ReadItDaddy's Picture Book of the Week - Week Ending 21st June 2019: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - The Art of the Movie" by Ramin Zahed and various artists (Titan)

It's taken absolutely ages for us to get hold of a copy of this, and in the end it was well worth the 8 MONTH WAIT (Yes, it really has been that long since I ordered it).

It's not hard to see why "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - The Art of the Movie" by Ramin Zahed was out of stock for so long just about everywhere (we couldn't even find a copy when we visited the US recently - not that I would have fancied trying to get this hefty tome into my baggage allowance!)

Chronicling probably the best movie of 2018 with a metric ton of pre-production art, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's awesome re-imagining of Miles Morales' Spider-Man origin story was so good it even won an Oscar (quite right too!)

But the movie wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for a distinct mindset from the artists who worked on it. Given some pretty loose reins by Sony Pictures / Marvel, Lord and Miller instructed their artists to produce an animated movie like no other, using groundbreaking techniques of building out an entire Spider-World in CGI but using traditional art and comic techniques to really bring the movie to life in an eye-popping way.

Does whatever a spider can...!

As huge fans of Spider-Man, both C and I wanted to see the movie as soon as we first saw the trailer, and absolutely loved every second of it (we were very lucky to have a cinema to ourselves for a really early morning preview showing, and dang, that was a good way to see this film!)

Back to the book, and inside you'll find some utterly incredible artwork from some of the most talented artists in the business, all with that same remit - do something that will be unforgettable, perhaps even genre-defining.

Gahd wouldn't it be great to be able to draw like this!

Everyone rose to the challenge, inspired by the original comics, the newer characters and of course the delicious possibilities that playing in multiple spider-man realms would present. The rest, as they say, is history but this book beautifully brings all that together.

It's not perfect by any means. I could probably have done with a lot less scenic / interior stuff, and a heck of a lot more character artwork (characters such as Spider-Man Noir barely get a mention and there's not nearly enough Spider-Gwen in here for C - who loves her to bits!) but it's still one of the most impressive art books we've ever laid our hands on.

Some great character art but we'd have loved a lot more.

Well worth the wait then!

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - The Art of the Movie" by Ramin Zahed and various artists is out now, published by Titan (self purchased - not provided for review).