10 Worst Things Spider-Man Has Ever Done

Mendel Stromm was first introduced as the treacherous partner of Norman Osborn. After failing to kill the future Green Goblin, he seemingly died of a heart attacked. Stromm survived though by transferring his mind into a robot body and began harassing Spider-Man as the Robot Master.

Eventually though, Stromm (now going by the less awful name Gaunt) found that he was being absorbed by his own robotics and was reduced to nothing but a head. Stromm called Spider-Man to him and explained that his decaying mind was the only thing keeping his suit's AI at bay and that if it got loose it would destroy New York's electrical grid. The only way to stop it was for Spider-Man to kill him.

Unfortunately Stromm wasn't an unarmed woman standing behind him and so Spider-Man was crippled with indecision over whether to mercy kill a tired old man or allow an entire city to be plunged into chaos.

Spidey's 'solution' was to design a computer virus that shut down both Stromm and the AI, effectively rendering them comatose. While this may seem like an ideal third option, it had the downside of leaving Stromm trapped in a barren virtual world inside his own mind.

Spider-Man did eventually send S.H.I.E.L.D. to rescue him though... seven years later.