8 Smartest Decisions In Marvel Villain History

3. Wilson Fisk Runs For Mayor - Daredevil

Wilson Fisk Mayor
Marvel Comics

Wilson Fisk is one of the most diabolical antagonists in Marvel's library, and potentially even its greatest. He's been a villain both to Spider-Man and the Punisher, but it's Daredevil with whom he appears to be locked in battle with the most.

The Man Without Fear revitalised his rivalry with the Kingpin of Crime during Frank Miller's stint on the character in the 1980s, at which point Fisk managed to bring the hero to the brink during Born Again. While that campaign of terror alone could go down as one of the smartest campaigns in Marvel's history, it's a more recent development that was probably Fisk's most ingenious.

After Fisk ratted out Daredevil's secret identity to the press, and also after the Man Without Fear managed to put that revelation back in the bottle with the help of the Purple Children, he decided to run for Mayor of New York City. Doing so would grant him new powers, even more influence, and a means of vexing his greatest rival through official channels.

Fisk has now confessed that he wields less power as Mayor than he did as Kingpin, but don't underestimate what he got up to while Mayor. He outlawed vigilantes in New York, undermined Murdock's efforts to make it possible for heroes to testify in court without disclosing their own identity, and is now even more untouchable than he ever was before.

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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.