App Review – The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story

Like any new technology, the field of e-books for kids is still experiencing growing pains. In recent history there have been a few exceptional examples of e-books done right, most notably with the classic The Monster at the End of this Book starring the loveable, cute, and furry Grover, as well as this year’s exceptional, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Now Marvel Comics has gotten into the game with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story, currently available for the iPhone and iPad for $6.99. Can the House of Ideas keep up with Sesame Street and Charlie Brown? Let’s take a look.

The Origin of Origins

This spring, Marvel introduced a new line of kid’s books called An Origin Story, featuring, well, the origin stories of notable Marvel heroes like Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, and your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Now, kid’s superhero books are generally pretty shoddy. The art is usually sub-par, the dialog is poorly written, and the author is racing towards the moral of the story – sharing is super, littering is bad, etc. – without even trying to create an interesting plot. As the parent who has to read these stories over and over again, it can get a little tiresome. However, Marvel has done its best to rise above these common kid’s book weaknesses, to create a series that could easily become heirlooms for readers to pass on to their kids someday, much like the Little Golden Books most of us grew up reading and remember so fondly.

To begin with, the artwork across the whole series is fantastic. Rather than traditional comic book line art, they use paintings to tell the story instead, yet they maintain an appropriate level of cartoonishness that fits the story really well. Honestly, the art is so good, it wouldn’t be out of line to buy an extra copy to cut out some of the more action-packed pictures to hang on the wall of your kid’s room.

The plots are all a retelling of the character’s origin story, so you know it’s good. There’s still a message for kids to take away (say it with me now, “With great power comes great responsibility”), but, like in the original comics, it’s woven into the story, rather than being the point of the story. They’re a great read and a lot of fun to experience with a kid just discovering these classic superheroes.

The App

So for The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story iOS app, Marvel has essentially taken a great kid’s book and translated it to a digital format. As a bonus, the narration is read by none other than Stan “The Man” Lee himself (Excelsior!). Already it’s worth seven bucks. But they really take it up a notch by including some nicely done “animated” sequences. They use the same static artwork, but, through “camera” movement or strategically placing the art in progression across the page, it looks like Spider-Man is flipping and flying through the air. The effect looks great and really adds to the excitement of the story. Lee’s narration is mostly spot-on, and part of the fun is to hear his New York accent slip through with the occasional “Spida-Man”.

The only complaint I might have with the narration, is that there’s no indicator of where Lee is on the page. Just about every other e-book for kids has a glow around the word as the narrator speaks it, which helps little folks follow along. In this case, if your kid isn’t quite up to reading level yet (like my 4-year old daughter), they might not quite understand when to turn the page. I had to explain to my daughter a couple of times that she had to wait for the man to stop talking before she turned the page. But even that resulted in a few early turns when Lee took a dramatic pause. The no-glow word is a minor complaint, but it’s a bit surprising that it’s been left out since it’s pretty much a standard feature for kid’s e-books at this point.

Where Origins resembles other e-books, though, is the addition of some interactive elements that strive to keep kids coming back for more. Unfortunately, these are a bit hit-or-miss. The first instance gives kids the chance to crank up the experimental equipment that irradiates the spider that gives Peter Parker his powers. The motion is fun and simple – just twirl your finger around in a circle on the designated area – and you can actually hear the whir of the machine speed up as you turn. It adds a nice level of involvement. But then, right after Peter’s bitten, you have to shake the radioactive spider off his hand by clumsily turning the iPhone/iPad. Because you’re moving, you can’t really see the interaction animation to know if you’re doing it correctly, and there’s a good chance you might shake right through the goal of throwing the spider off Peter’s hand. Later, you have to balance Crusher Hogan, the professional wrestler that Spider-Man takes on in his first public appearance, while Peter holds him up over his head. But the responsiveness of the app to the turning motion feels a bit delayed; making it harder than it should be to complete what is an inessential part of the story. However, there’s another sequence where you play a sort of mini-game involving properly-timed taps to make Spider-Man continue his web-slinging journey across the Big Apple. This one is so much fun that I’d pay $.99 to play it as a separate game. So it’s not that the interaction is necessarily bad, it’s just uneven, which makes it frustrating more than anything else.

If you get annoyed with the less-effective interactive aspects, you can turn off all interactivity by using the auto-page turn feature, or there’s a spider-webbed arrow that will let you skip just that one section. And if there’s one you’d like to revisit (like the web-slinging one), you can choose them individually from a separate menu at the bottom of the screen.

There’s also a sort of treasure hunt game scattered throughout the story, which challenges kids to find six Spider-Man symbols hidden on the page. Once they find all six, they’re given a famous Marvel No-Prize, which is a cute, but ultimately unrewarding touch. It’s too bad accomplishing this goal couldn’t have opened up a secret area with a different mini-game, downloadable wallpapers or something else a little more exciting. Instead, Marvelite parents are left trying to explain what a No-Prize is to a toddler, which, take it from me, is no easy task. Again, this is a minor complaint, but it would have really helped push this app above and beyond to offer a little more.

The Verdict

Even with some iffy interactive features, you still get a classic tale of superhero canon, narrated by one of the guys that created Spider-Man, plus some cool animation effects, making the app well worth $6.99. (It doesn’t hurt that the physical book is $9.00 on Amazon before shipping, either.) There’s not much that really make this stand out from other e-books, but the story and the artwork outweighs the lacking aspects in this case.

Hopefully Marvel will continue to give Captain America, the X-Men, and the rest of the Origins books the iOS treatment, because they’re off to a pretty good start with The Amazing Spider-Man: An Origin Story. With a few tweaks and additional user-experience consideration, they could rival some of the better e-books on the market today and help attract a whole new generation of fans.