The 20 greatest (and 10 worst) Spider-Man villains of all time
By Mike McNulty
5th Worst Villain: Judas Traveler
There are many reasons why many Spider-Man fans consider the Clone Saga from the early 1990s a blight on fifty-plus year history. This next villain is one of those reasons. But even though he has nothing whatsoever to do with clones, Dr. Judas Traveller inexplicably was one of the Saga’s most central players.
To have some idea of what Judas Traveler is like, imagine if pro-wrestler Kevin Nash became Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme, got heavy into the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Jung, and dressed up as though he lived in 19th Century Victorian England. In addition, he’s accompanied by a quartet of sycophantic groupies called “The Host,” and often debates with the Grim Reaper from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal dubbed The Scrier. Oh, and he’s also as omnipotent as Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
If you’re wondering why someone like this would even waste their time harassing a more down-to-earth superhero like Spider-Man, guess what? No one at Marvel could figure this out either, not even the character’s own creator, J.M. DeMatteis. As related by former Marvel editor Glenn Greenberg on The Life of Reilly blog, all that anyone in the Spider-offices knew about Traveller was he was some super powerful psychiatrist studying “the true nature of evil” for nebulous reasons.
Eventually, Marvel decided Traveller was really a mutant with minor telepathic abilities who only thought he was more powerful than he really was. In other words, a second-rate version of the X-Men villain, Mastermind. On top of this, he was just another pawn of Norman Osborn, thus making readers collectively ask, “What was the point?”