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Every Friday we use the powers of Marvel Unlimited to look back at the very first appearance of a major character, place or object that made waves this week.
Some lives remain so intertwined that you can’t imagine them separating for too long. That’s the case with Eddie Brock and his Spider-Man-hating symbiote. Together they’ve menaced the Web-Head, played hero, and split up only to get back together in the pages of this week’s VENOM #150. With these two back together, it’s the perfect time to look back at their complicated history. The symbiote itself actually appeared first back in 1984’s SECRET WARS #8, covering Peter Parker in a black costume after his traditional one got shredded. Upon returning to Earth, the Wall-Crawler kept the alien duds for a while.
Eventually, thanks to some tests performed by Reed Richards, Peter came to understand he wore an actual living being as a costume, one that did not take kindly to being removed from its host and briefly held in Mr. Fantastic’s lab. After being broken out of the extra-terrestrial contamination containment tube, the symbiote searched for a new host and possessed Peter only to separate after being exposed to extreme sonic distress in a bell tower as seen in WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #1.
For a while after that, Spidey found himself assaulted by a mysterious assailant who did not set off his Spider Sense. The culprit came to the forefront in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #299 and #300 when Eddie Brock made the scene as the symbiote-clad Venom! Brock explained why he hated Spider-Man so much: he had been a reporter for the Daily Globe, working on a series of stories about the Sin-Eater based on the confessions of a man named Emil Gregg. Just after his last piece hit, revealing Gregg’s identity, Spidey defeated the villain and unmasked none other than…Stan Carter. Humiliated and fired, Brock developed a rage-filled opinion of our hero that attracted the symbiote and they built a partnership based on their shared hatred.
Venom became one of the most popular characters of the late 80s and early 90s, returning on many occasions to plague Spider-Man. Many years later, Brock sold off the symbiote for $100 million and eventually suffered from cancer and delusions that Venom still controlled him even though they had separated. Though the U.S. Government eventually bonded the symbiote with Flash Thompson, who would go on a series of space adventures that seemingly healed the angry alien, but when the latest VENOM series launched, it saw a new person filling the suit until Eddie Brock came back into its life!
Flash Forward
For a time, Eddie and Venom played hero together, but eventually fell off the wagon, so to speak. After selling the symbiote, Brock found himself bonded with another, this one called Anti-Venom. Not long after that, the former Lethal Protector took it upon himself to kill any and all symbiotes he came across. After succeeding with Scream and Hybrid, he failed to kill Flash Thompson and wound up attached to Toxin, Carnage’s offspring. Brock used that symbiote in his efforts to kill his own “child” over the course of the CARNAGE series. Who knows what will happen between those two now that they’re both back in symbiotic action?
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