Rhino (character)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Rhino, whose real name is Aleksei Sytsevich, carries a reputation that writer Mike Conroy summed up in a single phrase: "famously one of Spider-Man's dimmest villains." Writer Stan Lee and artist John Romita Sr. created him, and he first charged into view in The Amazing Spider-Man #41, dated October 1966.

  Dim, though, is a strange label for a character who keeps returning, keeps changing, and keeps being rewritten by new hands. Comic books, cartoons, video games and films have all taken their turn with him.

  This documentary follows a man built to be a blunt instrument and asks what happens when the instrument starts to think. How did a hired thug end up sealed inside his own strength? What does a character known mostly for being fooled do when he finally sees the trick? And why does a villain who smashes things for a living keep drawing readers back?

  2465

• 2. Built In A Laboratory

  ›

  Aleksei Sytsevich starts out as a low-ranking member of the Russian mafia, hired muscle for an Eastern Bloc country. He volunteers for a series of chemical and radiation treatments. They give him an artificial skin covering and a great deal of strength and speed. The agents behind the program want a weapon. Sytsevich has other ideas, and he rebels against them and destroys their laboratory.

  Colonel John Jameson becomes his next target. Sytsevich is hired to kidnap the colonel and obtain the extraterrestrial spores to which Jameson was exposed during a space mission. Spider-Man defeats him, and he is taken to prison. That debut story runs across issues #41 to #43 and ends in December 1966.

  Sytsevich's body now has superhuman strength, stamina, durability and speed. The speed is best over short distances, so his favorite tactic is the charge. He runs straight at an opponent and does great harm to anything standing nearby. The charge has a cost. He lacks agility and reacts slowly, so changing direction at high speed is very hard for him. His fighting style therefore leans on melee attacks.

  The polymer suit that gives him his name copies a rhinoceros, down to two horns, and covers everything except his face. It resists damage and extreme temperatures. The horns can pierce two-inch plate steel. This first suit is cruder than the ones that follow it.

  After his prison sentence, Sytsevich hears again from the same scientists, and they have a new offer.

  610135

• 3. The Hulk Problem

  ›

  Gamma radiation, the same force that created the Hulk, is what the scientists bring when they come back to Sytsevich. It raises his strength still further. They also give him a more durable, acid-proof suit. As repayment, he agrees to find and kidnap Bruce Banner, the Hulk's human alter ego, for his knowledge of gamma radiation. The plan collapses. The Hulk defeats him easily and puts him in a coma.

  The Incredible Hulk (vol. 2) #104, from June 1968, marks the Rhino's return to print, and by the end of that story he has apparently died. Issue #124, dated February 1970, brings him back. From there he becomes a perennial opponent of both Spider-Man and the Hulk.

  One of the oddest matchups puts the Hulk in a bandaged disguise as "Bob Danner," playing baseball for the Florida Pistols against the Miami Emperors. A player on the Emperors turns out to be the Rhino, using the alias "Alex O'Hirn." A fight erupts between the two. The other players leave the field once they see how strong the pair are.

  Months after his coma, the villain called the Leader revives him with a scheme tied to Banner's wedding to Betty Ross. The Leader wants Banner to turn into the Hulk, and he wants the Rhino as protection from the rampage that follows. At the ceremony, the Rhino betrays him and attacks Banner the moment he transforms. In the chaos, the Rhino is knocked into a coma once more. The Leader briefly takes mental control of Sytsevich's body to fight the Hulk. He then abandons the Rhino and the Hulk on an alien world and flies home in a rocket. The rocket crashes on arrival, and the crash fuses the Rhino's costume to his body for good.

  789103

• 4. Stuck In The Suit

  ›

  Doc Samson brings the fused and furious Sytsevich to Project Pegasus. There he becomes part of a failed prison break alongside Moonstone, Blackout and Electro. Later, during a transfer to another facility, the Miracle Man tries to free him. Sytsevich does not want to leave. He wants medical treatment so the costume can be separated from his body. He and the Thing stop the Miracle Man, and the Rhino is taken to the medical facility inside Project Pegasus.

  The treatments fail to return him to normal, so he escapes. Some time later, the Kingpin hires him on the belief that crime can raise the money for more surgery.

  Then Sytsevich overhears the Kingpin tell a group of scientists not to remove the suit. The Kingpin plainly prefers a Rhino who stays armored. Sytsevich responds by kidnapping one of the scientists' children, holding the child until the procedure is finished.

  Freedom from the suit does not mean freedom from crime. He asks Justin Hammer for a removable replacement, which lets him carry on his criminal life. Hammer builds a second suit with improved strength and durability, and for the first time Sytsevich can take the armor off.

  1214151310

• 5. Hired Muscle

  ›

  The Abomination is the first villain to team up with the Rhino. Together they activate a gamma bomb at the Hulkbuster base, hoping to destroy the Hulk. The attempt fails.

  Egghead has better luck recruiting him for the Emissaries of Evil. The Rhino is paired with Solarr to hunt for a rare jewel. The Defenders, Doctor Strange and Doc Samson defeat them both.

  In the 1980s and 1990s, the Rhino reached significant exposure, appearing in over 12 titles. Sometimes he starred on his own, and sometimes he worked as a villain for hire. The limited series Deadly Foes of Spider-Man #1-4, running from May to August 1991, put him in the lead.

  The Sinister Syndicate gives him another crew, and with it he fights Spider-Man on multiple occasions before the team falls apart.

  Kraven the Hunter's Great Hunt treats him differently. In a prelude to the "Hunted" storyline, the Rhino is among the animal-themed characters who are captured and forced to serve as hunting targets. The captives grouped with him are publicly revealed as the Savage Six.

  During the "King in Black" storyline, Mayor Wilson Fisk recruits him for the Thunderbolts at the time of Knull's invasion. In the "Devil's Reign" storyline, he is on Fisk's latest version of the team, just as Fisk passes a law forbidding superhero activities.

  1630313235

• 6. Second Thoughts

  ›

  In Spider-Man's Tangled Web #5-6, dated October and November 2001, the "Flowers for Rhino" storyline is told from the Rhino's own perspective. Readers get to see the world through the eyes of the brute for the first time.

  A sharper turn arrives in Punisher War Journal (vol. 2) #13-15, from January to March 2008, where the Rhino begins to rethink his lifestyle. It starts when he accidentally kills a security guard during a bank robbery. The Punisher humiliates him, and Alyosha Kravinoff, the son of Kraven the Hunter, captures him. The Punisher rescues him from Kravinoff's superhuman zoo and convinces him to make amends. The Rhino sends a letter and money to the guard's widow and helps the Punisher on a case. He later persuades the Punisher not to kill Michael Watts, the third Stilt-Man.

  During The Gauntlet storyline, the Rhino gives up crime and surrenders to the police. S.H.I.E.L.D. removes his suit and sentences him to 25 years on Ryker's Island, though he is released early for good behavior. In a restaurant, Doctor Tramma offers to reinvent him. Sytsevich declines, having developed a crush on Oksana, a fired waitress, so Tramma builds a new Rhino instead. At Spider-Man's urging, Sytsevich refuses to fight the new Rhino. The promise breaks when Oksana, by then his wife, is killed. Grief-stricken, Sytsevich kills the new Rhino.

  Doctor Octopus then recruits him for his version of the Sinister Six. During the Ends of the Earth storyline, the Rhino tells Spider-Man that losing Oksana has changed him and that he is prepared to die. When Octopus blows up his own lair, the Rhino pins Silver Sable to the floor of a flooding corridor. He knows Spider-Man will blame himself for her death. The Rhino is presumed drowned. Later, while trapped inside Octopus's dying body, Spider-Man meets Oksana and the Rhino in the afterlife.

  Tahuexco, in Guatemala, is where the Jackal finds Sytsevich hiding after he turns out to have survived. The Jackal promises a revived Oksana if the Rhino does his bidding. Then Doctor Octopus activates a virus that makes all of the Jackal's clones decay rapidly, and Oksana turns to dust. The Rhino goes on a grief-stricken rampage. Spider-Man calms him by urging him to move forward for Oksana's sake. The two agree to meet once in a while to help each other with their pain.

  In the Outlawed and Killer App stories, Kamala's Law leads to underage superheroes being targeted. Sytsevich, now on Fisk's Thunderbolts, did not sign up to dispose of them. He secretly helps the Champions by handing them his Thunderbolts badge.

  1819232427

• 7. Other Rhinos

  ›

  In Age of Apocalypse, the Rhino is a rhinoceros-like Inhuman. The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows makes him an enforcer for Regent. In Spider-Verse, he belongs to Verna's Hounds. In Marvel Mangaverse, he is part of the Kishi Kuri clan.

  The Ultimate Marvel universe takes the biggest departure. There the Rhino is Alex O'Hirn, a scientist who uses a stolen military suit called the R.H.I.N.O. The letters stand for Robotism Heuristic Intelligence Navigable Operative.

  A man named Ryan O'Smith also deserves a mention, though he is not Sytsevich at all. An unnamed mad scientist experimented on O'Smith and gave him flight. He intended to become a superhero, but the original Rhino targeted him. O'Smith and Spider-Man defeated the Rhino together.

  When the Rhino reached live-action film, it was the armored look of the Ultimate version that filmmakers echoed.

  3738394142

• 8. Rhino On Screen

  ›

  Ed McNamara voiced the Rhino in the Spider-Man cartoon of 1967. In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Don Stark gives him a voice, and this version works for the Kingpin as a member of the Insidious Six.

  In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Clancy Brown voices the Alex O'Hirn version. This Rhino begins as a thug working under Tombstone and as Flint Marko's partner in crime. He becomes a guinea pig in Norman Osborn's illegal experiments and is infused with Doctor Otto Octavius's titanium resin armor. The armor makes him powerful but blocks his pores, so he must periodically rehydrate. After a first fight with Spider-Man, he joins two incarnations of the Sinister Six before he is captured.

  In Ultimate Spider-Man, which began in 2012, O'Hirn is a teenager at Midtown High School, voiced by Max Mittelman and Daryl Sabara. A serum made by Doctor Octopus turns him into an anthropomorphic rhinoceros. He joins the Sinister Six until Spider-Man persuades him to join the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. In the Spider-Man series of 2017, Sytsevich is a student at Horizon High, secretly injected with rhino serum by Raymond Warren. In that rhino form, his eyesight is as poor as an actual rhinoceros's.

  Paul Giamatti plays Sytsevich in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, released in 2014, as a dim-witted and boastful member of the Russian mafia. After Spider-Man foils him in an attempt to steal Oscorp plutonium, he lands in jail. Gustav Fiers then gives him a rhinoceros-themed mecha with forearm-mounted heavy machine guns and shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen told Entertainment Weekly that the armor was made from modified 1980s Soviet-era military gear. Giamatti confirmed that the Rhino was planned to return in a third film before the franchise was cancelled.

  Two alternate-universe Rhinos make non-speaking cameos in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as prisoners of the Spider-Society. In Kraven the Hunter, released in 2024, Alessandro Nivola plays a Russian mercenary and former associate of Nikolai Kravinoff. He can turn into a rhino and human hybrid, and he controls the involuntary changes by injecting an experimental serum provided by Dr. Miles Warren.

  Video games have given him many roles. John DiMaggio voiced him as a boss in Spider-Man 2 in 2004 and again in Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, where he is also playable. Robin Atkin Downes voiced him in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, where he is a playable character. In The Amazing Spider-Man game, Fred Tatasciore voices a genetic hybrid of Sytsevich and a rhinoceros, made by a corrupt Oscorp scientist for sale to a Russian crime syndicate.

  In Insomniac's Spider-Man series, Fred Tatasciore again voices him as a former enforcer for the Russian Mob in an irremovable combat suit. In Spider-Man from 2018, Doctor Octopus breaks him out of the Raft and recruits him into the Sinister Six, in exchange for removing his armor. In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Roxxon gives him new armor that better resists Spider-Man's bio-electric abilities, but the Tinkerer severely wounds him.

  Toy Biz released several Rhino action figures across its Spider-Man: The Animated Series line, its Spider-Man Classics line and its Marvel Legends series, and Hasbro later reissued a repainted Classics figure. Art Asylum made a mini-bust, Bowen Designs made a bust and statue, and Sideshow Collectibles made a comiquette statue. In 2020, CBR.com ranked him 2nd on its list of the most powerful members of the Sinister Syndicate. In 2022, Screen Rant placed him 8th on its list of powerful Silk villains.

  In Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours, a novel by Jim Butcher, the Rhino is forced to ally with Spider-Man against Morlun's family. The two foes come away with a deeper respect for one another.

  4448505961