Dexter Early Cuts Review (a few minor spoilers)

I'm looking forward to tonight's episode of Dexter. The Showtime series has from it's beginning been a dark reflection of mainstream superhero comics. All the elements are there: Dexter is a vigilante who works for the police as a day job. Dexter has unusual abilities (he can often recognize others with a dark side) with a dramatic origin. Special training. More recently in the new season Dexter, Julia Stiles is trying out to be his new sidekick.
I'm not the first to notice this connection. In the continuity of the show there is a comic based on Dexter's work. Showtime has been promoting Dexter for years at ComicCon. And last year Sho.com has been running webisodes of a Dexter animated series called "Early Cuts" which features the art of many great cartoonist.

Webisode Review
Title: Dexter Early Cuts http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/webisodes.do
Creator(s): Michael C. Hall, Kyle Baker, Ty Templeton, Andre Vera Martinez, Devin Lawson, Tim Schlattmann, Lauren Gussis, Bill Sienkiewicz and David Mack.

Art

All of the art is really spot on though the style varies from artist to artist. Sometimes the images are a little to spot on of actor Michael C. Hall which is odd when some things are rotoscoped and others are not. My favorite work is the Dark Echo story illustrated by Sienkiewicz and Mack. They compliment each other well and really match the tone of the series.
The animation is fairly static. It's closer to animated panels of a webcomic than an animated series. Most of the time this isn't an issue but there is one conversation in particular where the mouth animation took me out of the story.

Writing
The writing blends in perfectly with the show because it is written by members of the writing staff. Being an animated series allows them to create sequences that may be too expensive or difficult to film. Yet they don't over do it.


Sound

If you are a fan of Michael C. Hall's narration on the show prepare for some ear candy. Thanks to the static animation much of the dialogue that would be present in live action is replaced with narration. It is really effective with Dexter because it puts the audience in an uncomfortable place next to Dexter's thoughts.

Overall
This is one of my dream projects. Before this project came out I was keeping an ear toward my friends in LA hoping they would make some contact on Dexter I could pitch a Dexter webcomic to (my idea was a parrallell series that would retell each episode of the show from different characters points of view). This series is an even better idea. And the animation is a better idea.
http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/webisodes.do