There’s a new Spider-Verse in town, and what we’re most looking forward to is the resurgence of the “spidersona” – the joyous explosion of art as fans and artists show how they’d like to look if they were a part of the Spider-Verse. We have good spidersAnd dew spidersand spin with cool creepy fingersAnd man spidersand… hmm. This is a pelican? I love that for them.
But the biggest fan art spidersona out there is undoubtedly Sun-Spider – because she really made it About the Spider-Verse.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.]
Image: Sony Pictures
If you’ve seen it About the Spider-VerseThen you know – when Miles is on the run from an entire multiverse of spider-persons, the group includes a wheelchair-using spider who clocks Miles with one of her crutches. Then she jokes about how Spider-Mans tends to use humor as a mainstay, followed by an apology for that joke being so terrible. (Showing a real understanding of spider humor.)
That’s not just any spider – she’s Sun-Spider (originally Sunspider), created by cartoonist Dayn Broder.
A comics editor, designer and freelance writerBroder first tweeted their Sunspider art in the wake of In the Spider-Versethe 2018 issue. A year later, as Marvel got ready a new Spider verse miniseriesthe company contacted more than a dozen spidersona artists to have new art made from their inventions and put it in the pages of the series – and Broder was on the list.
“As a disabled person, I almost never get to see disabled superheroes,” Broder wrote in the song. “I wanted to create someone like me: an ambulant wheelchair user, who can still pedal in her own adapted way. Sun-Spider is hyper-flexible, but that also has its drawbacks, as it means she needs extra stability, and the crutches help with that.”
The crutches also shoot webs – because that rules.
Image: Dayna Broder/Marvel Comics
Image: Josemaria Casanovas/Marvel Comics
In 2022 Edge of Spider-Verse, Sun-Spider (aka Charlotte Webber) was given her own story by writer Tee Franklin and artist Jethro Morales, in which she went to prom, battled her own universe’s Doc Ock, and was recruited into a group of spider characters who tried – what else? – save the multiverse.
And now Charlotte is voiced by comedian Danielle Perez, a wheelchair user herself, and clashes with the likes of Ben Reilly and Jess Drew in About the Spider-Verse. It’s a nice circular moment for fandom: In the Spider-Verse inspired its fans, and fans in turn took part in inspiring the sequel. It all shows a real commitment to the power of the idea that anyone can be Spider-Man.