The 20 greatest (and 10 worst) Spider-Man villains of all time
By Mike McNulty
5th Best Villain: The Kingpin
Fans of the Netflix series, Daredevil, may only regard this bulky crime lord as Matt Murdock’s arch-nemesis. It’s an easy assumption to make, considering Wilson Fisk has waged an ongoing, personal vendetta against the blind lawyer of Hell’s Kitchen since Frank Miller’s seminal run from the 1980’s. What’s often overlooked is that the Kingpin of Crime was Spider-Man’s enemy first.
Even much of what we know about Wilson Fisk became established within the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man first. This includes the reason for how he can go toe-to-toe with someone as strong as Spider-Man–Fisk isn’t actually fat! His gargantuan size is the result of having a body that’s 100% muscle.
Of course, as head of one the largest criminal empires in the United States, Kingpin’s largest muscle is really his brain. This, of course, also means he can use other super villains to do his bidding, which makes him one of the major villains in the Marvel Universe along with Magneto, Loki, Doctor Doom, and the Red Skull.
However, because he’s now Daredevil’s archenemy, the Kingpin hasn’t played a serious role within the life of Spider-Man. Until Peter Parker decided to make the foolish mistake of revealing his secret identity to the world during Civil War. This resulted in Fisk putting out a hit on Spider-Man, which lead to an assassin accidentally shooting Aunt May. The Kingpin then found out the hard way what happens when you mess with Peter’s loved ones, as the wall-crawler gave him a viscous beating that also humiliated Fisk before scores of inmates.
Fisk left Spider-Man alone after this. Then again, considering the controversial “One More Day” which came afterwards, Fisk probably doesn’t really remember what happened. And besides, he, like the rest of the Marvel Universe, no longer remembers Spider-Man as Peter Parker either.