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Attributes

Height: Unknown

Weight: Unknown

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Alternates between gray and red

Features: Usually accompanied by either a two-legged or eight-legged robot

Summary

Created By: Stan Lee, Steve Ditko

Real Name: Spencer Smythe

Current Aliases: None

Former Aliases: None

Dual Identity: Not generally known

Current Occupation: Deceased

Former Occupation: Research scientist and possibly a college professor, although the latter was never made clear.

Citizenship: U.S.

Legal Status: Criminal record.

Place of Birth: Unknown

Marital Status: Unknown

Known Relatives: Alistaire Smythe, his son, who would blame Spidey for the Professor's death and come after him with even bigger Spider-Slayers.

Known Confidants: None.

Known Allies: For a time, J. Jonah Jameson funded Smythe's research and operated some of the Spider-Slayers himself

Major Enemies: Spider-Man

Usual Bases: New York City

Former Bases: None

Current Groups: None

Former Groups: None

Education: Post-graduate degree, presumably a PhD

Powers & Paraphenalia

Strength Level: Normal human strength

Powers: None

Abilities: Smythe is a reknown robotic expert and knows about everything there is to know when it comes to spiders.

Equipment: Smythe designed a number of robots, which he termed "Spider-Slayers" after his initial defeat by Spider-Man. The early ones were bi- pedal, designed to be operated by remote control and like a spider, could walk straight up walls. The later ones were built to look more like a spider, and sometimes had cockpits so a controller could ride along.

Weapons: None other than the robots.

Limitations: Apparently skipped physics class the day they covered the dangers of handling radioactive energy sources.

Background

Smythe, annoyed at the inability of his robot to capture Spider-Man, began to obsess about the Web-Crawler, turning to crime to finance his research and constantly improving his robots, which he dubbed Spider-Slayers. Turns out they were more along the lines of Professor-Slayers; the radioactive materials used in the manufacture of the robots poisoned Smythe, dooming him to a slow and agonizing death.

Blaming Jameson and Spidey equally for his impeding demise, Smythe handcuffed the two of them together with a bomb scheduled to detonate in 24 hours, determined to make the two of them suffer the agony of inescapable death. Unfortunately for Smythe, his disease was too advanced for him to survive the 24 hours himself; he expired convinced he had killed off the two men responsible. Peter Parker, however, had a pretty good grasp of what made mechanical devices tick, and was able to abort the bomb by freezing its controls.

Spidey seemed to have seen the last of the Spider-Slayers but Spencer's son, Alistaire Smythe, took up with the Kingpin and started building his own killer robots.

Thanks To:

The assistance of the Marvel Chronology Project is gratefully acknowledged.

Character Appearances