10 Best Comic Storylines Featuring The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Villains
3. Rage Of The Rhino (Amazing Spider-Man #617, 625)
In two separate but connected issues of Amazing Spider-Man, writer Joe Kelley manages to make Aleksei Sytsevich, aka, the Rhino, into a tragic figure of Shakespearean levels. Kellys story depicts Sytsevichs life after hes been released from prison and goes straight. Hes married to a woman named Oksana, is blissfully happy, and has no desire to ever don the Rhino suit again. But when a second Rhino appears and challenges Sytsevich to a showdown, the former villain is conflicted. Spider-Man convinces Sytsevich to keep on the straight and narrow and to avoid the confrontation. Sytsevich agrees that he's done with being a criminal. Unfortunately, his hesistation leads to tragedy. Oksana is kidnapped and killed by the new Rhino and Sytsevich realizes that he was never a good enough person to live a normal life. He returns to being the Rhino and vows to live a life of a supervillain once more. Sytsevichs downfall and return to evil is a totally gut-wrenching moment for Spider-Man. Its stunning to think that a villain that had been long portrayed as a punchline could suddenly be crafted with such depth and intelligence the way Kelly does in these two issues.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
