Spider-Man masks, superhero pins, and comic book iconography are present at Minneapolis, New York City, and other protests around the United States. Why is Punisher big with cops? What is it about Spider-Man? There’s a long tradition of co-opting Marvel and DC heroes and villains for protests.
Earlier this week, the police killing of George Floyd prompted a large group of protestors to march across the Brooklyn Bridge in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and in defiance of New York City’s 8pm curfew. One of the protesters garnered more attention than the rest when they clambered up onto a ledge on one of the bridge’s pillars and held up a cardboard sign proclaiming “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” Cheers erupted.
They were dressed head-to-toe as Spider-Man.
A huge development at the Manhattan Bridge protest right now pic.twitter.com/rCH0GLDgEe
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In the video above, posted by Anya Volz, one person in the crowd shouts “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us,” quoting from a scene in 2002’s Spider-Man, in which a multiracial crowd of New Yorkers pelts the Green Goblin with debris from the Queensboro Bridge. Shortly before the video cuts off, another person can be heard asking the costumed protestor to “do a flip,” a reference to a Queens-set scene in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Spider-Man and Batman (seen above at a June 3 protest in Washington, D. C.) aren’t the only comic book characters whose iconography has been brought to protest locations over the last two weeks — non-protestors have done it, too. In Chicago, federal prosecutors arrested Timothy O’Donnell after he admitted to being the looter photographed placing a lit object inside the gas tank of a Chicago police vehicle. At the time, he was wearing a mask modeled after ones worn in last year’s Joker.
