Spider-Man Brand New Day’s Ramrod Actor Releases Best Look At His Obscure Spidey Villain

Spider-Man: Brand New Day features one of the most obscure Spidey villains ever pulled from Marvel Comics, and the actor behind him just shared the best look yet at the character. Ramrod appears only briefly in the film, charging headlong at Tom Holland’s wall-crawler in a back-alley scuffle. Actor Billy Clements plays the metal-plated bruiser, a role that reports first attached him to back in January.

Clements celebrated the film’s arrival this week by posting a batch of behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram, revealing Ramrod in more detail than any trailer showed. The gallery includes a full costume shot from the set, a close-up of the character’s silver prosthetic bust, and footage of him in the gym bulking up for the role. The actor also confirmed that most of his scenes were cut from the finished movie.

Clements, whose first Marvel appearance came as the hulking Punisher villain The Russian in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, admitted his new role shrank in the edit but said he was "really happy to be there if only for a bit:"

"Spider-Man Brand New Day.’ Playing ‘Ramrod,’ out now! So amazing to play another Marvel comic book character, The Russian and Ramrod. I love comics, and to own a comic where you’re on the front cover, to me, is so, so, so cool. A lot of Ramrod’s stuff was cut, but when they had to cut out 3 hours, a lot more recognised actors were totally cut out, so [I’m] really happy to be there if only for a bit. [I] really wanted to do my best to represent the character as accurately [as possible], studying all Ramrod’s comic appearances, so I trained 2 hours a day. Thank you @eddiehallwsm for the diet advice. Thank you @marvelstudios and @vancityreynolds for these amazing opportunities, and to everyone who made it possible."

In his post, Clements also shared an image of 1981’s Amazing Spider-Man #221, whose cover shows Ramrod smashing through a wall as Spider-Man springs clear of the impact. 

One of the numerous TV spots Marvel released in the build-up to the movie brought that image to life, and the moment reportedly happens in an early montage of Peter Parker’s street-level battles that also squeezes in minor rogues Boomerang and Tarantula.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on Friday, July 31. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers wrote the script, which finds Peter fighting crime full time in a city that forgot he ever existed after the spell that closed out Spider-Man: No Way Home. Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Mando, and Tramell Tillman also star.

Who Is Ramrod in Marvel Comics?

Ramrod began as a Daredevil enemy rather than a Spider-Man one. Writer Steve Gerber and artist Don Heck introduced him in September 1973’s Daredevil #103 as the abusive foreman of an offshore oil rig, a boss who drove his crew so hard that a stack of loosened oil drums toppled over and crushed nearly every bone in his body. A mysterious benefactor then pieced the dying man back together with alien technology, swapping his shattered skeleton for steel and armoring his skull, chest, shoulders, and hands in polished metal.

The procedure came with strings attached. Crooked San Francisco lawyer Kerwin Broderick and Moondragon, who operated under the villainous alias Madame MacEvil at the time, claimed they injected Ramrod with a lethal chemical to guarantee his obedience, then sent him after Daredevil and Black Widow. His debut story even involved a visiting Spider-Man, who traded punches with the cyborg up the side of a building before the other heroes put him down.

In the comics, Ramrod is pure muscle. Marvel classifies him as a character with Class 10 strength, enhanced speed and durability, and a steel-plated skull that lets him smash through solid walls headfirst. Ramrod is 6-foot-8 in height and weighs 300 pounds, 80 of them metal. He's an absolute unit, but his unarmored face is his one glaring weakness. 

His best-remembered outing arrived in October 1981, when writer Denny O’Neil crashed the cyborg into Peter Parker’s graduate school life at Empire State University in The Rage of Ramrod! He lost, as he usually does, and drifted through the following decades in the background of the Marvel Universe, mostly filling out villain crowd scenes and propping up the bar between defeats.