Webspinna Battle Artist's Statement

This Webspinna Battle was a really cool experiment and I am grateful for how well it all turned out. To be honest, I was very nervous about how the final product would look, but I’m so glad that it all turned out well. When we picked the theme “Heroes vs. Villains”, I knew that there could be several different directions we might take. I wanted to go with this theme because of my familiarity with the superhero genre, but I also wanted to branch out into other heroes and villains with whom we might be familiar. Keala had the really great idea of making the story a little more dark than we had originally conceived it to be. This included having the hero turn into a villain by the end of the battle. I was really surprised and grateful for how much depth this added.

I love to read comic books, particularly Marvel comics, and those certainly played a role in the clips that we chose. One particular story arc that I enjoy is the Civil War story arc, which also plays around with the idea that heroes can become villains by pitting the heroes against one another, particularly Iron Man and Captain America. When these two former teammates become foes and Captain America dies standing up for what he believes in, it makes Tony Stark appear to be a villain. Our battle had a similar structure. Things started off more funny and cartoony before transitioning into something much more dark and sinister. Even the sadistic Joker was defeated by something dark that came over the Black Widow.

As I read through the article by Lethem, I realized that this assignment was similar to our Round Robin assignment earlier this semester. He talked in the beginning about how the writer of Lolita took his story from another writer. Bob Dylan borrowed his themes heavily from others. We took something that already existed and used it as a springboard to make something new. However, in this case we were more aware of the art we were using for our purpose. It was really cool to see it become something new. I used some really obscure clips and it was fun to see them developed to create a character with new personality.

I also thought that it was really cool how the performance itself made the story unique. Because we had to struggle and improvise when something didn’t work exactly as we wanted it to, the story and characters changed into something that they wouldn’t have been otherwise.