Exploring the Marvel Universe Online

In the wake of yesterday's formal announcement of the Marvel Online title, Gamespot has an interview with 'Cryptic Studios' creative director, Jack Emmert, and Marvel Entertainment's vice president of Interactive, Ames Kirshen — as well as Microsoft Game Studios' senior director of business development, Frank Pape. They discuss the details of a game on Windows and the 360 (both will play in the same world), how the game will reflect the comics, and why Cryptic is involved. From the article: "Cryptic with their great pedigree, their great track record on the City of Heroes franchise — it was the perfect partner. We have access to all the characters in the history and lore of the Marvel universe to put into this game. So we're super excited. I mean this is, for an MMO player and for folks on the console that want to play an MMO and bringing in a new audience, it's as compelling a statement as we can make." And here I thought they were going to talk about that little multi-year lawsuit between Cryptic and Marvel.

Comments

Re:I never got the "men in tights" thing...

[Chris Burke]

I'd couldn't prove it, but my thought is that the skin tight suits is a result of the historical necessity to keep art costs down in comics.

Drawing clothes is extra work. First you draw the body, then you have to draw the clothes over that body such that they appear to hang naturally.

Or you could just draw the body, and then color it to look like the hero is wearing clothes, maybe add a couple pieces of flair. It's faster, ergo cheaper. Add fifty years and maybe it isn't financially necessary for publishers like Marvel but it has basically become a tradition.

I understand there's a similar explanation for why characters in Japanese comics have crazy-colored hair. Everyone in Japan has black hair, so in B&W comics it made sense to just leave the hair blank to save money and prevent printing problems and their readers just naturally filled it in with the expected color. When they started using color printing, the artists thought why fill in that blank space with black when you could use pink or blue? This, too, then becomes a tradition.