Art-Style is the Future: The Spider-Verse as a Model for Conceptualizing and Visualizing Graphic Narratives in Visual Media

Abstract

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a watershed moment in American animation. A stylized animated adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man comics that drew directly on the aesthetics and visual language of comics, Into the Spider-Verse signaled a stylistic shift toward stylized aesthetics and imagery that aligned narrative and visuals and diverged from photorealistic aesthetics by drawing from diverse visual languages and aesthetics. The influence of Into the Spider-Verse, and its 2023 sequel Across the Spider-Verse, on the visual style of American animation serves as context for an exploration of how the films’ synthesis of aesthetics, visual languages and narratives from multiple visual mediums can inspire creators to reframe how they conceive of graphic narratives, visualize narrative, and adapt graphic narratives across visual mediums. The intersection between aesthetics and narrative in the Spider-Verse films challenges an emphasis on realism in the aesthetics of visual narratives in mainstream American visual narrative media that flatten visual signatures. The Spider-Verse films contest this emphasis on a mainstream stage and arrive in a landscape where audiences have greater access to a diverse visual storytelling aesthetics modes and mediums. This exploration uses analysis aesthetics and the synthesis of visual languages in the Spider-Verse films to demonstrate how the films offer a model for conceptualizing and visualizing narratives and explore how the convergence of aesthetics and visual language in the depiction of characters, environments, and scenes in the Spider-Verse films inspire creators to reframe the thinking that informs the conceptualizing, writing, and visualizing stories for scripted media.