Spider-Verse’s wheelchair-using ‘Spider-Man’ began with fan art

There’s a new Spider-Verse in town” the thing we’re most excited to see is the resurgence of the “spidersona” — the joyful explosion of art as fans and artists show off how they’d like to look if they were a part of the Spider-Verse. We’ve got goo spiders, and dewspidersSpiders and other spiders cool spooky fingers” man-spiders, and… hm. This one is a pelican? It’s so sweet of them.

But the biggest fan-art spidersona out there is undoubtedly Sun-Spider — because she actually made it into Across the Spider-Verse.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.]

Image: Sony Pictures

If you’ve seen Across the Spider-Verse, then you know — when Miles is fleeing from an entire multiverse of spider-persons, the group includes a wheelchair-using spider who clocks Miles with one of her crutches. After making a joke on how Spider-Mans often use humor as crutches, she apologizes because the joke was so bad. This shows that you have a good understanding of Spider humor.

That’s not just any spider — she’s Sun-Spider (originally Sunspider), created by cartoonist Dayn Broder.

Broder is a freelance designer and comics editor who first tweeted Sunspider Art in the aftermath of Into the Spider-Verse’s 2018 release. When Marvel released’s 2018 release, it was a year after. Spider-Verse miniseries, the company reached out to more than a dozen spidersona artists to commission new art of their inventions and feature them in the pages of the series — and Broder was on the list.

“As a disabled person, I almost never get to see any disabled super heroes,” Broder wrote in the issue. “l wanted to create someone like me: an ambulatory wheelchair user, who can still kick butt in her own modified way. Sun-Spider is hyper-flexible, though this does have drawbacks since it means she requires 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’s Edge of Spider-Verse, Sun-Spider (aka Charlotte Webber) got her own story from 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-persons trying to — what else? — save the multiverse.

And now Charlotte is voiced by comedian Danielle Perez, herself a wheelchair user, and she’s bumping shoulders with the likes of Ben Reilly and Jess Drew in Across the Spider-Verse. It’s a lovely full-circle moment for fandom: Into the Spider-VerseThe original film inspired fans who, in turn, helped inspire the sequel. All of this shows that the movie is genuinely committed to the concept that anybody can be Spider-Man.