Think about it. Spider-Man has one of the greatest rogues galleries of all comics. Green Goblin. Doc Ock. Venom. And that's just for starters. The key to any great hero is a great villain and Spidey has them in spades. But one downside to being a superhero with decades of history behind you is that they all can't be winners.
For every fantastic villain Spidey faces, there is an equally ... not so fantastic one. With great power comes great responsibility and the higher the highs, the lower the lows. Let's take a look at the 10 worst Spidey villains.
10 Frog-Man
Eugene Patilio isn't exactly a villain, but he's not exactly a hero, either. At least not a successful one. It's complicated. Actually, it's kind of sad. Eugene's father Vincent was an inventor with a middling track record. Vincent did succeed in creating electric coils and used them to augment his new life of crime as the Leap-Frog.
After some dustups with Daredevil, this went about as well as his inventions and Eugene hung up the suit. His son picked it up and became Frog-Man, trying his absolute hardest to be a hero and help Spidey and others. Like, really hard.
9 Walrus
Most supervillains have an agenda. Money. Power. Killing half of all life in the universe. The Walrus? All he wants is to smash stuff. A self-proclaimed 'mass-destructionist', Hubert Carpenter is a character that actually exists in the Marvel Universe. He's fought Spider-Man repeatedly and is mostly a nuisance.
The Walrus first appeared in 1984, in The Defenders #131, and somehow continued to appear afterward. Perhaps his greatest moment came in the Fear Itself storyline when Deadpool tricked him into thinking he's worthy of wielding a magic hammer. Not the smartest of Spidey's villains.
8 White Rabbit
Awesome new Marvel Legends action figure notwithstanding, White Rabbit deserves her place on this list. Lorina Dodson had it pretty good growing up. Rich, healthy, imaginative. She took it a bit too far, though, indulging a fascination with Alice In Wonderland to the point that she killed her octagenarian husband (in her defense, it was an arranged marriage and she was in her twenties, but still, murder) and took on the persona of the White Rabbit.
For a time she partnered with Walrus as the Terrible Two and had a few run-ins with Frog-Man, proving there are absolutely levels and some people reach them.
7 Grizzly
One of White Rabbit's more um, ambitious schemes was to genetically engineer giant man-eating rabbits. She threatened to unleash them on captured villains Gibbon (oh, we'll get to him) and bear-enthusiast Grizzly unless she got a ransom of a billion dollars. Yep.
Grizzly was a professional wrestler named Maxwell Markham who got pink-slipped for being too violent. Supervillain Jackal gave him a grizzly-bear suit that augmented Markham's strength. Unfortunately, Grizzly never properly harnessed the suit and remains a permanent C-lister. Or D-lister. Hard to say.
6 Gibbon
Despite a pedigree that includes being created by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. in The Amazing Spider-Man #110, the Gibbon is one of the worst Spidey villains there is. Hey, they can't all be winners. This is due to the fact that Gibbon is a founding member of the Legion of Losers, a team that included - you guessed it - Grizzy, Kangaroo (getting there), and Spot (you know it).
Even with the strength, speed, and reflexes of a gibbon, Martin Blank couldn't quite make it as a baddie. He later tried going as a hero, which is something that happens a lot. That didn't go so well either.
5 Human Fly
Before we continue our tour through the Legion of Losers, let's take a moment to appreciate the unequaled mediocrity of the Human Fly.
Richard Deacon first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #10 as a criminal who is so not worth anyone's time, the police shoot and leave him for dead. Somehow, he winds up in the lab of a mad scientist, who saves Deacon's life and transforms him into the Human Fly. Deacon pays the scientist back by killing him and then promptly gets swatted by Spider-Man in their first battle.
4 Kangaroo
Another member of the Legion of Losers, whose only real success is they are on almost any list of terrible Spider-Man villains, Kangaroo is so bad he's been two different people. The first was Frank Oliver, an Australian (shocking, right?) who pioneered MMA fighting before turning to crime.
He was succeeded by Brian Hibbs, who recognized his limits and teamed up with the rest of the Legion. In and out of prison and The Hold, Kangaroo continues to try and make it as a criminal to this day.
3 Typeface
This actually happened. Unlike most of the other entries on this list, Gordon Thomas is a more recent creation, making his first appearance in 2000, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #22. Being modern doesn't help him in the least, as his modus operandi is to draw letters on his face.
Typeface uses, well, typeface, both as his iconography and his weapons. He throws metal letters at people and, unlike pretty much everyone else on this list, actually defeated Spider-Man. That didn't last, of course, and Typeface has faded into obscurity. He was thought to be dead after Civil War, but like so many comic book characters, he got better.
2 Spot
Points for creativity, at least. Like Typeface, Spot actually wins in his first go-around with Spider-Man. After that, there was a significant decline in his success ratio. The final member of the Legion of Losers (AKA not the Sinister Six) Dr. Jonathan Ohnn worked as a scientist for the Kingpin, studying the powers of the superhero Cloak, back in Spectacular Spider-Man #97 and #98. This didn't go so well, and Ohnn was stranded between a dimension itself somewhere between light and darkness.
Ohnn emerged from the 'Spotworld' with tiny portals to it all over his body. It makes for some fun moments in fistfights, but without any superstrength, this advantage fades fast.
1 The Big Wheel
Sometimes, you just have to laugh. Most heroes and villains have a gimmick. It's part of comic book tradition. The Big Wheel takes this and, well, rolls with it. The Amazing Spider-Man #182 graced us with Jackson Weele, who, through a comically sad series of events, ends up with a big giant metal wheel, courtesy of the Tinkerer. It can climb up the sides of buildings, which I guess has its advantages, except he falls off a building into the river and apparently dies.
Big Wheel made such an impression, 20 years went by before we found out he actually survived his watery fate and now wants to be a hero. Like so many villains on this list, putting on a costume is maybe not for them.