‘Across the Spider-Verse’ Introduced Everyone’s New Favorite Spidey

There are many Spideys out there, and we all love some better than others. The joy of a movie like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is that it gives fans many different versions of our favorite hero to love and root for. Like Spider-Punk. Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya) is a character who exists in the world of the comics, but there’s not a lot about him out there. So when we finally got to meet him in action in Across the Spider-Verse, fans quickly realized one simple fact: Hobie rules.

Spider-Punk is, well, punk. He’s the embodiment of the punk mentality popular in the United Kingdom and, as we saw with Spider-Verse, he’s very much anti-establishment. It isn’t surprising that Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) connected with Hobie and that the two were friends in the midst of the Spider Society because she also pushes back at the idea of power. Then again, so do all of our Spider-Babes. But Hobie is the perfect look into the buck-the-system ideals of the punk movement while also being extremely cool. And the internet is absolutely in love with him.

Hobie, who is from London, talks fast and is a little hard to understand if you don’t know that accent, but then again, who cares? He’s perfect and we love him.

Since the release of Across the Spider-Verse, fans are suddenly realizing that a Spider-Man who wants to fight the system, even if it means fighting his own Spider-people, is cool. Let me tell you, when Hobie decides that the Spider Society isn’t for him because he hates what Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) is doing to Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), I knew that he was perfect.

Would die for Spider-Punk

The animation for Hobie is one of the cooler aspects of his character. He’s constantly shifting in his style, so when he’s standing next to a character like Gwen, who is based more on a color palette than her design changing all that much, you can really see it shine. He’s rock-n-roll, fueled by his hatred of the system and how it hurts those around him, and he’s not afraid to voice his issues.

So it really isn’t that surprising that the internet is in love with Hobie and his actions, just as Gwen seemingly is.

Frankly, we don’t get enough of him throughout the film. That’s not a diss on Across the Spider-Verse; there were a lot of Spider-people to tackle. But Hobie leaves pretty quickly during Miguel’s fight with Miles and I wish we had more of him in the film. The love that audiences have shows that a character like Hobie Brown is a welcome new look into the world of Spider-Man. He is important to Gwen’s story, so I hope that in Beyond the Spider-Verse, we’ll get to see more of Spider-Punk as they try to figure out how to fight back against Miles Morales’ canon.

(featured image: Sony Pictures Animation)