WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Daredevil #23 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Marcio Menyz & VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Many of Marvel's biggest players in the criminal underworld have powers or abilities of their own that can make them capable of standing up against the likes of Spider-Man. That doesn't necessarily make them invulnerable though, and one villain just found that out the hard way.
Hammerhead just tried to tell off Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin -- and got brutally beaten as a result, turning the classic Spider-Man foe into a pretty effective lesson for the other crime lords of New York.
Hammerhead is a classic Spider-Man villain, a classic mobster and a major representative of the Maggia in the Marvel Universe. While rising in the ranks of the New York criminal underworld, Hammerhead was left near death -- which is when the disgraced surgeon Jonas Harrow found him and saved his life by replacing his shattered skull with dense steel. This gave Hammerhead a surprisingly effective weapon -- even allowing him at times to shake off punches thrown by Spider-Man and other heroes as if they were just bee stings. At various points, Hammerhead has worked for crime lords like Silvermaine, Kingpin, and Mister Negative, while also eying his own potential control of the city.
But more often than not, the low-level criminal is treated as a henchman for the likes of Spider-Man to deal with. However, he also just served as a very effective example by Wilson Fisk. Hammerhead initially sided with Izzy Libris to try and take down the Owl after he announced his plans to replace Kingpin as the crime lord of New York City. But Hammerhead became a liability, especially after he tried to effectively take Hell's Kitchen as his own personal territory.
Growing exhausted with him, Libris secretly bought out all of Hammerhead's men before shooting him in the skull -- not killing him, but removing him from play as Daredevil and Kingpin worked together to save a burning Hell's Kitchen. Initially, Hammerhead argues that Libris shooting him in the head means he should, at the very least, be given a better deal, along with removing Libris from power. Coldly furious, Fisk suddenly grabs Hammerhead by the back of the head and slams him face-first into the table. Again and again and again, Kingpin forces Hammerface's unbreakable skull against the table until the man is unconscious and bleeding profusely all over the place.
Having done so in front of the rest of the remaining criminal lords of the city, Fisk is content that Hammerhead has been a useful example of just how unhappy Fisk has become with the state of the underworld while he's been mayor. It's a brutal reminder of just how dangerous Kingpin is, no matter how "civilized" he's acting. Because Libris was the only one willing to bring down the Owl, she's been given control of the city -- and effectively used Hammerhead to remind everyone what happens to those that anger the Kingpin. It's unlikely that the beating killed Hammerhead, but it's still a brutal put down of the villain, and could leave him with something to prove -- once he regains consciousness.