15 DEADLIEST Comic Book Assassins

The biggest criminals or terrorist organisations have armies of soldiers and supervillains at their beck and call. If Spider-Man is nosing around the Kingpin's property, he'll send a couple of goons to eliminate him. When Hydra realises Captain America has infiltrated their base, they'll order their henchmen to wipe him out.

And if that fails, you can always hire a professional assassin. These aren't just run-of-the-mill crooks or Z-list baddies. We're talking about people who are trained by the best of the best (or the worst of the worst depending on how you look at it). And with the world populated by thousands of supervillains, it's no surprise that contract killers aren't in short supply.

For some of these guys, they don't want revenge or take over the world. They just want a pay check. They may kill for a living but it's nothing personal (usually).

And this isn't just limited to supervillains. There are a few superheroes who have proven so efficient at killing, they've been hired by the government or SHIELD to take out a dangerous threat.

But the big question is who is the deadliest assassin of all?

At first, Mary Walker comes across as a timid, shy pacifist who has a passion for teaching. However, Mary has DID and will convert to her darker personality, Typhoid Mary, when stressed. In this form, Mary can use telekinesis, put people to sleep, or create hallucinations.

As her mind became less stable, she manifested more Alters, including a pyrokinetic called Bloody Mary. Bizarrely, she cannot access her powers as Bloody Mary while in the personality of Typhoid and vice versa.

When Kingpin recognised Mary's potential, he hired her as an assassin. Even though she's a loose canon, Kingpin is able to control her through hypnosis. In the Shadowland storyline, he demonstrated he can switch her personality in an instant simply by uttering the words, “Frangible archipelago sibilance".

Superheroes have great difficulty fighting her since they have to constantly adjust their strategy while she switches between personalities and powers. Her vast array of abilities and unpredictability has allowed Mary to become Kingpin's right-hand henchwoman, a deadly mercenary, and one of the world's most dangerous assassins.