

The sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse takes everything further. The premise was that a teenager from Brooklyn, Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), became the Spider-Man of his own universe, only to discover that countless other universes had countless web-slinging, wall-climbing equivalents, including our old friend Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), a Looney Tunes-style pig called Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), and a brooding 1930s vigilante, Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), who existed in black and white. A fairytale 'for the age of Marvel movies' And yet, most impressively of all, the many innovations were bound up in the heartfelt story and loveable characters. The film was a game-changer – a Pop-Art extravaganza that took the medium to astonishing new places.

Some parts looked painted, some looked hand-drawn, some looked as if they had been printed on cheap paper, complete with the Ben-Day dots that Roy Lichtenstein put in his paintings. One of surprisingly few big-screen superhero animations, it was also the first to exploit the idea of alternate universes, and the only one to reproduce the variety of visual styles and techniques that you can see when you flip through a stack of comics.

It feels as if a new Spider-Man film has come out every year for the past two decades, but 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse somersaults over the rest of them.
