Iconic Marvel Villain Gets Their Greatest Redesign Of All Time, Bar None

Published Sep 9, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. The Marvel multiverse has given a minor Spider-Man antagonist the chance to shine as a terrifying monster ripped straight out of a Godzilla movie. Throughout the years, several Marvel antagonists have undergone a drastic transformation into genuinely imposing forces of nature. One example is Mac Gargan, who began as a relatively straightforward tech-suit-wearing mercenary before bonding with the Venom symbiote, which temporarily made him a cannibalistic hulking monstrosity. Other twisted Marvel villains like Bullseye, Sabretooth, Purple Man, and Carnage kept raising the bar for cruelty and went from regular threats to living nightmares their respective heroes couldn't contain. Beyond Marvel's main universe, the boundless nature of the multiverse is the ultimate laboratory for drastic transformations. In the original Ultimate Universe, Norman Osborn completely abandons his traditional costume and glider to become the Ultimate Green Goblin, a grotesque, pyrokinetic, Hulk-like demon who eventually kills Spider-Man. This same reality birthed The Maker, born from a young Reed Richards who abandons his heroic ideals out of sheer disappointment with humanity. More recently, the newly forged Ultimate Universe of Earth-6160 reimagined Hulk as a manipulative leader of a shadowy global cabal. Other Marvel timelines take even bolder approaches to character redesigns, often turning regularly overlooked antagonists into bigger threats than some of the most iconic Earth-616 villains in order to raise the stakes. Swarm Is A Monstrous Kaiju In The Marvel Mangaverse Marvel Mangaverse: Iron Knight #1; Written By Cody Ziglar; Art By Kei Zama, Wayne Faucher, And Arif Prianto The Marvel Mangaverse's second chapter, Marvel Mangaverse: Iron Knight #1, opens with its new Iron Man figure Riri Williams aka Ironheart fighting for survival within the confines of her dystopian land. Accustomed to fending off strange creatures, Riri ignores a talking bug until it reveals where it comes from: Swarm, the Spider-Man villain composed of sentient insects, is a large monster that resembles a demonic cockroach in the Marvel Mangaverse. Riri Williams struggles to contain it, as its double threat of kaiju-like body and army of small bugs is too much for Iron Knight to handle. Visually speaking, the Marvel Mangaverse improves on Swarm's traditional design, as this new version is a single giant bug that's powerful on its own, and its scouts share its conscience. On Earth-616 and most other timelines, Swarm is a literal collection of insects in the shape of a human, similarly to Earth-11-580's Spiders-Man, and its costume is nothing but a hooded cloak. While unforgettable and harder to kill, Swarm's original design fails to embody the same immediate threat as his Marvel Mangaverse counterpart, who draws from the sheer visceral horror that giant insects naturally create. Swarm Should Be A Bigger Villain Than He Is Swarm's Powers Are Terrifying In Every Universe Despite possessing one of the most viscerally horrifying power sets in comic book history, Fritz von Meyer is usually relegated to a punchline. Swarm shares the same terrifying immortality as heavyweights like Sandman and Electro, who can always survive by becoming one with their materials. Swarm merges his mind with a mutated hive that makes him the literal embodiment of hundreds of thousands of killer bees. Logically, this makes him an overwhelming and nearly unkillable antagonist, but he doesn't show up to fight Spider-Man as often as the rest of the wall-crawler's rogues. As a sentient hive mind, Swarm possesses the horrifying ability to manipulate and absorb billions of additional insects that allow him to balloon into a towering kaiju. This macro-organism can blot out the sun, collapse skyscrapers, and strip the flesh from entire populations in seconds. His psychic control over the hive also allows him to disperse his consciousness to spy across an entire city or overwhelm an opponent’s respiratory system from the inside out. If Earth-616 gave him more chances to shine, Swarm could easily overshadow his Marvel Mangaverse self, even without undergoing any major design or power change. Would you like to see Marvel's Swarm more often? Marvel Mangaverse: Iron Knight #1 is now available from Marvel Comics Created by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko Movie(s) Spider-Man, Spider-Man Strikes Back, Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse TV Show(s) Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man Unlimited, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Spider-Noir Comic The Amazing Spider-Man First Film Spider-Man First TV Show Spider-Man