A group of six powerful villains against one! Well, that’s not fair. But this is something normal in the world of our ‘web-developer’ wall-clinging superhero, Spider-Man. He has faced multiple villains in his superhero life. But a forceful and challenging team keeps testing him again and again. This team is known as ‘Sinister Six’- a group of six supervillains that appeared for the first time in Spider-Man comics books. It was published by Marvel Comics during the 1960s.
Sinister Six is a creation of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. It made its first debut with ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ published in 1964. The leader of Sinister Six was mostly Dr. Otto Octavis or simply Dr.Octopus, that eight-mechanical armed villain from Spider-Man (2004). He recently became popular meme material for his dialogue “Hello Peter !” as shown in the teaser of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ released in 2021. Its two trailers also highlighted five members from Sinister Six, including Dr. Octopus. ‘The Sinister Six’ is an upcoming film based on Spider-Man and the evil gang’s ‘reunion’. And before this movie arrives in theatres let’s check out the ’10 facts you need to know about Sinister Six’.
The First Sinister six
As already mentioned above, this evil group of six supervillains first appeared in Marvel comics named The Amazing Spider-Man, Issue-1 in 1964. Stan Lee and Steve created this. Its first six members were Dr. Ocks, Electro, Sandman, Kraven the Hunter, Vulture, and Mysterio. Dr. Ocks was its leader. According to the story, Dr. Ocks was in jail after losing to Spider-Man. He has also lost his mechanized tentacles. Later he breaks out of jail and calls each of the worst enemies of Spider-Man he knew. And out of those who responded were included in the team and got organized into Sinister Six.
Their first encounter with Spider-man
On the other side of this super-secret evil planning of Sinister Six against Spider-Man, the superhero himself was leading a life in dilemma and wanted to get seriously involved in his life as Peter Parker, a high school student. One day Peter didn’t reach his school, so the teacher called Aunt May. His Aunt May goes to Daily Bulge with Betty Brant, where Peter’s friend Jameson worked. She inquired to him about Peter. But they both are abducted by Sinister Six, expecting that Spider-Man will definitely come searching for them.
As per their expectations, Spider-Man does come in search of his Aunt and Betty. But instead of fighting together with Spider-Man, Sinister Six decides to face him individually to receive the credit of finishing him off alone. Hence the fight starts with Electro, followed by Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, Sandman, Vulture, and finally Dr. Octopus. All of them get defeated one by one by Spidey. They are all sent to jail in a single room where they continue to argue about where did they go wrong!
No Spider-man in the first face-off
Even though Spider-Man fought all the members of Sinister Six and defeated them all, he had no powers at the beginning of this battle. Yes! So he was just a typical boy in a superhero suit without no powers. And this happened because he thought he was paying a lot more price for being a superhero. He felt distant from his loved ones when he was closer to his responsibilities as a hero. He was also blaming himself for the demise of his uncle Ben Parker.
All this stressed him too much and made him temporarily lose his power. He wanted to have a regular life now as other school-going students do. But his destiny pushed him back to his superhero avatar when he heard about his Aunt May and Betty being captured by Sinister Six. He later regained all the superpowers he had lost because of his guilt-ridden life while fighting with Electro.
Marvel’s first supervillain Team
Sinister Six was the first-ever supergroup containing some of the strongest foes of Spider-man in comics history of Marvel. Marvel has published comics since the 1940s, but the modern era started only with the publishing of comic books like ‘The Fantastic Four’ and ‘Spider-Man’ in 1961. Sinister Six became the first supervillain group of Marvel comics ever. Simultaneously, another group called “The Masters of Evil” debuted in the sixth issue of Avengers’.
The permanent members
Sinister Six is a group that varied with time with the incoming of new members and outgoing of some members who either left it or died. But some members became the most repeated members of the group. They often guided other villains against their targets. They were Electro, Vulture, and Dr. Ocks.
Electro, aka Maxwell Dhillon, was in the team until their fifth team got disbanded. Later he joined the team during the ‘End of the Earth’. He once again joined the Superior Six team founded by Superior Spider-man, who was none other than Dr. Ocks controlling the mind of Spider-man. He walks off from this team also, once he regains his senses. Vulture, aka Dr. Michael Morbius, is next to Electro as a Sinister Six-member. Dr. Ocks has been the leader and founder of this team. But he left after its third incarnation and came back directly in the seventh association, which was again disbanded during Ends of the Earth. He was also the Superior Spider-Man of the Superior Six groups.
Superior Six
Going with the meaning of this particular word, one may wonder that “Superior Six” may contain the teaming of all the good characters from the comics. But conversely, it’s not. Superior six is Sinister six in a new form where Dr. Ock’s mind switches over with the body of Spider-Man when he was almost dead in the ‘Ends of the Earth’ around 2012.
Dr. Octopus or Dr. Ocks, now in Spider-Man’s body, tries to control everything related to his personal life. Also, he doesn’t like Avengers, so he detaches himself (as Spider-Man) from them and assembles his own villain team with Electro, Sandman, Chameleon, Vulture, and Mysterio. He brainwashed them to form his new team, called ‘Superior Six’, and made them work like superheroes but for his own benefits. And once this control over their minds vaporized, they all left the team without knowing that it was Dr. Ocks and not Spider-Man.
Six! that’s too less
Sinister Six, meant to be a six-member group, actually featured more members than this several times in the past. There have been 16 versions of this team in the Marvel Universe, led by different leaders having different aims. The sixth incarnation was Sinister 12, having twelve members led by Green Goblin. Its eleventh incarnation consisted of sixteen members. A team led by Mojo was Sinister Sixty-six. The Kindred-led team during Sinister War had twenty-six villains in total. There is even Sinister-Sixty, which appeared in the sixth issue of “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”. It was a kid-friendly version of comics.
Also Read: Top 10 Quotes From Moon Knight That May Fascinate You
Zombified Sinister Six
There is a zombie version of Sinister six that included zombified Dr. Octobus, Green goblin, Vulture, Sandman, Electro, and Mysterio. They were shown in the “Marvel Zombies: Dead Days” where they combat Magneto along with Wolverine. In this Zombie series, there is a Zombified Spiderman in Marvel Zombies return who eats and bites his villains from the sinister six containing everyone except Green Goblin replaced with Kraven the hunter. Also, only the sandman is left uninfected as he hides in the
sand. They all become zombies and kill the spider-man and friends in return for which spiderman kills them all. Sandman even helps spiderman to save Aunt May and Mary Jane.
When the target was not spider-man
There were times when Sinister six assembled not to target Spider-man but either they fought against each other or other Marvel characters. For example, the sinister six formed by the reunion of Vulture, Electro, Mysterio, and Hobgoblin takes was against Dr. Octopus. Sinister seven formed by Hobgoblin was against Kaine (a foil of spider-man). Sandman’s Sinister six was against Dr. Octopus again. Superior six by Dr. Octopus was to fight a few villains as he wanted to rule the world. There were some more that aimed at just stealing things from other powerful villains.
The future Sinister Six
The recent movie ‘ Spider-man: No Way Home‘ released on 13 December 2021, featured almost all the Sinister Six members except the sixth one, staging another suspense for Sony’s much-awaited project since 2013, the ‘Sinister Six’. All those who appeared in “No Way Home”, are Dr. Octopus, Green Goblin, Sandman, Electro, and Lizard. They did not appear as members of Sinister Six, but as villains from different universes who had to be sent back before they could disturb the very fabric of time. And hence speculations are made about who will be the sixth member of this evil team.
So this was all on the top 10 facts you need to know about Sinister Six, as they were continuously in the news, ever since after the release of ‘Spide-Man: No Way Home’.
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