10 Most Evil Spider-Man Villains

10. Mindworm

Spider-Man villains have some of the best and weirdest names in the superhero genre, and "Mindworm" is no exception.

This cranially abnormal supervillain made his debut in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #138 courtesy of Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, and though it's technically true he never sought to become a villain to begin with - and even ended his stint in the comics trying to reform - that doesn't make him any less terrifying.

Mindworm (real name William Turner), was born with a gigantic head and psionic powers, surviving by leaching the mental energy from those in his vicinity like a more grotesque, lethal version of Colin Robinson from FX's What We Do in the Shadows.

Turner eventually encountered Spider-Man, but only by chance; he had propped himself up in an apartment building where he could leach the energy of his neighbours without them knowing, and one of those neighbours just so happened to be Peter's bully-turned-friend, Flash Thompson.

Mindworm tried to leach Peter's brain energy shortly after he moved in with Flash. Parker's Spidey-Sense tipped him off though, and he was able to defeat Mindworm by giving him a good bonk on the noggin, putting an end to his reign of terror on Flash and his fellow tenants.

Folks will probably point out that Mindworm deliberately stopped short of draining a lethal amount of his victims' energy, but equally, no one wants their brain juice nabbed after a hard day working.