They are Crime, the Horrible Mr. Cobb

Everyone has a dream of the type where you pitch for the Yankees during the World Series. Mine would be designing a Spiderman villain for the great Steve Ditka to illustrate. I have one that would be perfect for his style. His story would be something like this...

Dr. Randolf Cobb heard an interesting story once. There was a study involving radioactive spiders and one got out. What makes it interesting is that incident occurred shortly before the debut of Spiderman. Obviously, there was a connection there in Dr. Cobb's mind. So he hunts up the details of the experiment and whips himself up some radioactive spiders. He then lets one bite him and he waits to become a super human.

Well, he indeed got spider powers. Just not the same package that Peter Parker got. The good news is that he became super strong, stronger even than Spiderman. The bad news is that every hair follicle on his body started spinning out spider silk. Worse he has very little control over the process. Instead of becoming a super powerful Adonis (with TIGER BLOOD, heh), he ended up looking like a mummy after being dipped in a cotton candy machine.

Very very upset at this, Dr. Cobb still had one course of action. Obviously the experiment worked, just not as it did with Spiderman. Therefore, he should capture Spiderman and study him. Hence our villain's motive.

Cobb's set of powers makes for quite a problem for our Spiderman. Peter likes to use his agility and speed and duke it out hand to hand. Getting close to Cobb though would take out effectively take out his agility and spidersense. Hitting Cobb would be like hitting a tar baby, and while he doesn't have much control over his webs he is essentially a walking web bomb. Spiderman would be quickly entangled and then fall victim to Cobb's greater strength. So Spiderman has to keep his distance and figure out how to stop him.

I can definitely see in my mind a series of Ditka panels that would just rock. As a character there's definitely room for growth and change. Cobb could easily become a part of Spidey's stable of unstable villains. I can even see a team up between Dr. Octopus and Cobb.