10 Times Comic Book Heroes Became Villains (In A Big Way)

Over the decades of being plastered over the pages of comics and appearing throughout TV shows and films, Spider-Man has amassed a wealth of weird iterations and appearances, some of which are even outside of Marvel (such as the Italian Spider-Man; everyone should see the Italian Spider-Man).

Many of these are morally dubious; none, however, come close to Spider-Man in the story of The Marvel Universe vs The Punisher.

Set in a reality where The Punisher accidentally released a virus that spread throughout the states, which turns people into cannibals (that’s cannibals, not zombies, just to make that point completely set in stone). It just so happened to infect Peter Parker seemingly as patient zero. Fast forward a while later and the world has, inevitably, gone to that old chestnut; nuclear war. Essentially humanity (uninfected humanity, that is) is almost extinct, but that doesn’t stop The Punisher going around and doing his thing: blowing people’s heads off with a load of guns.

This includes when he encounters a totally friggin’ beefed up Spider-Man again, who is in charge of a clan of cannibals. There’s a lot more to cover with this story, especially as it’s a Punisher story, but the point is Spider-Man started eating people and didn’t stop until he bit off more than he could chew with The Punisher.