Flowers for Rhino

Rhino , one of the main opponents of Spider-Man , is experiencing a mid-life crisis after trying to save Stella, the daughter of a mafia boss who tells him that he hired him as a bodyguard because he is too stupid to pose any threat to his business, and his daughter, and is only able to demonstrate their muscles. Rhino meets with the doctors, who had previously created his latest costume, and they do his brain surgery, which turns him into a super-genius.

He begins to effectively use his intellect, demonstrating him in battle with Spider-Man, whom he easily defeats, and then runs off with Stella with the intention to create a new criminal organization with criminals like the Mad Thinker, whom he manages to pull out of prison. After a while, he writes a novel, and even rewrites Hamlet , as well as he succeeds in obtaining a judicial ban on Spider-Man approaching him, and thereby preventing his attacks. But it turns out that genius intelligence has "side effects" - the rhinoceros becomes so clever that it prevents him from enjoying life. He is disappointed in Stella, whom he considers too stupid to communicate with him. He almost commits suicide, but he manages to find a way to bring the past back to himself. He returns to his slightly silly appearance, feels happy, and, with joy, smashes the walls.

Randy Lander from fourthrail.com commended the story, comparing it with the classic story " Flowers for Algernon " - "a mixture of humor and intelligence." He also praised Fegredo’s artistic work, but ambiguously commented on the work of Steve Buccellato, who, in his opinion, is too distracting from history ^[1] .

The story was included in two collection editions of Marvel:

• Flowers for Rhino (English) on Comic Book DB
• Spider-Man's Tangled Web (English) on the Grand Comics Database