About

Spidersona (from spider + persona) refers to fan art in which artists depict themselves or other individuals as Spider-man. The sub-genre gained popularity following the release of 2018 animated film Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Origin

On Twitter, the first use of the word "spidersona" dates back to a June 26th, 2010 tweet by user @itsdrenthe^[1]. Before the release of the 2018 animated film Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse, the word had primarily been used by members of the furry fandom in reference to their spider personas^[2][3].

On October 2nd, 2018, the second trailer for Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse premiered on YouTube^[4]. On the same day, Twitter^[5] user @robcham tweeted that based on a concept of infinite universes in the film, anyone could be Spider-man in some dimension. In another tweet^[6], @robcham posted a depiction of his own Spider-man alter ago, referring to it as a "Spidersona".

Spread

In the following months, portrayals of one's Spider-man alter ego, often tagged with #spidersona hashtag, gained popularity on Twitter, Tumblr and DeviantArt. On December 21st, 2018, Twitter^[7] user @hateehateeyo posted a fan art image which gained over 20,000 retweets within three weeks (shown below, left). On December 29th, 2018, Twitter^[8] user @TalunsArt posted a fan art of Spider-man presented as a tyrannosaurus (shown below, center). Another popular fan art, posted by Twitter^[9] user @drunkenfix on December 31st, 2018, gained over 900 retweets within eight days (shown below, right).

On December 31st, 2018, Twitter^[10] user @spidersona called for artists posting Spidersona art not to mention her account in their posts.

On January 4th, 2019, comic book artist Tony Moore posted his version of Spidersona to Facebook^[11].

The trend was covered by several news outlets, including articles by Polygon^[12], Comicbook^[13] and Bleeding Cool^[14].

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References