Top 100 Batman VILLAINS

88 - Black Spider

#88 - Black Spider
First Appearance: Detective Comics #463 (Feb 1976)

"Greetings, my sweet, let's introduce ourselves. I'm Black Spider -- and you're dead!" ~Black Spider

A minor villain with an interesting legacy, Black Spider had a tragic origin: as a teenager, the Spider was a heroin addict who attempted to rob a liquor store while on a particularly brutal drug binge. When he finally woke up from it, he realized that the store he had robbed was his father's, who was killed at his own hand. Sobered by the experience, Black Spider donned his costume in order to wage a one-mar war against the drug trade of Gotham. His particularly cruel and brutal tactics brought him at odds with Batman, a vigilante Spider thought should naturally be on his side. His work has been part of several interesting stories in the Batman mythos, and his particularly mercenary behavior has taken him all over the DCU.

I like Black Spider because he's one of those villains that has a rigid yet bizarre code of honor; he refuses to commit certain crimes, yet he has no qualms perpetrating others. He's for the most part a rational and meticulous individual, and this helps him find his way into various team-ups of villains as well as working with groups like the Suicide Squad. He's been part of the Society in Infinite Crisis, Calculator's group in Identity Crisis, and he even dated Dr. Fate's wife for a while. All in all, his story is a tragic one (I'll get to that in a minute), his character is fresh, and he's left a great legacy of three other Black Spiders who've followed in his footsteps. However, the original is always around, an irreplaceable C-Lister who deserves more attention.

Greatest Black Spider Story Ever Told:Batman: Shadow of the Bat #5 - A hidden gem in the great Batman treasury of works by Alan Grant, Black Spider reveals some of his origin as he his captured and nearly killed by a drug dealer. A quite explosive ending and a great piece of character development.