When you’ve been fighting crime as long as Peter Parker has, there’s bound to be all kinds of strange creatures and characters coming out of the woodwork. With all of the places Spider-Man has been to, he’s pretty much fought them all. He’s fought alongside the X-Men and the Avengers. He’s been a substitute member of the Fantastic Four and has fought alongside numerous partners over the years. Being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is a pretty rough job. Especially when the neighborhood is New York, where all kinds of people get it in their heads that they want to try and take Spider-Man out.
Spider-Man doesn’t necessarily underestimate any of his opponents, but there are definitely plenty of them that the wise-cracking hero wouldn’t bat an eye at. But then they beat the web slinger within an inch of his life or worse, teaching him a lesson in humility and how being bitten by a spider doesn’t always mean he can easily defeat lesser-known foes.
10 Kraven
There aren’t many villains that can claim they actually killed their arch-enemy. Kraven can’t claim he killed Spider-Man either, but he gave him a really bad thumping and the next worst thing to death - he buried him alive.
During the “Fearful Symmetry” storyline, The Hunter wanted to prove he was better than Spider-Man. To him, that meant bury him alive, take his costume and deliver his own brand of justice. He also did what Spidey couldn’t do - catch the Vermin.
9 Mysterio
For a failed special effects guy, Mysterio is far more dangerous than Quentin Beck’s resume says he is. Fans are learning that first hand now that Spider-Man: Far From Home is out in theaters. One of the most dangerous plots he enacted wasn’t even against Spider-Man, but his good friend, Daredevil.
During the “Guardian Devil” storyline, he paid Kingpin for all of the information he had on Daredevil and used it to bring Matt to his knees, crafting a fiendish narrative as only Beck can along the way.
8 Hydro-Man
One of the Elementals in Far From Home was inspired by supervillain Morris Bench, aka Hydro Man. But the comic book version has yet to make a proper appearance in the MCU.
He’s still not to be trifled with. Most people don’t want to be caught in a rainstorm, let alone be up against a guy totally made of water! How to defeat a guy you can’t punch?! Who wants to fight a guy that can drown you pretty easily?
7 The Spot
He looks like an idiot. His name is more suited to man’s best friend than a supervillain. Even Spider-Man nearly fell off a roof laughing at the Kingpin’s lead scientist. But when Dr. Jonathan Ohnn was tasked with finding out how to mirror Cloak’s powers to access the Dark Dimension, The Spot was born!
Only the experiment worked too well and Ohmm now had access to all sorts of pocket and mirror dimensions. That is a dangerous man, all kidding aside.
6 White Rabbit
You thought only Batman had an Alice In Wonderland-themed villain? Spider-Man has one too! She’s named the White Rabbit. Lorina Dodson was an unwilling and bored trophy wife whose husband “died happy,” so she used her inheritance and love of literature to buy all kinds of gadgets and live a life of danger.
Dodson has a vast supply of Lewis Carroll-themed weapons, but because of her appearance, no-one ever takes her too seriously.
5 The Jackal
Never has a Spider-Man villain cause so much chaos and looked pretty silly doing it. Professor Miles Warren became obsessed with Gwen Stacy and then obsessed with getting revenge on Spider-Man for killing her (since that’s what the papers had claimed). He experiments with cloning and makes all kinds of clones of himself, Spider-Man, and Gwen Stacy.
It all came to a head in the mid-nineties, when one of the surviving clones thought he was the real Spider-Man. Thanks to Warren, all kinds of failed clones, like the Scarlet Spider, Kaine, and Carrion, have been running around the Marvel universe for decades.
4 The Spider Slayers
Now that J. Jonah Jameson has been introduced in the MCU, perhaps he might do what he did in the comic books - commission an engineer to build Spider-Slayers: essentially, an army of robots designed to capture or kill Spider-Man on sight.
Originally built by Spencer Smythe, the operation had been taken over by his son, Alistair. Alistair would eventually turn himself into the Ultimate Slayer. It’s Peter Parker versus an army of Terminators all targeting him. How much more dangerous can you get?
3 The Mobsters
One aspect of Spider-Man’s world that gets overlooked is that he’s based in New York. There’s also a lot of mobsters based there, too. A pair of them happen to have superpowers and with the backing of the mob behind them, Hammerhead and Tombstone are always a threat to Spidey.
Hammerhead might look and feel like a Dick Tracy villain, but with an adamantium or vibranium plate in his head and control of the Maggia crime family, he can (no pun intended) hammer in a lot of skulls. After being exposed to a heavy dose of chemicals, ordinary thug Lonnie Lincoln became Tombstone after his skin was made virtually invulnerable.
2 Shriek
She looks like Paul Stanley’s daughter, has an evil twisted version of Dazzler and Dagger’s powers, only has eyes for Carnage, and is completely unpredictable. Shriek, in her way, is kind of like Marvel’s answer to Harley Quinn.
Her power levels also make her very, very dangerous. She can generate light beams made out of sound, which let her fly and severely hurt enemies. In contrast to Dagger’s ability to bring out the light in people, Shriek can manipulate the inherit darkness in people, which would cause a lot of mayhem throughout New York.
1 Calypso
It’s movies like The Serpent And The Rainbow or The Skeleton Key, Marvel style, whenever the priestess Calypso comes to town. Kraven’s former lover used her magic to drive him into wild fits of rage, which led to “Fearful Symmetry.”
At various points, she was able to control villains like Lizard and Hellspawn, nearly destroying both Spider-Man and Daredevil in the process.