What happens when Spider-Man's villains get fed up with getting their butts kicked? They form a team with the aspirations of destroying the hero who continually stops their fiendish ways. This is the story of the Sinister Six, a supervillain team that conceptually is really cool, but falls flat on its face.
Back in 1964, a group of Spider-Man's villains--who had been beaten time and time again--decided to join forces to take down the web-crawler. In Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, Doctor Octopus put together a team featuring Mysterio, Vulture, Electro, Kraven, and Sandman. This was supposed to be a group that would end Spider-Man once and for all.
Doc Ock knew he couldn't control these villains, so he had them all fight Spider-Man, one by one, in a location that would play to each villain's strength. It didn't go as he hoped, as Spider-Man had no problem beating them all up.
The supervillain team showed back up 26 years later in the story "Return of the Sinister Six." Doc Ock gathers the same team, but replaces Kraven with Hobgoblin, since Kraven killed himself a few years prior. This time, Doc has a new plan that's a bit out there: He wants the Sinister Six to hold Earth hostage by hijacking a satellite which will spray poison into the atmosphere killing everyone on the planet. If Earth wants to avoid a mass extinction event, all humans have to do is make the Sinister Six the supreme leaders. And like last time, Spider-Man defeated them all easily.
There were plenty of more incarnations of the team over the years, some of which had great stories, but they all had pretty much one thing in common: they couldn't beat Spider-Man. So why do people--including myself--get excited about them? The Sinister Six, is such an interesting idea, and at some point, maybe on the big screen, we could see this team form and actually give Spider-Man a run for his money, as Spidey's villains are all really cool.
And you can actually check out the Sinister Six in the recently released Spider-Man game for PS4, which launched on September 7. This round of villains features Electro, Rhino, Scorpion, the Vulture, Mister Negative, and a mystery sixth member who you won't learn about until you play the game.