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The 5 Best and 5 Worst New Post-Brand New Day Spider-Man Villains


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?By Matt Wilson

It’s been about two years since Peter Parker got a hard reboot and became the unmarried, mostly still-secret-identity having wall-crawler we know him as now. The less said about the way he got there, the better, but in all honesty, the post-Brand New Day era Spider-Man comics have been really good. Besides just telling excellent Spidey tales, these issues have introduced several new villains into the wallcrawler’s rogue’s gallery, and just like the stories themselves, some of them have been cool and others, not so much. We wanted to make fun of the latter, but fair’s fair — we decided to recognize the good ones, too. (Note: No, we didn’t include the Spider-Tracer killer on the list because, well, that turned out to be a bunch of dirty cops, and I don’t think that really counts.)




THE BEST:


5) The Red Vulture

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He’s a rip-off of another already-established villain, so that’s a strike against him. And Spider-Man managed to beat him by simply just hugging him too hard, which is probably not something he’s gonna want to put on his resume. But despite all that, this new Vulture was genuinely a worthwhile threat for a couple issues, and it was a real surprise when he puked acid all on old Peter Parker’s face. Plus, he’s got that whole criminal-wronged-by-other-criminals-and-getting-his-revenge vibe going on, which seems like a good motivation for a guy with a screwed-up face and acid-puking abilities.


4) Overdrive

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Yeah, it’s a silly idea for a character; aguy who can jump into any ride and automatically pimp it to Xzibit-level proportions. But hey, the two stories he’s been in have been fun, and at its best that’s what the last couple of years of Spidey comics have been about. On top of that, he almost ran over DB (formerly the Daily Bugle) owner Dexter Bennett three times in one issue, and that’s a pretty great accomplishment.


3) Kraven The Hunter V.3

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Lord knows why they needed another Kraven the Hunter running around, especially one with a fauxhawk, when they had a perfectly fine Kraven in the crazed catcher of animal-themed villains who gave the Punisher a hard time. But we got a new one anyway, and she did a pretty good job of capturing Spider-Man and hunting him. I mean, it was the wrong guy, but if you had to pick whether Peter Parker or some badass cop was Spider-Man you’d probably make the same mistake. Plus, she beat the crap out of Vermin, which earns her some points. And cut her some slack! She was only 12! No shit, it says at the end of the issue she was born in 1996. Figure that one out.


2) Mister Negative

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He’s a new version of the Kingpin, there’s no doubt about that. But he’s got a few neat twists that make him more than just a poor man’s Wilson Fisk. His true identity is Martin Li, the super-nice director of the soup kitchen where Aunt May does volunteer work. In the Mr. Li identity, he can heal people and even cured Eddie Brock’s cancer (it also makes him Anti-Venom, ugh). When he’s Mr. Negative, his touch does the opposite, corrupting the people he touches. There’s lots more to mine from the character, and he’s almost definitely the deepest of the new Spider-Man villains. So I can forgive the whole creating Anti-Venom thing.


1) Paper Doll

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Don’t you just hate it when your rabid fans get all up in your business and start flattening people to death? Well, that’s just what happened to poor old Bobby Carr, who was just trying to get his mack on with Mary Jane Watson when this crazy 2-D fan started trying to make a cardboard cutout out of her. Spider-Man ends all that, though, by, wouldn’t you know it, using his brain to make Paper Doll revert back to normal 3-D form. The character’s got a neat — and more importantly original — gimmick, cool powers, was brought to life beautifully by Marcos Martin and was written well, even though she had the one-dimensional (har har) motivation of being obsessed with a star actor. Hopefully they can flesh her out more soon.

It’s a Brand New Page of the Worst on the next, uh.. page.

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THE WORST:


5) Screwball

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You know, just to read the issues she’s in, Screwball’s not that bad. She’s portrayed as an out-and-out opportunist rather than a murderously super-evil force of nature, which is a nice change of pace for most new villain characters, who generally have to be OMG SO BADD. But here’s the problem: In just a couple years, and I literally mean like two or three years, she’s going to seem really, really dated. Not only is she “the world’s first live-streaming supervillain,” she’s also a master of parkour, you know, that faddy jumping-around-on-buildings-like-gymnastics-apparatus thing. In all honestly, she’ll soon be thought of as the Rocket Racer/Hypno-Hustler of the late-’00s.


4) Freak

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Here, quickly, is Freak’s deal: He’s a junkie who stumbled onto some of Doc Connors’ special stem cell research drugs and, like any other addict, just shot them right up without even looking to see what they were. And, like most other drugs, they turned him into a gross heap of organs who can mutate into different gross looking things that are impervious to stuff that are necessary to the plot. And you know how Spider-Man finally beats him? By announcing that there are drugs in a car trunk and getting him to indulge in some antidote stuff. No specific drugs, mind you. Just general drugs.


3) Menace

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At first, Menace just seemed to be yet another Green Goblin rip-off who seemed to have a thing for knocking off political candidates or interrupting their speeches or whatever. A little derivative, but easy enough to handle. But then she was revealed to be Lily, Harry Osborn’s girlfriend and a mayoral candidate’s daughter, and things just got really weird and confusing. So weird that the Spidey editors thought it necessary to spend a whole issue having her explain to Harry just what her deal was. And then she was pregnant with Norman Osborn’s kid but could still turn into a (totally different-looking) horned monster with six-pack abs. It’s messed up.


2) Blindside

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So get this, Blindside is a supervillain who makes you go blind if you touch him! Get it? Blindside? Unfortunately, his existence really does in my idea for a supervillain character called Mr. Literal-name. Luckily, he’s only appeared in two issues: One where he tried (stupidly) to blind Daredevil, and another in which he gave Spider-Man an excuse to accidentally kill Jackpot.


1) Raptor

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Well, it finally happened. They introduced a character who’s mad at the clone who posed as Spider-Man back in the mid-’90s just so they could drudge up all that clone shit again and do a terrible, awful story about Kaine in (the not-very-good) Web of Spider-Man #1. Thanks, Marvel. All that said, the guy does have dinosaur genes, which doesn’t save him from being the worst of the bunch, but does make him slightly less terrible.