A gay Spider-Man is about to enter Marvel’s Spider-verse
BY ORLY LYONNE
Last month out comic writer Steve Foxe revealed the upcoming debut of the first queer Spider-man: Web-Weaver, reports John Russell at LGBTQNation.com.
The character will make his first appearance in September’s fifth issue of Edge of Spider-Verse. From what the Eisner award-nominated Foxe has said on Twitter, it sounds like Web-Weaver will be an unapologetically fab and femme superhero.
“Something I realized immediately when conceiving Web-Weaver is that he can’t—and shouldn’t—represent ALL gay men. No single character can,” Foxe wrote in a tweet last month. “His fearlessly femme identity is central to who he is, but it’s not the STORY…which you can experience for yourself in September!”
“The world isn’t as simple as a straight white guy,” Tom Holland told The Sunday Times. “It doesn’t end there, and these films need to represent more than one type of person.”
Marvel’s official description of the character calls him a “not-so-mild mannered fashion designer” whose spider-powers allow him to show us “a very different kind of Spider-Slayer.”
Comic artist Kris Anka designed the character’s look and described some of his high fashion influences on Twitter. “I looked at a lot of McQueen and Mugler for this as inspiration,” he wrote. “I cast a wide net for the original designs while also looking at new and unique spiders that @steve_foxe has recommended, which eventually paired down to this look.”
The five-part Edge of Spider-Verse series, written by Foxe, Mark Bagley, Dan Slott, Alex Segura, and Karla Pacheco, launches this month, reports LGBTQNation.com.
It’s clearly too early to start speculating whether Web-Weaver could make it into a future Spider-Man film, but it is not totally out of the realm of possibility. At least two actors who have played the hero have said they’re open to more queerness in the movies.
“The world isn’t as simple as a straight white guy,” Tom Holland told The Sunday Times in 2019. “It doesn’t end there, and these films need to represent more than one type of person.”
And in 2013, Andrew Garfield told Entertainment Weekly that he’d questioned the character’s sexuality. “Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!… So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”
