The 20 greatest (and 10 worst) Spider-Man villains of all time
By Mike McNulty
Worst Villain: Freak
There are many bad villains which could’ve made this list: The Spot, The Hypno-Hustler, Swarm, The Big Wheel, The White Rabbit, The Walrus, etc. Except they’ve either been created as deliberate jokes, or they’ve achieved cult-level status of badness like the films of Ed Wood or Troll 2. A truly terrible villain, however, are those meant to taken seriously and end up failing on every conceivable level. Hence the biggest embarrassment in the history of Spider-Man: Freak.
Who was Freak? That’s just it–we never learn his real name. All that readers knew about him was he was some pathetic junkie who broke into Dr. Curt Connors lab one night to get high. As his bad luck would have it, he mainlined an untested regeneration serum he somehow mistook for uncooked crystal meth. The result was any time he died, his body evolve so he wouldn’t die the same way twice. This also turned him into a hideous (wait for it!) freak who comes back uglier every time.
Therein lies Freak’s problem. He’s a comic book villain with no consistent, identifiable appearance, whose only motivation is drugs. The moment readers saw the image of this awful-looking character smoking a joint, any notions that Freak could ever become a great, lasting villain instantly vanished. In fact, after just four stories, Freak disappeared into comic book limbo, where Marvel hopes this embarrassment will stay.
Who in world came up with the idea for Freak, you may ask? Believe or not, it was Bob Gale, the screenwriter for Back to the Future. Guess that goes to show even talented, experienced storytellers can come up with some really awful ideas now and again.