell's Blog at archive.today (archived 2012-11-11)
- The New York Times Article
- An interview with D. G. Chichester, Comics Bulletin