10 Strongest Spider-Man Villains, Ranked

Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular superhero by an insurmountable margin, and nobody wonders why. He is one of the greatest superheroes of all time, being the ultimate embodiment of the responsibility we all have to stand up and do whatever we can to make the world a better place. Of course, they say a hero is only as good as their villain, and while I disagree with that, it’s hard to deny that having a top tier supervillain lineup is essential to being as massive of a success as Spider-Man is. His villains are some of the most terrifying, charismatic, and beautifully evil characters ever made, with the hero having easily one of the most elite rogues gallery ever put to pen. Today, I say we take a good look at not the best or most evil of those villains, but who is the strongest one Spider-Man has ever fought. It’s something we’ve all thought at least once, so let’s look at Spider-Man’s ten strongest villains, and decide who the strongest one ever is.

Now, given that Spidey is Marvel’s biggest name and thus has fought just about everyone at least once, for this list we will only be focusing on villains that are primarily Spider-Man’s foes. Unfortunately, that means heavy hitters like Mephisto and Thanos will not be topping this list. We also won’t be including characters that we have no data on, so while The Amazing Spider-Man promises that Hellgate is Spidey’s strongest foe yet, for the purposes of this list, we won’t be able to count him. At least not yet. So with the rules out of the way, let’s dive right into it.

10) Venom

Venom is in a strange place, because his baseline is already powerful, but his peak of power would easily earn him the number one place on this list. Although his King in Black and Captain Universe forms make him darn near unstoppable, we will only be considering Venom’s power when he was actively a Spider-Man villain, so just his normal strength and shapeshifting abilities. Even without those amps, Venom is a serious threat. He’s even stronger than Spider-Man, who is known throughout the entire comic book community as the guy who always holds back when he fights. Imagine Spider-Man’s biggest strength feat, then up it just a bit, and you have Venom’s power level. He’s definitely one of Spider-Man’s most ruthless foes, and his raw power is nothing to be underestimated.

9) Carnage

Everything Venom can do, Carnage can do while spilling way more blood. Where Venom is a suped-up version of Spider-Man, Carnage is the next evolution of Venom. What makes Carnage so dangerous isn’t just his next level strength and speed, but the insanity and bloodlust of both the symbiote and its main host, Cletus Kasaday. He is a deranged serial killer that has spilled enough blood to fill at least one of the Great Lakes, and is an endless font of creativity for death and torture. Carnage is always making the best use of his shapeshifting abilities to create an array of deadly weapons, and he is way too strong to consider anything less than a monster.

8) Rhino

Rhino is a mean, invulnerable, smashing machine. He might not be the Unstoppable Juggernaut, but he might as well be with his impenetrable skin, and good luck to anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to get in his way once he starts running. Rhino is a brute of pure, unrivaled strength. When Spider-Man’s most popular villains decide to get together and make a new rendition of the Sinister Six, Rhino is almost always called to be the muscle of the group. Spider-Man has openly admitted to being scared of his raw power, and makes active efforts to avoid directly fighting him, usually aiming to trick him and bring the bad guy down with some clever plan. Spider-Man can fight him with pure power, but that is far from a good idea.

7) Digger

Digger is the result of an experimental Gamma Bomb going off over the gravesite of thirteen mobsters who were murdered there decades earlier. Different bits of each of their bodies were fused together into a single composite being that called itself Digger. Like all being irradiated by the green light of Gamma energy, Digger was granted massive amounts of raw strength. While not on the same level as someone like the Incredible Hulk, Digger was still way stronger than Spider-Man, able to rip through entire cartridges of web-fluid like it wasn’t even there. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man 2004, what a mouthful, listed Digger’s strength maxed out at lifting a hundred tons, which is just an absurd amount of tons. He’s definitely one of Spider-Man’s most physically imposing foes, and not one, or thirteen, to be messed with.

6) Gog

Gog is effectively Spider-Man’s own personal kaiju. He is a massive, orange-skinned alien with strength that places him in the upper echelon of anyone in the Marvel Universe, and fortunately not too much intelligence to back it up. His size has varied over the years, being around thirty feet tall when he first fought Spider-Man, but later growing to a gargantuan three hundred feet. At his full size, Gog was able to easily swat aside some of Marvel’s strongest Avengers, from Ghost Rider to the Hulk. A rampage from Gog has the potential to bring down all of New York City in under an hour, and it’s always an all hands on deck situation when Gog decides to stomp into town.

5) Tri-Sentinel

The Tri-Sentinel was originally designed by Loki to enact revenge on Earth’s heroes after their defeat in the “Acts of Vengeance” storyline. Loki used their limitless dark magic to fuse together three different prototypes of the Nimrod Sentinel. If you aren’t aware who Nimrod is, he’s a hyper-advanced Sentinel from the distant future, designed to hunt down, adapt to, and exterminate any mutant he comes across. Under Nimrod’s leadership, Sentinels were able to take over all of North America in the alternate timeline presented in “Days of Future Past.”  Plenty of X-Men storylines all center around stopping Nimrod from being created in the present day, and the Tri-Sentinel is the result of three different prototypes being fused together and enhanced by Loki’s magic. Sure, none of the three would be a match for the actual Nimrod, but all three bound by magic were such a massive threat that upon its first appearance, the only one able to stop it was Spider-Man, who was then acting as Captain Universe. Only being able to be stopped by someone like Captain Universe is an absurdly high level to stand at.

4) Sandman

Sandman is one of Spider-Man’s most classic villains, and everyone knows that he’s also one of the Wall-Crawler’s most deadly foes. Flint Marko usually takes fighting pretty lightly, preferring to fight Spider-Man with giant hammers or waves of sand, but that is only the most basic version of his ability. Sandman has the ability to add a seemingly infinite amount of sand to his body, which can grow ad infinitum if he has access to more sand. The upper ceiling of Sandman’s size and strength well and truly has no limits, being only kept in check by the amount of sand on hand and his own desire to not flood the entire world in a sandstorm that could rip skin off of bones. He has the potential to be one of Spidey’s most dangerous foes, and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #308 revealed that he is effectively immortal, living for billions of years and seeing the natural end of the Earth.

3) Hydro-Man

Yet again I am asking you to abide by an improved version and derivative version of another entry on this list, but once again, imagine Hydro-Man as an even more dangerous version of Sandman. Water is one of the most powerful substances in the world, being able to rip through anything and everything with enough force or time. Hydro-Man has all of the strengths of Sandman, amplified by the sheer natural properties of water. Imagine fighting Hydro-Man in the ocean, or in the rain. He’d be literally unstoppable. In New Avengers Most Wanted Files, Spider-Man literally states that Hydro-Man has the potential to be a threat to the entire world, but he is held back by his remarkable stupidity. We best hope that he stays stupid, for all of our sakes.

2) Morlun

Morlun is Spider-Man’s deadliest, most ruthless villain. Once a normal human, Morlun was transformed into a psychic vampire known as an Inheritor, who must feed upon Spider-Totems, those with spider powers, across the multiverse. He’s killed countless alternate versions of Spidey across the Spider-Verse, and even once killed Peter, although he was immediately revived and reborn as a new version of himself. Whenever Morlun appears, Spider-Man is pushed to every physical, psychological, and spiritual limit in any attempt to just survive. When they first fought, Morlun shrugged off every blow Spider-Man dealt him, and Peter claimed that Morlun hit harder than the Hulk. Nobody has ever brutalized Spider-Man more in a fight, with Morlun once literally ripping out one of Spider-Man’s eyes and eating it. He is able to absorb all forms of life energy, which only makes him stronger than ever before. He’s a near unstoppable monster whose only focus is the death of Spider-People, and he is very, very good at what he does.

1) Solus

The only villain more dangerous, deadly, and stronger than Morlun could only be, of course, an even more powerful Inheritor. Solus is the original Inheritor, having made the deal that transformed him and his ilk into Totems of the Leech. Much like our other derivative villains on this list, Solus is everything about Morlun turned up to fifteen. Where Morlun was a threat to Spider-Man and other members of the Web of Life and Destiny individually, Solus threatened all of existence. He was such a threat that the entirety of the Spider-Verse was required to join together to stop him, and for an example of just how powerful he is, he once consumed and killed the alternate version of Spider-Man that wielded the powers of Captain Universe. He was unhurt after taking multiple direct, full-power blasts to the face, and then absorbed all of his life force like it was nothing. Solus is the most dangerous villain Spider-Man has ever had the displeasure of going up against, and we can only hope that he says down for good.

So there we have Spider-Man’s ten most powerful villains, ranked up to the strongest of them all. Of course, Spidey has plenty more villains than just this, so there’s always the chance one of those guys deserves to sit up here too. Who do you think is Spider-Man’s most powerful villain? Let us know in the comments below!

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