Beyond Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider-Gwen, and Miguel O'Hara, here are all the Spider-Man variants you need to know from Across the Spider-Verse!

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse eased us into the multiversal weirdness. After introducing Miles, we finally met Peter B. Parker, followed by Spider-Gwen. Soon, things went nuts with a noirish detective Spider-Man, an anime girl from the future, and a cartoon pig. Once all that was done, we got to see a futuristic Spider-Man 2099 interact with a badly animated version with an obsession with pointing.

But this year’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse goes absolutely crazy with Spider-Man variants. Some are throwaway designs for the movie, but there are also many who are deep cuts from Marvel Comics history. Here’s a guide to all the new arachnid heroes and heroines in Across the Spider-Verse:

Spider-Woman Starting with the supporting cast, we have a take on Jessica Drew as Spider-Woman, a mainstay heroine in Marvel Comics who was an Avenger and Agent of both SHIELD and SWORD. Spider-Woman has always had an iffy-at-best connection to Spider-Man. As Luke Cage once pointed out, she’s not related to him in any way and has completely different powers, but stole his gimmick anyway. But hey, it was good enough for her to get her own animated series once upon a time. Her outfit and habit of jumping into action while pregnant is from a solo run from a few years ago.

Jessica Drew’s movie rights are a bit awkward, as the MCU can technically use her…as long as she doesn’t associate with anything spider-related. That means you’ll never see her in costume in an MCU movie, if she’s introduced at all. It’s fitting that she would show up now, as Spider-Woman was pretty damn important in the comic version of Secret Invasion, which inspired the Marvel show on Disney+.

Spider-Punk Before his star-making role in this movie, Hobie Brown was introduced in the Spider-Verse comic event before getting the spotlight in a couple short stories and finally his own miniseries. While the movie made it look like the Kingpin was the big evil authority figure in his world, the comic used Norman Osborn as a Reagan stand-in. Hobie used his powers, fighting skills, and musical talents to fight off Osborn’s symbiote army, and continued to take on his world’s own take on the villains, such as a yuppy Kang the Conqueror and a Taskmaster looking like he’s out of the Misfits. Interestingly, Spider-Punk is not based on a version of Peter Parker or Miles Morales, but the Marvel 616 version of the Prowler. Maybe he and Miles are more similar than they realize.

Spider-Man India Back in the mid-2000s, Marvel collaborated with Gotham Entertainment to do Spider-Man: India, a miniseries about recreating Spider-Man, but in India. Unlike the confidently studly movie version, the comic take on Pavitr Prabhakar is more of a shy loser like Peter Parker. Really, outside of the source of his powers and cultural stuff, they did little to differentiate him from the Peter Parker. Change his guardians to Uncle Bhim and Aunt Maya, change his love interest to Meera Jain, etc.

As for the powers, Pavitr’s are more mystical than science fiction. This lends itself to the Venom symbiote, which is some kind of fluid demon creature in this reality.

Spider-Byte Introduced in 2018’s Vault of Spiders, Margo practically lives online, making the “world wide web” more literal. Usually hanging out in the Peter Parker Memorial Science & Technology Building, Margo was able to enhance her online avatar to have armor and powers, allowing her to fight off cyber criminals. After joining Spider-Gwen in one of the Spider-Verse crossovers, she was able to translate her cyberspace abilities into the real world.

Scarlet Spider Many years ago, Spider-Man was cloned. Then that clone died minutes later and his remains were thrown into a smokestack. Years after that, we discovered that the clone didn’t die after all. He instead wandered around the country under the name Ben Reilly. When Spider-Man became a bit too broody and unhinged in his comics, Ben Reilly returned to remind everyone what a fun “Peter Parker” was like. Under the name Scarlet Spider, the two got in some highly popular adventures in the ’90s. Although they played around with the idea that Ben was the real Spider-Man in the comics, he was killed at the end of the story and crumbled to dust to prove that he was really, absolutely, definitely a clone. Then he came back years later because comics. The movie version plays up both the ’90s art style of the Clone Saga and the fact that being a clone is somehow the worst thing a person can be in comic books.

Web-Slinger The Wild West version of Spider-Man originally cameo’d in Amazing Spider-Man #9 back in 2014. Marvel later expanded on him in an episode of the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon where they brilliantly gave him the villain Doc Ock Holliday. Web-Slinger (real name Patrick O’Hara) and his masked horse eventually received their own comic short story in which he took on a frontier mad scientist version of Morbius.

Spider-Rex Pter Ptarker is probably the most recent Spider variant to show up in Across the Spider-Verse, and from the looks of it, he was only added to the comics because they’d already designed him for the movie. The dino made his debut in mid-2022, after all. The web-swinging T-Rex got his powers from a meteor filled with spiders, because, sure. Probably the most brilliant part of this setup was that Venomsaurus was really a dinosaur that survived falling into the tar pits

Spider-Cat Spider-Cat was originally created for a short story where a housecat had dreams of fighting crime in red and blue tights while fighting a Venom pigeon. The concept was brought back for the Spider-Verse comic, where the poor kitty had its essence devoured by a vampire.

The more popular take is Spider-Man the Cat, a bodega cat who would occasionally accompany the Miles version of Spider-Man in his video game. While this cat did not have any actual powers, its adorable getup more closely resembles the movie version.

Julia Carpenter The second Spider-Woman made her debut in the middle of the original Secret Wars, where she joined the heroes’ side against Dr. Doom and the rest of the villains. Notably, when Spider-Man first received the black costume, he figured its color scheme was an unconscious design choice from having the new Spider-Woman on his mind. Julia ended up being pretty prominent in the ’90s, but fell into semi-obscurity once Jessica Drew entered the spotlight again. Eventually, Julia took the mantle of Madame Web, which will be netting her a movie as early as next year.

Spider-Monkey After Marvel Zombies became a huge hit, Marvel tried to emulate that success with Marvel Apes. A team of heroes ended up in a universe where instead of evolving into humans, apes just evolved into smarter apes. Then there was a whole thing where some of the heroes were really corrupt and Captain America was a vampire, or whatever. They ran out of clever gags almost immediately, but naming their Spider-Man counterpart Spider-Monkey was just too easy of a layup not to use.