Drawn to Sprider-Man: out comic book writer Phil Jimenez went from drawing Wonder Woman to subbing for Tobey Maguire's hands on the Spider-Man set.

Walloping webslingers, Spider-Man has gay hands! Out comic book artist Phil Jimenez, who currently writes DC's Wonder Woman series, earned his acting chops as a hand double for Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire in the Marvel superhero's bigscreen debut, opening May 3. Watch closely: After Maguire's character, nerdy Peter Parker, gains fantastic abilities from a radioactive spider bite, he sits down to sketch out the outfit he'll wear as Spider-Man. Enter Jimenez--or at least his hands.

The audition process involved no line readings but plenty of line drawings. "I created these fake high school notebooks with lots of drawings [and phony class notes]," he says, "and I E-mailed them digital pictures of my hands. Turns out my hands are an awful lot like Tobey's, and I got the job."

Spider-Man director Sam Raimi filmed several close-ups of Jimenez sketching superhero costumes, but the artist saw little of Maguire. The bulk of their time together was in the makeup trailer, having identical swollen spider bites applied to their hands. "We just saw each other a couple of times, shook hands," Jimenez says. "He was really working hard, focused on his work. I love any actor who does a superhero movie and takes the work seriously. I was really impressed."

Jimenez spent a week on the set, creating Parker's sketch-filled notebooks as well as artwork specifically for the close-ups. Because Raimi had to personally approve--or reject--hundreds of sketches, the director kept Jimenez nearby, relegated to an old couch in the editing rooms or stuck at the dining table in Spider-Man's kitchen set.

The couch and kitchen table were familiar territory for Jimenez. Early in his comic book career, unable to pay tuition at New York's School of Design, he wound up crashing with a pal. "A friend of mine let me stay on his couch for a year free," he says, "with the condition that if I became successful, I'd do the same for him. So I spent most of my 21st year sleeping on his couch and drawing [comic book] art on his kitchen table." As it turned out, he soon landed a job at DC Comics and was able to return his friend's favor.

Jimenez, 31, has been an avid comic reader since his early teens, although Spider-Man was not his first choice among superheroes. "My favorite characters were almost always women: Wonder Woman, Storm of the X-Men, the Scarlet Witch--or even Spider-Woman," he says. "I believe it's because these women were strong, powerful characters and the objects of desire of men. As a gay teen, that's what I wanted to be. Spider-Man was an everyman, a character whose secret identity, Peter Parker, was your average joe. I was a big fan of the glamorous, epic heroes."

His comic book reading was all wrapped up with his gradual recognition of his sexual identity, he says. "The character I most identified with was Wonder Woman's sister, Wonder Girl," Jimenez explains. "She was this perfect person, and a huge motivating factor in my life was a desire to be the best son, the best student, and a successful artist in New York City. Because if I accomplished all of these things, [I thought] being gay might be less of a blow to my family."

Jimenez not only told his family he was gay but also told his readers. "I came out in the back of a comic I wrote and drew as a tribute to my first boyfriend, the man who hired me at DC Comics, Neal Pozner," he says (Pozner died in 1994 of AIDS complications). "I got the most incredible response--literally hundreds of pieces of mail from gay readers."

Only in the past decade have mainstream comic book characters begun to follow Jimenez's lead by coming out of the superhero closet. "Things are getting better," Jimenez notes, citing characters such as Maggie Sawyer, the lesbian police officer who works with Superman; Apollo and the Midnighter, the gay superhero couple in The Authority; and Northstar, the X-Men's first openly gay mutant after more than 30 years. "But it will probably be a long time before we see any gay character with his or her own title."

Still, since the comic book writing field is dominated by straight men, Jimenez remains wary of how gays are portrayed--"in the same way that I worry about writing, say, Southern black characters," he says, "not because I don't think the writers are well-intentioned but because there are nuances that are borne out of the experiences of a particular group. Writers who are not part of that group can miss that." Jimenez himself has written supporting gay characters: Some of the Amazons in Wonder Woman were in same-sex relationships. "Time for a sex scene, though," he adds with a smile.

Jimenez has no fear of being pigeonholed. "I am who I am," he says. "I have the career and the life that I do because I'm gay and because of my experiences and desires as gay man. I actually hope that reflects in my work without alienating audiences. Hopefully, the work will always speak for itself."