We've never gotten a big-screen version of one of Spidey's most famous challenges: the
nefarious Sinister Six.
Or have we?
The Sinister Six might already exist in the MCU, even if you've never noticed.
If you're not familiar with them, the Sinister Six have a history with Spidey that dates
back all the way to 1964.
While every issue advanced the superhero soap opera that was the Marvel Universe back then,
the publishing schedule was punctuated by special oversized issues that, because they
were meant to be a once-a-year spectacular, were called Annuals.
Across the street at DC Comics, Annuals were pretty much just big reprints designed to
get "classic" stories into the hands of readers who had missed them the first time around,
often built around a theme.
At Marvel, things were done a little differently.
While their Annuals did feature reprints of key stories, the lead story in every issue
was not only all-new material, it was also something meant to be a pretty big deal.
The Fantastic Four Annuals gave readers an origin for Doctor Doom, a war between Atlantis
and the surface world, and the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, an oversized
epic that guest-starred the entire Marvel Universe circa 1965, including Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby themselves.
For the first Spider-Man Annual, the idea that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko came up with
was one of the simplest ways to make a story feel important: if one supervillain could
make a regular issue seem like a big deal, then why not throw in a few more?
In fact, why not take virtually every Spider-Man villain who had been created over the past
year and throw them all against Spidey in one massive all-out brawl?
When it hit the stands in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, "The Sinister Six" clocked in at
41 pages, and contained some of Lee and Ditko's best work ever.
The idea was simple: after escaping from prison, Doctor Octopus gathered five villains who
wanted revenge on Spider-Man Electro, the Vulture, Mysterio, the Sandman and Kraven
the Hunter.
After figuring out that Spider-Man had some kind of connection to them, Doc Ock kidnapped
Betty Brant and Aunt May, leaving behind clues that would lead Spidey from one villain to
the next.
It was basically a scavenger hunt, but with a strong chance of being mauled by leopards.
Ditko punctuated each of the battles with a full-page splash of Spidey taking on the
bad guys, which was something that wasn't actually seen that often back then.
The editors of the '60s figured kids would feel ripped off if each page wasn't crammed
full of story, but it's hard to imagine any fan looking at a massive shot of Spider-Man
crashing through a wall to punch out Mysterio while threatening to "play a drum solo on
that glass fishbowl" and think it was anything but awesome.
Needless to say, the story was a hit, and that original lineup with Otto Octavius as
the mastermind would go down in Marvel history as one of the greatest villainous teams ever
assembled.
Surprisingly, the Sinister Six didn't make another appearance for a while.
It wasn't until 1990 that we got the team's proper return in a story appropriately called
"The Return of the Sinister Six."
The only big difference was the addition of the Hobgoblin to the roster, replacing the
temporarily deceased Kraven.
Unlike the original straightforward tale, however, the return was full-on bonkers.
Not only did it see the death of Aunt May's elderly boyfriend Nathan, but it was built
around Doc Ock manipulating the other villains into a world domination plot and then revealing
an insane twist: he was really launching a satellite that would extort wealthy addicts
by causing them to painfully convulse whenever they did cocaine.
Fortunately, with the help of a face turn from the Sandman, Spider-Man was able to defeat
Doc Ock and make the world safe for cocaine once again.
That story cemented the Sinister Six as the Marvel Universe's premiere villain team, and
paved the way for them to branch out in more ways than one.
They've appeared as a team in multiple Spider-Man cartoons, as well as video games from the
NES all the way to 2018's PS4 Spider-Man.
They're even in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the broadway musical!
The only place they haven't been yet is the movie theater… unless they've actually been
there all along.
If the Sinister Six do show up in the MCU, it's likely that it won't be the classic lineup
that was introduced back in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, for one simple reason.
Movies tend to shy away from using the same villains that have been seen before with other
versions of the character.
Before the MCU, half of the original roster had already shown up in Spider-Man movies.
Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina rocking the rarely seen "two trench coats at the same
time" look, was in Spider-Man 2.
The Sandman appeared alongside Venom and a dancing Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3.
2014's Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought in Jamie Foxx as Electro, but it's okay if you forgot
about that one.
"What's your name again?
How could you forget me?
Oh I do I know it, I know it, don't tell me.
It's Max.
Is it Max?"
As far as the other half of the classic lineup goes, the Vulture was the primary villain
of Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Mysterio is in Spider-Man: Far from Home.
The only one who's missing entirely is Kraven the Hunter, but that's not a huge problem.
There are more Spider-Man villains floating around the Marvel Cinematic Universe who could
be used in his place.
In the span of a single film, Spider-Man managed to encounter more of his classic foes than
Iron Man did in ten years.
The obvious one, of course, was the Vulture, but he's just the tip of the villainous iceberg.
On the off chance that you missed it, take a closer look at Adrian Toomes and the cabal
of high-tech arms dealers that used to be his construction crew, and you'll see both
the Shocker and the Tinkerer who debuted alongside the Vulture back in Amazing Spider-Man #2.
There's also an appearance by the Prowler and the Scorpion.
Thanks to Into the Spider-Verse, those two wound up being two unlikely picks for Spider-Foes
who would both make it into two different movie universes in the span of 18 months.
That's five major Spider-Man villains well, four major villains and the Tinkerer, really
and they're just the ones we know for sure.
Peter has a science teacher named "Ms. Warren" in Homecoming who might very well turn out
to be the MCU's version of the Jackal, who in the comics is Peter's old science teacher,
Miles Warren.
Of course, that's just if, for some reason, they want to do a movie about Spider-Clones
in spite of everyone who was reading Spider-Man comics in the '90s begging them not to.
Generally speaking, superhero movies have a villain problem.
Not only do the villains tend to just be palette-swapped versions of the good guys, but they also have
an unfortunate tendency to die after a single film.
Even when the villains are interesting and compelling in their own right, like Erik Killmonger
in Black Panther, they usually only last for a single film before they're killed off.
Or they used to be, until Homecoming.
Admittedly, there were MCU villains who stuck around before that, including Helmut Zemo
in Captain America: Civil War and Baron Mordo in Doctor Strange.
Thanos also appeared in a handful of movies, although he managed to die twice in the last
one, which kind of makes up for it.
Think about other major Marvel villains, though.
Ultron, whose entire deal is that he comes back deadlier every time he's defeated, was
thoroughly obliterated at the end of the film that bears his name.
Ego the Living Planet was blown up after fighting a giant holographic Pac-Man.
These are powerhouse villains in the comics who just cease to exist in the films.
And that makes sense, too.
As much as the MCU films form an ongoing universe, they're not made for the perpetual publication
schedule that comics have, so there's no real reason to keep the bad guys around if you
think you can tell a more compelling story by killing them.
Once again, Killmonger is the prime example of a villain whose death is meant to mean
something larger than just the end of the film.
The thing is, when that's the default setting that every movie goes with, it stands out
when the villains don't die.
Loki, for instance, has stabbed his way into the hearts of moviegoers across the world
precisely because he just keeps surviving to get another one over on Thor.
"Surpriiiise."
It becomes a universe where characters only stick around if, like Loki, there are plans
for them in the future.
That brings us, again, back to Spider-Man: Homecoming.
It makes a point of keeping its villain around, and only partly because rescuing the bad guy
says a lot about who Peter Parker is and why he does what he does.
That leads to the epilogue in prison, where the Vulture encounters Mac Gargan.
On the surface, it feels like another subversion of what we expect from the superhero movie
formula: when he's given the chance to assemble a team of villains and reveal Parker's identity,
Toomes doesn't take it.
"If I knew who he was, he'd already be dead."
Whether it's because he's not the bad guy he pretends to be when he threatens Peter
in the car which seems unlikely because he buries him under a few tons of warehouse cement
immediately after or because he realizes he owes Spider-Man his life, he gives up on the
opportunity.
The scene shows us something else, though.
The fact that Gargan is still around and trying to make connections with other people who
want revenge against Spider-Man shows that the groundwork is already there for a sinister
team-up.
If nothing else, Spider-Man is the first hero in the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
to have six enemies who are both mad at him and still alive.
All of this is, of course, pure speculation, but it's pretty easy to look at a movie where
the bad guys are kept around and assume that this is all building to something big.
It's also pretty easy to imagine how it could go down.
Hydro-Man fits pretty easily into the same role as the Sandman, without the baggage of
being in one of the worst-received Spider-Man movies, and the same goes for the Shocker
replacing Electro.
As much as fans would love to see his crop-top lion vest, Kraven could be easily substituted
with a revenge-seeking Lizard.
And if the Vulture truly is done with his Spidey-fighting days, the Jackal could conceivably
fill the role of the older science weirdo.
Throw in the Tinkerer as the wild card-slash-tech guy, and that's a pretty solid Sinister Six.
And again: those are just the characters we know about.
Who knows what villains Marvel might pull from the comics in the future.
Who's to say they won't toss in Stegron the Dinosaur Man for good measure?
From a storytelling standpoint, building to the Sinister Six might not even be necessary.
As much as we love to imagine Spider-Man as the everyman hero who balances his superheroic
life with his everyday problems, that requires a Spider-Man who's always struggling against
the odds.
Meanwhile, the cinematic Peter Parker has crammed a whole lot of living into a very
short time.
In the three years since he was introduced, the MCU's Spider-Man has gone toe-to-toe with
Captain America, rocketed off to outer space, fought Thanos on the other side of the universe,
spent five years as a pile of dust before being resurrected from the dead, and fought
Thanos again on Earth alongside dozens of other superheroes, including at least two
literal gods.
It's kind of hard to go back to just fighting the Rhino after that.
The Rhino and five of his very angry buddies, on the other hand, sounds like the right kind
of challenge.
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