10 Human Comic Book Anti Heroes You Don't Want To Mess With... Ever!
7. Scarlet Spider (Kaine)
Marvel Comics
Of all the clones to have emerged in the wake of the bonkers Clone Saga event from the nineties, Kaine is perhaps the most misunderstood. That's partially because, throughout the years, no one at Marvel has really known what to do with him. That was, until he he rebranded as a new Scarlet Spider in 2011 in a series written by Christopher Yost.
There, Kaine Parker was relocated from New York to Texas (New York does admittedly have a lot of spiders in it already), took on an awesome-looking red and back outfit and set about dealing justice in a decidedly more heroic way than he previously did. It's also worth noting that, while Kaine dialled back his brutal methods during this period, his past as a villain was still called into question and dominated his legacy too.
The idea of a more vengeful Spider-Man isn't a particularly new one (goodness knows the corrupting influence of the symbiote has been deployed on dozens of separate occasions), this one was certainly one of the more compelling. It reminded readers that, while Ben Reilly is undoubtedly the most famous Parker clone, he definitely isn't the most fearsome.
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.
