The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #1-17

The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #1-17

Originally released in 2013

Written by Nick Spencer

Art by Steve Lieber

These guys, right?

The Superior Foes of Spider-Man focuses on the new Sinister Six - and yes, there's only five of them. (the bouncer at the door isn't part of the team)  It's all part of Boomerang's master plan.

I've read this series before, but I figured that since I've been focusing on supervillains this week, this seems like as good of an excuse as any to come back to it.  ...Well, calling these five "supervillains" is a bit of an exaggeration.  They're villains, sure, but they're not exactly super by any stretch of the imagination.

Boomerang is allegedly the team leader, though the only thing he's good at is making motivational speeches.  He might be the least competent member of this team, and that's saying something when it consists of the third person to go by the name "The Beetle", a guy who used to call himself "The Whizzer", a getaway driver who I'd never heard of, and the Shocker.

Despite my mockery of her choice of codename, Janice Lincoln (the third Beetle) is legitimately competent.  She's well-organized, well-connected (she's the daughter of Tombstone, though she doesn't feel the need to bring it up unless she has to), and generally seems like she could lead the gang.

The problem (aside from casual sexism among the criminal element) is that Boomerang is a compulsive liar (to just about everyone, including the audience) who would sell out his entire team if it would make him a little more money.  This is demonstrated when he tells his parole officer, Abner Jenkins (a.k.a. Mach-VII, a.k.a. the first Beetle), about his gang's plan after they kick him out for his general incompetence.  Abner sends Luke Cage and Iron Fist after them, and Boomerang breaks the Sinister Six out of a police vehicle to take charge of the Sinister Six again.

The series plays out like a mix of The Godfather and Arrested Development, with conspiracies piling up on each other and the Sinister Six being in way over their heads.  The Chameleon and the Owl (two classic villains for Spider-Man and Daredevil, respectively) are competing with Hammerhead for power in New York's criminal underground, a painting of an unmasked Doctor Doom and the cyborg head of former Maggia don Silvermane are involved, and Bullseye is targeting Boomerang for constantly insulting him.

The series is a ton of fun.  Maybe it's because I had already read it before, but the issues just flew by - at first, I figured I'd read five or six issues, then all of a sudden, I was on issue 11.  From that point, I figured "the series is only seventeen issues long - I might as well read the whole thing!" (it helped that today was a quiet day)

Boomerang and the Beetle probably get the most development, but as the series gets into the later issues, we get more focus on the rest of the team.  Overdrive wanted to become a superhero, and when Mister Negative showed up to give him superpowers in order to make him a getaway driver, he saw his opportunity.  After all, Quicksilver and Emma Frost were supervillains before they became superheroes, so the same thing could work for him, right? (the others call this the stupidest idea they've ever heard, which is saying a lot)

Meanwhile, the Shocker gets a confidence boost after spending most of the series being disrespected or left for dead, to the point where he can take on the Punisher, who's the guy that makes gangsters and low-level supervillains absolutely terrified.

Though it takes a while for him to get there.

A long while.

On a re-read, this series holds up extremely well; it helped that it had been long enough since I read it that, while I knew that there were a bunch of misdirects for what Boomerang's plan actually was, I couldn't recall what his true goals were.  I wound up taking significantly more screenshots than I usually do (about eighty in all) when reading this series because there were so many great moments that I wanted to bring up somehow, even if I couldn't fit them in naturally.

It's something that I'd love to see more of in a series - a bunch of low level villains barely scraping by with much more dangerous villains threatening to come down on their heads. (something like this for DC, set in Gotham or Metropolis, would be great)  Even the bigger names get more comedic quirks while still being portrayed as legitimate threats.

It does a great job at adding humanity to these D- to B-list villains, and it's a hilarious series to read.  Maybe I'm overselling it, but it's a series that I would highly recommend.