'Cupcake, The Terrible Spider'

Meet ‘Cupcake,’ the terrible spider. She is a marionette whose six out of eight legs are moveable.

Strung in such a manner that tipping her X-shaped controller left or right will move three legs—two on one side and a third on the other—merely tilting her back and forth gives her a creepy gait. The red pattern on her underbelly is reminiscent of a black widow’s marking, but she is a unique species in her own right.

She gets her name from the shape of her head, which at a certain stage of production reminds one of a cupcake (albeit a cupcake topped with tiny eyeballs). I thought the name helped offset her otherwise gruesome visage, in which her fangs angle out from a blood-red grin.

I have been drawing this character for some time, as she part of a comic I conceived called Butterfly & Fly. She is delightfully menacing, and I am thrilled to have brought her to life in her present form. From her controller to the tips of her legs she hangs nearly twenty-nine inches. She is about eleven inches from one side to the next.