MacDonald "Mac" Gargan is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as an adversary of the superhero Spider-Man. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #19 (December 1964) as a private investigator hired by J. Jonah Jameson to learn how Peter Parker took pictures of Spider-Man. In the following issue, Jameson decided to turn Gargan into a deadly adversary for Spider-Man through a barely-tested procedure, which left Gargan with an unremovable scorpion-themed armor and the predatory instincts of the arachnid. Driven insane by his mutation, Gargan instead turned to a life of crime as the Scorpion, and went on to menace both Spider-Man and Jameson, whom he held responsible for his tra