There are so many reasons why superhero fans are ecstatic about Spider-Man’s bombastic return to Marvel Studios. As one of the comic publisher’s oldest and most popular heroes, he gives second wind to a franchise that has always delivered on its promise of exceptional, action-packed entertainment for fans of the genre. His younger persona plays well against the more seasoned Avengers that we’ve become familiar with over the last decade. And then, of course, there are the villains.
Although monstrously overstated by fans and increasingly baseless, Marvel has historically had a villain problem. While DC, their biggest competitor in both print and on the big screen, has access to all of their characters, Marvel does not.
Before getting into the movie business themselves in 2008, they sold off the movie rights to many of their most popular franchises. Universal got the Incredible Hulk. Fox got Fantastic Four and X-Men. Meanwhile, Sony got Spider-Man.
The reason why people still argue that “Marvel doesn’t have any good villains” is because so many of them are walled off with these other companies. Even Ego, the Living Planet — the show-stopping antagonist from this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 — had to be traded back to Marvel by Fox.
Of the villains that Marvel Studios doesn’t have access to, the lions share belong to Spider-Man. Between the Venom, Carnage, the Green Goblin, Sandman, Electro and the animal ranks of the Sinister Six, everybody’s friendly neighborhood wallcrawler has more iconic baddies than he knows what to do with. Even Kingpin, best known for squaring off with Daredevil, got his start as a Spider-Man villain.
Beyond just the title character and his increasingly diverse supporting cast and spider-themed allies, Spider-Man being back with Marvel means that the company now has access to all of the great foes stretching over decades of comic storylines. And rather than retreading the greatest hits real of villains already tapped for the big screen — like Doc Oc and the Lizard — Marvel seems content to give some of the web-head’s more obscure adversaries a chance at the limelight.
Rather than taking on an obvious A-lister in the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, Parker is set to contend with a pair that not as many fans of the character will be familiar with. The Vulture — chillingly played by superhero mainstay Michael Keaton — is at least recognizable: ranking among Spider-Man’s most recurrent animal-themed opponents. The real head-scratcher is going to be the use of the Mad Thinker: an old, but rarely used, villain who’s just super smart.
The real fun will come in the sequels however, where anything — from Kraven the Hunter to the vampiric Michael Morbius — can happen. Rumored to appear in the already-scheduled follow-up, however, is a peculiar sort of villain that, like the Vulture and Mad Thinker, is more historically important than he is popular or even memorable. Supposedly crossing paths with Spidey in the near future is the Jackal.
The Jackal is best remembered today for masterminding the Clone Saga: a particularly tedious period of Spider-Man canon that is often credited with Marvel Comics having to file bankruptcy in the mid 90’s. The story, which stretched on for more than four years, saw numerous characters in the franchise — including Aunt May and Spider-Man himself — be revealed to be clones lead by the Jackal: a mad geneticist to who hadn’t appeared since Parker’s Silver Age adventures.
More recently, however, the title of the Jackal appeared in the comics as part of the storyline “Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy.” It saw Ben Reilly — the Spider-Man clone better known as the Scarlet Spider — take up the mantle of the Jackal and coerce the Sinister Six to join him by cloning their departed loved ones.
No matter what direction Marvel decides to take the character in the MCU, it won’t likely be any one version of this character. The first appearances of the villain were too-strongly tied to lore that the movies side-step (such as Gwen Stacy), the 90’s version was too poorly received and the most recent version pre-supposes too much of Spider-Man’s storied past has already happened. Either way, we won’t have to wait too long to find out, since the movie’s already been penciled in for summer 2019.
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