Gail Simone, known for her work on Batgirl and Deadpool, has challenged fans to share their Spider-Man villain name. In typical fashion, this viral challenge provided the parameters for coming up with the name, allowing for silliness to shine through. As usual, Simone’s Twitter questions have provided comic fans with the chance to show just how fun and silly fandom can be.
On Twitter, Simone asked readers to combine two very different elements to create one bizarre villain name. Spider-Man’s villains are frequently named after animals, including Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Vulture, and Scorpion. It also isn’t unusual for heroes to have names pairing colors with animals, such as DC’s Blue Beetle or Marvel’s White Tiger. However, Simone’s challenge is just a bit more complex than simply picking a favorite animal or the last animal a fan saw.
Marvel’s Newest Spider-Man Villains Equal Underwear Plus Animals
Fans were asked to combine underwear color with an animal that shares the first letter of a city or town visited – that isn’t where fans live. They then took to Twitter using the hashtag #MySpideyVillainNameIs. The results were hilariously random, with Gail contributing Teal Barracuda to the mix. Some of the names don’t actually seem as farfetched as the challenge would originally make them seem, while others are very silly to try imagining practical villain costumes for. Nonetheless, this is a fun character-creation exercise that allows anyone to come up with an original villain who could potentially thwart Spider-Man. Even other comic creators joined the fun, such as Kurt Busiek.
With the wide variety of animals in the world, it’s not surprising that there are so many different options for new villains, who could all have a wide range of stunning abilities. Still, there are also some animals that will rarely ever come up in a conversation, making them extra fun and unexpected inclusions for this challenge – even if they might not be long-term foes.
Just like there are a variety of animals to choose from, there are also quite a few underwear options when it comes to colors and patterns. From the usual black, white, and red to paisleys, plaids, and polka dots, fans had a slew of apparel to use. However, as may be expected, fans didn’t want to be limited by their underwear – or lack thereof! Several fans opted to choose their laundry day birthday suits in their villain names.
Some options are just too good to pass up on, such as ones that include rare comic crossovers. Sonic the Hedgehog and DC’s Penguin may not have many opportunities to come up against Spider-Man in any form, but Marvel has done its fair share of crossover adventures over the years. Yet one of the most fun to appear within this viral challenge was Black Manta, posing the question of how Marvel’s wall-crawler would fair against DC’s classic Aquaman foe.
With so many fun options, Marvel isn’t likely to have a shortage of possible villains for its heroes to fight if comic creators ever use similar random brainstorming methods for character creation. Spider-Man’s rogue gallery is already rather diverse, but thanks to fans – and Deadpool writer Gail Simone’s comic-based internet antics – it could easily grow larger and wilder.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
