I have just been working on a little fan fiction as an exercise. I was watching the new Into the Spiderverse and thought about some of the original fanfic Marvel characters that I had rolling around in my head. More than once, I’ve had these characters address existing Marvel characters like Spider-man, and I thought that writing one down would be a good exercise. I spend a lot of time writing about Spider-Man’s internal thought process, convincing myself that I have a decent grasp of the character, but when I got to the character I had thought up (and the position he was occupying in the story) I had a disheartening flash of memory.

The Spider-Man that I was most familiar with was the 90’s cartoon. One of the main side characters from that cartoon that I never saw revisited in other cartoons or movies (until recently) was Madame Webb. Because this character was not in any of the comic storylines for Spider-Man that I had read in the past ten years, I had almost forgotten about her. I was only reminded of her existence when her character was briefly reintroduced a few years back for a short while and then a new Marvel movie focusing on her character was announced earlier this year. The disappointing thing was that she functioned in the Spider-Man cartoon in almost the same way that I was fan-writing my character. Furthermore, after a bit of internet research, I discovered that her powerset and even some character design elements were very similar as well.  It was almost like I was doing the same gender-bending palate swap garbage writing that I had privately mocked just recently. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun and everything that we think of has been done before. Who knows what ‘original’ ideas we may be having that are prompted by something from our past or childhood that we only vaguely remember?

Fortunately, I’m just stubborn enough to say “No, my character shall not be a derivative gender swap, there will be meaningful and relevant differences, and the decision to put a name to such a character will be weightier than throwing a name out to the internet and never being able to publish it for myself.”

So if I do put this piece on the blog, I don’t think I reveal any settled on names just yet.

At any rate, the main depressing thought was that my character also wore a trench coat, and had the telepathy superpower which would let him know what Spider-Man was thinking as I the viewer know from watching the cartoon and reading the comics. I also feel that most fictional characters start with a small nugget of self-insert fiction.

So where my brain went first was, in the worst-case scenario, I could use the multiverse card and just say that there could be any number of variations on Spider-Man’s supporting cast out there. A male Madam Webb is easy enough to think of. A swapped costume color pallet is also easy to picture. I think this would be derivative if it was left at that. However, just because you have a clear image of a character in mind doesn’t mean you need to leave it at that. What can be the same, and what should be different? I can use these questions to make interesting new characters like Noir Spider-Man or Spider-Gwen. But also, thinking about it made me realize that the character had enough original design behind it that I could swerve away from settling on a gender-swapped Madame Webb.

Powersets and character designs do not have to be wholly original to not be derivative. If character and motivations are unique enough, we can be forgiven for some similarities. I mean how many different Spider-Men, Kryptonians, and members of the Bat Family have we seen over the years? So, my fanfic character can share taste in fashion with older more established characters. He can even have a similar skill set. The character just needs to be different enough to make a different in the story. I can have the character be more active, less cryptic, and more personal than a mission giver. So, even if a character is similar to or inspired by an existing one, there is still a lot of room for creative input and something new to show.