Graphic via Acquire

I was reading Beer and Comics this morning and he had an interesting note about animated web comics. The first animated “comics” I saw were Marvel’s book previews. When I was with Illusion (in a significant way) we were lucky enough to have presented the animated trailer for World War Hulk at out NY Comic Con party. We gave it away on little co-branded USB drives.

The spots were (and maybe still are) developed by a design firm called Motherland. I remember that there was a mad rush for the trailer because Marvel needed it for a panel and the Motherland chaps were stuck outside in line. Since I needed the trailer too (we hadn’t encoded it or stuffed it on a few hundred USB drives needed for that night yet) I told Marvel to sit tight while I ran around the outside of the Javitz Center screaming “Motherland!” like a tool. Luck was with me and I got an ipod with all the juicy video goodness. Since then I’ve been seeing a similar style employed by other publishers.I’m going to say that the Watchmen iTunes animations are very interesting too. So is the new Black Panther TV series via BET (done in a motion comic style). The trailer is online here. MTV Mobile has Robert Kirkman’s Invincible. It’s becoming very very trendy.

This is all well and good except that it’s an old concept. Tell me that the original 1960′s animated Marvel series weren’t motion comics.