If you live in one of the iTunes regions lucky enough to support them you've probably come across motion comics, if not you've probably come across them before now anyway. It's hardly a fresh idea, adding some fancy animation and possibly voice acting to a comic has been done several times before, Watchmen has been around for some time, Broken Angels even got a dvd release.
However Marvel is giving the genre a new push, given the overwhelmingly positive reactions to the Spider-Woman motion comic releases over the last few months on the iTunes Store. Using Spider-Woman was a bold move, the name itself reeks of 90's cheese, and it is easy to discount Jessica Drew as a serious Marvel character on the basis of her super hero name alone, but to do so would be a grave mistake, she has played a large part in recent Marvel arcs and is much more than just a female version of an already well established character (much more so than Jimi B-Woman). Obviously having a big hitter like Bendis writing the story and beautiful art by Maleev helps no end, but no-one was expecting the production quality, love and attention that the release received. Marvel has already followed up with motion versions of it's popular X-Men franchise, and will no doubt turn it's attention to their universe wide Dark Reign event at some point in the near future too.
As to whether or not Motion Comics are just a passing fad or something that will become an essential part of any nerd collection, it is still to early to say. However things turn out in the end it is certainly an interesting way of packaging the medium, and anything that gets it to into the hands of a broader audience can only be a good thing.
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