The Best New Spider-Beings In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

The Best New Spider-Beings In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse https://ift.tt/FdogIUE

In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, we met a lot of Spider-Entities. Hundreds, at least, and possibly a thousand or more. Just about every Spider-Man suit you've ever seen is represented here. But we're not here to talk about a bunch of slightly different Peter Parkers. In fact, we're not about to talk about Peter Parker at all, because the best new Spider-People we meet in Across the Spider-Verse are all somebody else. Or some thing else, in some cases--several of them aren't human at all.

That's a large part of the magic of the Spider-Verse: we get to meet so many Spider-Folks who aren't Peter Parker. Which is great, because we've had more than our fair share of those Spider-Men on the big screen. Now it's time for the others to get their time in the sun.

Warning: There are some spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But this is just a fun feature and we're not going to talk about the plot much.

It may be somewhat difficult to believe, but nearly all the Spider-Beings who get meaningful screen time actually do originate in the comics, even the animal ones. See, a few years before we had the first Spider-Verse movie, which came out in 2018, we had a Spider-Verse event in the comics back in 2014. In this story, Spiders from every dimension formed the Web-Warriors, a trans-dimensional Avengers-esque group made up exclusively of Spider-People, in order to defend themselves against a group of multiversal hunters dedicated to killing every single Spider-Being.

So, yeah, nearly every outlandish new Spider-Person we meet in Across the Spider-Verse has origins in the comics, with many being introduced specifically in these Spider-Verse comics. So yes, even the horse came from the comics.

Check out our list of our favorite new Spider-Folks that we met in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse below.

10. Spider-Therapist

Sony Pictures

I know I said this list wouldn't have any Peter Parkers in it, but we actually don't know who the Spider-Therapist is who sarcastically mocks his patient, a different Spider-Man, for being upset his uncle died. He could definitely be Peter. We have no clue. But the idea that there's a Spider-Man who just uses his powers for therapeutic purposes is pretty good--his heightened Spider-Senses would probably be helpful for reading his patients. Though he might want to work on his bedside manner a little bit.

9. Spider-Cat

This house cat-turned-superhero is famous not just for being a cat who's a Spider-Person--he actually was killed battling the Inheritors, which is upsetting to think about. But fortunately he makes it through his 10 seconds of screen time in Across the Spider-Verse alive.

8. Scarlet Spider (Ben Reilly)

This growling and melodramatic clone of Peter Parker (voiced by Andy Samberg!) only gets a few random lines here and there, but every single one of them is a great joke. And trust me, he's earned that moodiness--his backstory is that he was killed and resurrected over and over by his creator, who was using Ben to refine his cloning tech. Pretty traumatic.

7. Spider-Man India (Pavitr Prabhakar)

Voiced by Karan Soni, the comedian who played the cabbie in the Deadpool movies, Pavitr is a delightful contrast to all the other Spider-folks because he lacks a traumatic backstory--his is supposed to go down during this film, but Miles prevents it. It's nice to have a happy Spider-Man for once. Side note: His city of Mumbattan is the best location that has ever been in a Marvel movie.

6. Spider-Rex (Pter Ptarker)

An actual dinosaur from a version of prehistoric Earth (Earth-66) where dinosaurs were apparently sentient. Spider-Rex actually began life as a pteradon named Pter Ptarker. But when he was attacked by a T Rex, the pair were nailed by a meteor filled with radioactive space spiders and swapped bodies, and they both suddenly had superpowers. Pter, now in the T Rex body, won that one.

5. Spider-UK (Malala Windsor)

This female version of Spider-UK who's wearing a burqa isn't from the comics, but she's likely a reference to Malala Yousefzai, the well known Pakistani activist who has been living in the UK since the Pakistani Taliban nearly assassinated her when she was a teenager. Windsor, by the way, is the surname of the British royal family.

4. Sun-Spider (Charlotte Webber)

The pun name is obviously amazing, but even better is that she's in a wheelchair that can swap its wheels for sick mechanical spider legs on the fly. Sun-Spider is actually a fan creation inspired by the first Spider-Verse film who was then introduced in one of the Spider-Verse comics in 2019. And not only did she get to have a cool featured action moment while all the Spider-Folks are chasing Miles around the Spider-Society--she also gets to deliver a pun. Technically that makes her a more legit Spider-Man than most of the other ones we met in this movie.

3. Spider-Horse and the Web-Slinger (Patrick O'Hara)

These two--a Wild West gunslinger and his horse, who were both bitten by the same radioactive spider and have a telepathic bond as a result--are a pretty great Lone Ranger joke. And, honestly, few things hit the spot like a horse shooting spider webs out of their hooves. It's just such a weird image and I have no desire to get it out of my head.

2. Spider-Mobile (Peter Parkedcar)

In the comics, this sentient car is basically just one of the random background Spider-People from a Spider-Verse comic, but apparently the idea was that he comes from a dimension that's basically Pixar's Cars. And I gotta say that I would definitely watch Marvel's Cars--if Phil Lord and Chris Miller are involved, anyway.

1. Spider-Punk (Hobie Brown)

Daniel Kaluuya's Spider-Punk is the best character in the whole dang movie, an agent of chaos who encourages all defiance of authority. Normally a character like this would be kind of obnoxious in the hands of movie screenwriters, but instead Hobie is just the cool uncle who has some very on-point life lessons to share with the youngsters. Hobie knows what he's talking about, kids.

Fun fact: Due to a miscommunication, Spider-Punk was originally designed to be Spider-UK as a mistake. But Marvel liked the look of him so much that they recycled it for Spider-Punk, who was American in the comics. So making him be British in the film could potentially be a nod to that odd real-life origin.