10 Best Times Supervillains Switched Sides

10. Doctor Octopus - The Superior Spider-Man

Superior Spider Man Avengers
Marvel Comics

Dan Slott finally drew his stint on The Amazing Spider-Man to a close last year, ending a decade's long association with the character to pursue a new challenge in the Fantastic Four. Whatever your thoughts on the writer's run, it's probably fair to say that its transformation into the Superior Spider-Man - a storyline that saw Dock Ock take control of the wall-crawler's body - made for a refreshing take on the character.

Doctor Octopus became the new, 'superior' Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man #700, having recently acquired Peter's body for nefarious purposes. The original Peter has his mind placed in Octavius' original, failing body, but is able to transfer all his memories to Ock before passing away. With this knowledge in hand Ock reaches an epiphany, seeing the value in his old enemy's heroics and then deciding to not only continue Peter's identity, but to innovate it in every way possible.

With this being comics a return to the status-quo was always inevitable, but Ock still managed to make one heck of an impression as the new Spider-Man. He had a cracking red and black costume, a set of mechanical arms that harkened back to the Iron-Spider design from Civil War and a ruthless edge absent from other versions of the web-slinger.

After Peter reclaimed his own mind, Ock began a cycle of death and rebirth before once again assuming the identity in December 2018, vowing to outdo his past tenure as the friendly neighbourhood arachnid.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.