Brief Synopsis: Miles Morales is a biracial teenager living in a New York City where the best crimefighter around is unarguably Spider-Man — much to the chagrin of Miles’ father, a police officer who does not share Miles’ admiration for the web-slinging vigilante. But that’s only one reason the relationship between Miles and his father is strained. Miles is exceptionally gifted, both academically and artistically, but the weight of expectations is overwhelming him, so he retreats to an abandoned subway station to paint graffiti with his Uncle Aaron…and gets bitten by a radioactive spider. Sound familiar? With newfound Spidey powers, Miles Morales is thrown into a universe (or multiverse) that seem out of his league. In the abandoned station, he stumbles upon Wilson Fisk’s next nefarious scheme: a particle accelerator that can open a window to parallel universes, but could destroy reality itself. The particle accelerator works long enough for multiple Spider-People to be tossed into Miles’ universe, where they form the weirdest team of superheroes New York has ever seen. Miles has to learn what it means to wear the Spider-Man mask in time to web up, and save the multi-verse.

The artwork for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is beyond words. From the color palette to the character designs to the shape of Miles Morales’ New York City — it all feeds into this dynamic, mesmerizing energy that leaves the audience breathless. The fact that Spider-Verse has a super solid screenplay and great characters is almost window dressing in a film that dared to stylize an animated movie to feel like a living comic book: high contrasting colors to give characters an extra pop (like how Gwen is usually outlined with a neon pink or sea-green), panel overlays, thought bubbles to accompany Miles’ voiceover narration, onomatopoeia words like “Boom” or “Thoink” (or my personal favorite — “Bagel!”), and so much more. Spider-Verse is a wonderful love letter to comic book readers of all generations, a special reward for fans who will feel like this film is a personal message for them. But for people who aren’t hardcore comic book readers and just a giant fan of Spider-Man (like me), the novelty of the art design is more than enough to understand immediately why people are calling Spider-Verse a game changer for animation. For myself at least, the actual scenes aren’t what I remember; it’s one specific image at a time…Miles Morales diving headfirst into the welcoming arms of the city landscape, and it’s just his red hoodie and black jacket silhouetted against a blue gradient night sky…Miles and the alternate Peter Parker swinging on their webs (as “Thwips’” with every web shot hover over them) with a computer modem gripped between them, backdropped by a beautiful autumn forest with white birch trees…and what’s wonderful about Spider-Verse is that it has so many beautiful still images that every person is going to walk away from the film with a collection of treasured mages that stick in their minds.