10 Comic Villains With The Best Motivations

7. Kraven The Hunter

Even though Wilson Fisk would later leave the wall-crawler behind in order to torment the borough of Hell's Kitchen, one supervillain who retained synonymy with Spider-Man was Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven the Hunter.

Kraven tried but constantly failed to hunt Peter Parker during Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original run on The Amazing Spider-Man, but eventually found success in one of the web-slinger's darkest stories, dubbed Kraven's Last Hunt.

The book, written by J. M. DeMatteis and illustrated by Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod, was published during a dark period for Peter. He had recently parted ways with the symbiote, but had opted to retain the black costume as a symbol of his newfound maturity, with the character even set to marry longtime girlfriend Mary Jane Watson.

Such a tone prompted a reappraisal of Kraven's motivations, prompted by DeMatteis stumbling across an entry on the character in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The character, until then a relatively clichéd supervillain, was imbued with an unrelenting obsession to defeat Spider-Man, to become him and, in essence, prove to himself and his mortal adversary that he was superior in every way.