You can always tell when a new series like Marvel’s WandaVision is a hit with audiences when the fandom starts creating its own impressive works of art that draw creative inspiration from the topic at hand. Illustrator Vadim Dvoeglazov’s no stranger to putting channeling his love for live-action fiction into stylised art meant to evoke the feeling of vintage comics, but when it came to getting in on the WandaVision hype, he wanted to bring something a bit different to his new series.
For the past few weeks, as Disney+’s WandaVision built to its polarising finale, Dvoeglazov’s been turning each of the series’ episodes into a different illustration that transforms that chapter of Wanda and Vision’s story into increasingly disturbing comic book covers. When we reached out to Dvoeglazov by email to chat about his WandaVision series, he explained how his past work focused on The Mandalorian made his latest work a no-brainer.
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But after seeing how WandaVision intended to consistently play with its style and tone from episode to episode, Dvoeglazov scrapped his initial plan to make a single piece of art based on the show, and instead decided to chronicle the entire season.
“I was very impressed by the format of the show, which was not previously seen in projects from Marvel, that very attracting mystery and unique energy that grows with each episode, a lot of Easter eggs and interesting details made this show alluring for me from the first episode,” Dvoeglazov told Gizmodo. “As trite as it sounds, perhaps these are the main motivators. Projects which I’m partial to inspire me equally, whether it’s the adventure story of a Mandalorian and a Child, or the story of a witch from Sokovia shrouded in alluring mystery.”
For each illustration, Dvoeglazov wanted to convey how the series’ episodes hit him while also recreating images from the show that both captured the era-specific settings and fit his own choice of vintage aesthetics. Unreliable as theories can be, those also became part of Dvoeglazov’s creative process.
“To be honest, everything happens in the head immediately during the first viewing of the series,” Dvoeglazov said. “I have several ideas and I try to choose the one that will maximally convey the very energy that I absorbed while watching, and at the same time I try to build the composition in such a way that it authentically conveys a recognisable vintage presentation, as in the classic Marvel comics about superheroes.”
Though WandaVision’s come to an end, Dvoeglazov’s series is still a work-in-progress with two more covers inspired by the penultimate episode and season finale to come. He also sees this collection of covers as part of something bigger still.
“I confess that I plunged very deeply into this story, re-read many interesting theories, which, of course, further piques interest before the episodes are released,” Dvoeglazov continued. “WandaVision is one of the first key puzzles, which in the future, together with other paintings, will form one large-scale project, but I really don’t want this story to end on a sad note.”
WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+.