Venom: 5 things to know about the Marvel symbiote

Venom

The very last frame in the trailer for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which we saw during the PlayStation Showcase in September, stirred up the fans of the videogame Webbing, confirming the entry of Venom, a character who, absurdly, is even more loved. and famous by Miles Morales. The reasons are many, but it is difficult to explain them to those who have not lived the fascinating and bizarre path that led Venom to become one of the leading characters in the Marvel imagination, so important that Sony dedicated a film of its own to him in 2018. A sequel of Ruben Fleischer's film arrives in theaters these days, however, directed by Andy Serkis.

The two films are ... complicated to frame, let's put it this way. They exist in a kind of limbo unrelated to the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the Disney Avengers, since there is an intricate question of rights that divides the Marvel intellectual property between the house of Mickey and that of PlayStation, but if the two films in question are quite mediocre, not to say ugly, it is also true that they restore a hair of cinematic dignity to a very important character who so far has had little.

If at this point you have seen Venom: The Fury of Carnage, but you do not know this very special antihero and want to know more before buying Marvel's Spider-Man 2, you might be in the right place: here are 5 things to know about Venom, including comics, cinema and video games.

In the beginning it was a costume

The first appearance of the symbiote in Secret Wars Usually the authorship of Venom is attributed to David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane, who introduced him in the Marvel universe with Issue 300 of The Amazing Spider-Man of May 1988. Digging deeper, however, it turns out that the idea dates back to 1982 and a reader named Randy Schueller who had imagined a black suit of unstable molecules for Spider-Man ( the same material that makes up the costumes of some superheroes such as the Fantastic Four). The editorial manager at the time, Jim Shooter, had literally bought Schueller's idea for a few hundred dollars and only a few years later had actually put it into practice during the Secret Wars crossover.

In that story, Peter Parker found and wore a black costume that amplified his powers, but at the same time exercised an increasingly disturbing control over him. Some time later, in fact, it was discovered that the black costume was a sentient alien parasite, a symbiote that Peter was forced to get rid of.

The alien entity, however, remained around, binding itself to a plethora of Marvel characters and offering the House of Ideas countless What if? and bizarre stories. The most famous and important guest, however, remains Eddie Brock, a journalist who blamed Spider-Man for his misfortunes and who found an opportunity for redemption in the black costume, transforming himself into the monstrous villain called Venom.

It was initially designed by Todd McFarlane - the creator of Spawn, among other things - who preferred a horror-tinted design, then exacerbated by the designer Erik Larsen, who further worked on details such as the tongue and sharp fangs . The character, in some ways, wasn't even that original: he was literally a counterpart to Spider-Man as the Anti-Flash and Bizarre of Distinguished Competition for Flash and Superman could be, respectively.

Venom, though. , met with such success with audiences and critics that Marvel decided to try a different strategy, instead of carving out a place for him as an occasional villain. And so, in a 1993 story, Spider-Man rescues Eddie's wife, Anne Weying, and the two rivals establish a kind of truce. Venom thus becomes a kind of vigilante in a necklace all his own, an anti-hero along the lines of the Punisher - with whom he shares the color scheme, after all - who has no qualms about achieving his goals. The publishing history of Venom is extremely complex, also because it changed guests from time to time: between 2005 and 2009, for example, it was the Scorpion who bonded with the symbiont, while between 2011 and 2016 it was Flash Thompson's turn, Peter Parker's former schoolmate. Today, however, Eddie Brock possesses the powers of the so-called King in Black and can control every symbiote in the hive scattered throughout the galaxy.

Venom in the cinema

Agent Venom is, in fact, Former Flash bully Thompson Venom and Venom: Carnage's Wrath are something of a reboot for this Marvel character, as he's already appeared as a villain in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. In that film, the symbiote arrived on Earth with a crashing meteorite just where Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson were having a romantic evening together. The parasite then jumped on Peter's moped and later bonded to him secretly ... yes, okay, let's say that this really implausible narrative solution, but after all Spider-Man 3 is certainly not one of the most popular cinecomics in the history of cinema. Inexhaustible source of memes, Raimi's film had used Venom first as the "dark side" of Spider-Man / Peter Parker - and oh well, we all know the so-called "evil dance" scene - and then as a real villain, tying it together. to Eddie Brock played by Topher Grace.

Parenthesis closed Raimi - Venom and Eddie die in the final battle - the symbiote disappears from the film scene for many years. He is absent from Sony's first reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, although a deleted scene hinted at him in the never-released sequel, and he doesn't appear in either Spider-Man: Homecoming or Spider-Man: Far from Home.

Venom in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 The matter is indeed complicated, but in essence Sony had bought Spider-Man from Marvel in '98 or thereabouts, and only recently sold it in a kind of loan for use at Marvel Studios and Disney with a series of intricate arrangements that essentially allow the Mickey Mouse house to make films with Tom Holland as Spider-Man who plays in the Avengers, without however preventing Sony from having the same actor in his films focused on the other characters acquired in the Spider-Man package, such as Venom or Morbius and Kraven the hunter.

With all this talk of multiverses, the new frontier of cinecomic both at Marvel and in home of DC Comics, nothing would stop you from seeing Tom Hardy's Venom and Tom Holland's Spider-Man together. The future, however, is quite uncertain. The next Marvel Studios film focused on the Webweave, Spider-Man: No Way Home, would seem to be the last of this round, while Venom: The Fury of Carnage, also thanks to the pandemic and the various restrictions, but above all its mediocre quality, it's not making a big deal at the box office. And honestly Morbius and Kraven are characters with too little appeal to justify this weird Spider-Man cinematic universe without Spider-Man. The only certainty we have is that we won't stop seeing Spider-Man in theaters one way or another, but as for Venom right now it's hard to predict the future of the franchise.

Who is Carnage?

Venom: The Fury of Carnage, a scene from the film One of the most popular characteristics of Venom is that it often leaves behind a trail of wild symbionts more or less frequently. Carnage is the most famous and perhaps even the most dangerous, with a rich and articulated publishing history. The character made his debut in number 361 of The Amazing Spider-Man, but his guest even dates back to number 344: at the time, the writer David Michelinie wanted to kill Eddie Brock and pass the symbiote to a new host, but the popularity of the character - of Venom, to be exact - prevented him. Michelinie, thus, prepared a new villain, a serial killer named Cletus Kasady inspired by the Joker of DC Comics. In the comics, Cletus shares a cell with Eddie during the latter's incarceration, and when Venom helps the former reporter escape, he inadvertently leaves behind a fragment that binds to the killer, transforming him into Carnage, a very powerful monster. and violent that puts Venom and Spider-Man on the sidelines in more than one storyline.

Despite having tied to several guests throughout its publishing history, Carnage associates much more often with Cletus Kasady, which is why Sony decided to introduce him in the movie Venom: Carnage's Wrath. Played by Woody Harrelson, in the new film Cletus Kasady is a serial killer that Eddie interviewed as a reporter. Due to a series of circumstances that we won't anticipate if you haven't seen the film, Kasady comes into contact with a Venom champion who turns him into Carnage and allows him to wreak havoc on the city, forcing Eddie and Venom to fight him. .

Carnage is one of the deadliest villains in the large Spider-Man gallery, protagonist of some very famous story cycles such as 1993's Maximum Carnage, which in turn inspired the video game Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage for SNES and Mega Drive 1994.

Venom in video games

Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage, 1993 Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage was also the first video game in where it was possible to control Venom directly. The titles released in previous years, such as The Amazing Spider-Man for the SEGA consoles of 1990 or the Spider-Man: The Video Game cabinet of 1991, always saw him in the role of boss at the end of the stage or game, but in the early years' 90 music changes and Venom, increasingly popular among readers, but also on TV thanks to the animated series on Tessiragnatele, begins to carve out more and more space even in video games. In 1998, for example, he joined the cast of the crossover fighting game Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, and will remain in almost the entire series (after missing the appointment with Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, in fact, Venom returned to the roster in the Infinite chapter).

If we exclude some memorable boss fights, like the one at the end of 2009's Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, it seems that Marvel preferred to put players in the position to control the symbiote rather than fight it. This also applies to games dedicated to the little ones, by the way. The grotesque Venom, visually reinvented for the occasion, also appears in LEGO titles focusing on Marvel characters (LEGO Marvel Super Heroes and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2) and in the Disney Infinity toybox, where it somehow retains its horror, albeit sweetened, features. .

Also present in various mobile games, Venom has distinguished himself as a playable character in the recent Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 for Nintendo Switch, although the most memorable game that sees him as a supporting actor is undoubtedly Ultimate Spider-Man from 2005 : the title, inspired by the comic book of the same name, pitted the player against Venom in the early stages of the story, and then entrusted him with control in some subsequent stages.

The best stories of Venom

A plate from the recent King in Black miniseries Now let's see what are some of the best symbiont-centric stories you might want to retrieve to deepen your knowledge of the character before or after seeing Venom: Carnage's Fury in theaters. Most of these comic stories have been collected in handy volumes, so it shouldn't be too difficult to search for them on Amazon or the like. As we said, Venom first appears, in costume form, in the 1985 Secret Wars miniseries - not to be confused with the more recent miniseries of the same name - but its first official appearance dates back to issues from 298 to 300 of The Amazing Spider. -Man. Venom: Lethal Protector is another very important story cycle, as it represents his first, true transition from villain to anti-hero. If you don't like comics, you can always retrieve the adaptation to a novel published by our Multiplayer Editions.

A board by Venomverso If you want to know more about the more heroic side of the symbiote, we cannot help but recommend the stories centered around Agent Venom, Flash Thompson's alter ego who, after being tied to the alien parasite, ends up serving in the Avengers and even the Guardians of the Galaxy. Among the Agent Venom stories, the Spider Island miniseries is certainly one of the funniest and most spectacular. Returning to Eddie Brock, however, there are some simply iconic ones that should be read absolutely, if only because they inspired the films: the numbers from 344 onwards of The Amazing Spider-Man that introduce Cletus Kasady and, later, Carnage; Separation Anxiety, in which the symbionts seen in the first Venom film first appear; Maximum Carnage, which inspired the game of the same name; The planet of symbionts, which delves deeply into the mythology of the alien species to which Venom belongs and lays the foundations for the most recent King in Black minisaga. Finally, we also recommend the absurd Venomverso saga of 2017, in which we get to know some "variants" of Venom that, in the multiverse, are linked to the most unthinkable guests, from Captain America to Rocket, passing through X-23 and Ghost Rider.

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