Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion, initially the first "anti Spider-Man", has become little more than a joke since his debut...

Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion, initially the first "anti Spider-Man", has become little more than a joke since his debut....typically he's portrayed as a goon and a buffoon who even among Spidey's rogues gets little respect

How do you fix him?

We make Miles the new Scorpion

Not a bad idea desu, though that would be more about fixing Miles than fixing Mac

We make Mac the new "black" Spider-Man.

Take him back to the original concept of him being a guy who's physically at a level above Spider-Man, he can't win just by punching him because Gargan hits harder and can take more hits. Make Peter have to work for his win. Let Gargan get some wins over other characters.

Also, play up Gargan being dangerously violent, unstable, and full of murderous rage directed at Spider-Man and JJJ.

Wasnt he already that when he was Venom? If Miles is the new Scorpion with his bullshit venom blasts and now mechanical tail, lets make Gargan The Tick

>Wasnt he already that when he was Venom?

Even as Venom he was treated as a dork, which begs the question of why even give him an upgrade to begin with only to shit on him within the same story

Make him a predator that relies on his senses and killer instinct to make him lethal. He doesn’t speak much but he’s not a mindless brute. He will wait in place and hide until the moment is right to strike.

Give him a bastard son/daughter. A kid who inspires him get his shit together. He starts turning his life around and all that good stuff. He's a success kicking ass as the Scorpion making money and suddenly, BAM! The kid gets killed, it can be blamed on Spider-Man and Scorpion fucking loses it.He no longer does any henching, or robberies. His only purpose in life is to kill and eat Spider-Man's heart. He becomes such an unstable psycho nobody can safely work with him. He mutates himself with some chemicals that make him stronger, but they burn off his face. But he doesn't care, in fact he laughs, because this symbolizes that Mac Gargan is dead and only THE SCORPION remains!

Spider-Man beats him all the time because he knows how. So pit him against heroes who only know him as a chump and not a powerhouse who needs to be out-smarted so they aren't prepared for when he wrecks their shit.

What if he got the Venom symbiote? No way THAT could be dumb.

This

The Gargan in Homecoming seems like a deranged psychological, so go overboard with that.

He used to be a private investigator before becoming Scorpion. Maybe play up that part of his past more by showing him as being good at tracking without being noticed, then striking when the time is right like the predator he is.

Maybe, hear me out now

..maybe it's ok for some characters to never recapture their glory days. Maybe some people fall by the wayside and never reach that high again. Maybe we don't have to "fix" every character by making them command respect.

Thing is, Mac Venom should have been a terrifyingly powerful character, on par with the Hulk in terms of raw power. As Scorpion he's stronger than Spider-Man, so the symbiote should have more than doubled his strength. Also, Gargan learned how to control minds with the symbiote. He was wasted as a character.

Yeah but his powers came from the suit, so would they have stacked like that?

What do you mean? His powers as Scorpion was mutated like Spider-Man, but with a scorpion instead of a spider. J Jonah Jameson thought it was a good idea at the time. The suit was just armor+a tail.

His powers don't come from his suit, the suit just enhances them and provides armor, weapons, and now life-support because his physiology is all fucked up.

Make him how he was before Defalco.

>so the symbiote should have more than doubled his strength.
Nu uhhhh

I guess I was just wrong then. That uh... honestly sounds kinda dumb though.

That only works if you've got an interesting place to take the character. "Chump" on its own isn't interesting and Spidey's has a couple other villains that are something of a joke despite their power.

Give him the power cosmic and make him a Herald, only for him to screw up and anger Galactus.

Not really. He went through a procedure that gave him powers, and then they gave him an armored costume with a built-in weapon to give him an even bigger advantage against Spidey.