Friday Five – Favorite Spider-Man Villains

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week we help you get to know our writers with the help of a top 5 list! This week: Favorite Spider-Man Villains

So Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens today (or last night) and this past Wednesday marked the relaunch of the Amazing Spider-Man comic with a new #1, and what better way to celebrate everyone’s favorite Wall-Crawler than by listing off our favorite bad guys! So that’s exactly what we’re doing, this week is devoted to all those villains that have made Spider-Man and Peter Parker’s lives a living hell over the last 50+ years.

As always let us know your top 5 in the comments or on Facebook!

Chris

1. Venom (Eddie Brock) – Everything (Except Spider-Man 3) – The original Venom was great, Eddie Brock hated Spider-Man and the Symbiote did too, they’re a match made in heaven. Sure both parts of the character have had some issues over the years, but you can’t deny Venom was one of the best parts of comics in the late ’80s and early ’90s. And at least while Eddie Brock keeps getting screwed, the Symbiote is doing better than ever with Flash Thompson as his host. . . well except for being drugged and controlled so it won’t take over.
2. Morlun – Comics – Morlun, like a lot of the early 2000’s run of Spider-Man was a lot cooler than he gets credit for. His entire purpose is basically to kill things with SpiderPowers. And he’s so powerful that Spidey’s own fight or flight reflex kicks in and instinctively makes him run and hide. While the character has been gone a long time, he’s return with Spider-Verse later this year, and that’s pretty exciting.
3. J Jonah Jameson – Everything – Man this guy is the best and the worst all at once. J.K. Simmons played him perfectly in the first 3 Spider-Man films, and I really hope we get to see the character on the big screen again sometime soon. He’s probably one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes, as he’s not only helped create some of his other enemies (Scorpion, Spider-Slayers, etc) he’s also slandered him in papers, and made whole police units just to take him down.
4. King Pin – Comics – More of a Daredevil enemies than anything else, King Pin first appeared in Spider-Man, and he’s the reason that Pete and MJ aren’t married any more. After Pete unmasked, King Pin tried to kill him and ended up shooting Aunt May instead, this lead to one of the best scenes in recent comics where Pete breaks into prison just to beat up the King Pin as himself and threaten to kill him if he ever came after his family again.
5. Kaine – Comics – At this point Kaine is a reluctant hero, but back during the ‘infamous’ clone saga is was 100% bad guy, and continued that trend for a long time afterwards. In his defense, he was kind of insane from being an imperfect clone and was slowly dying. Now though he’s a stronger version of Pete with some of the powers Pete lost during Brand New Day (Organic webbing, wrist spikes, spider-talk).

Special Mention: Green Goblin & Doc Ock – Easily Spider-Man’s two greatest enemies, they’ve done the most damage to the character over the years, physically and emotionally.

Eric

1. Spot – Who sounds less menacing than Spot? Nobody! It’s ridonk how awesome this guy is tho. Made up of many portals to another dimension. He can be quite a pain for the webslinger.
2. Chameleon – Chameleon is mostly a threat to Spider-Mans reputation more than anything. Still a pretty big threat!
3. Mysterio – A master of special effects and the perfect villain to use in a movie, yet still unutilized. Fix it Sony!
4. Morbius – The human vampire! I’ve just always thought the character was cool.
5. Shocker – This was a tossup with Boomerang. Ultimately Shocker won for because hev at least had some scientific knowledge, were as Boomerang just theirs boomerangs.

Pisko

1. Morlun – I don’t like Morlun, I like that he’s unbeatable. He’s a pretty awful villain except for the fact he could destroy the world.
2. Doctor Octopus – One of my favorite Spider-Man villains because he is a mirror held up to Spider-Man in a “what-if” way. Where Parker learns to shrug off bullies and abuse and rise above it; Otto let it run his emotions and his life which turned him dark and lustful for revenge. Both of them brilliant scientists, Otto was once Parkers since camp instructor and the two have a relationship before either gains power. They match each other incredibly well and know how to push the others buttons.
3. Shocker – Shocker is a bad villain. I mean, he’s good at being a villain but he’s bad at not getting caught. Generally the battles with Shocker are the ones where the web head is at his funniest. Shocker sets Peter up for some of the best one liners based on his padded, quilted-northern style wardrobe. Not to be underestimated, Shocker always seems to find a way back out of jail to torment the wall crawler.
4. Vulture – Vulture represents what would happen if someone gave Mr. Burn from the Simpsons the ability to be young forever. It doesn’t end well. Adrian Toombs simply wants to be young again and the only thing standing in his vulture suit super powered way is… Yeah, Spider-Man. Vulture’s ability to fly makes for some of the best acrobatic battles for Spider-Man outside of a Goblin encounter. Vultures cohorts and crime ties make him a foe that has plenty of hired help to tire out Spider-Man to make an easier battle.
5. Green Goblin (Harry Osborn) – While Stormin’ Norman Osborn is by far the better Green Goblin, Harry is the goblin who proves a harder foe because of the shared friendship and past he and Peter have. Peter KNOWS that Harry is a good person and won’t ever stop trying to save him from a fate resigned to Harry from his father and his legacy. All Spider-Man has to do is save him and hope he sees the light.

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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