Venom is a symbiote.
Symbiotes are a parasitic race from the planet Klyntar, who require a host to bond with in
order to survive.
Venom, who was kept in captivity, was discovered by Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man issue
252 in 1984.
Spidey’s suit had become trashed, and upon seeing the alien machinery keeping Venom captive,
our boy Parker was like ‘hey, that might give me a new costume!”
And released Venom, who then bonded with him and turned into a black suit.
There’s a whole history behind that black costume and how it became the sentient alien
that is Venom, though.
But because of Venom’s symbiote nature, this had led many a story to explore the concept
of Venom bonding with multiple characters in the Marvel Universe, sometimes with disastrous
results.
So today, we’re taking a look at some of those story arcs with our list of the top
10 characters that wore the Venom symbiote!
Now before we jump in, for the sake of diversity on this list, we won’t be talking about
Eddie Brock, the man most well known for bonding with the Venom symbiote.
It’s just a little too obvious.
We’ve also done a mix between characters who have worn the symbiote in the mainstream
Earth 616, and ones who have bonded with Venom from alternate earths and futures.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Venom_(Klyntar)_(Earth-616)
10 The Hulk Generally speaking, any time the Hulk is given
some sort of advantage in combat beyond what he’s already capable of doing, it’s pretty
darn dangerous.
So now imagine what our big green pal was capable of when Venom decided to bond with
him.
Yikes.
But thanks to one of Marvel’s What If titles, we know what would happen if Venom bonded
with the Hulk.
In What If Vol 2 issue 4, there was a story called What If the Alien Costume Had Possessed
Spider-Man?
This was back in October of 1989, a year after Venom and Eddie Brock had hit the scene, so
readers knew what the symbiote was capable of.
More on that later though.
So the concept for this explored what if Spider-Man had waiting longer before going to Mister
Fantastic who ultimately separated him from the symbiote?
Peter had been irreversibly bonded with Venom, and would later stumble upon the Hulk, who
was on a rampage.
The symbiote jumped ship, bonding with the Hulk, who he promised to help, saying that
he could aid Bruce Banner with his uncontrollable Hulking out problems.
But the symbiote would later give up on that loose promise and ditch the Hulk for another
character he deemed more powerful that appears a little later on on our list.
9 Galactus Now technically speaking, Galactus doesn’t
really count asa character whose bonded with the symbiote.
But to Spider-Man, it appears if the god was Venom’s host.
Galactus Venom appears in a story in which Mysterio has completed messed with Peter Parker’s
head, and Peter sees Galactus donning the Venom symbiote.
While it has no actual story impact aside from being a really cool splash page, it’s
still pretty neat to ponder what on Earth, or rather in the galaxy, Venom would do if
he were to ever bond with an entity that powerful.
I take it Peter really didn’t want to find out.
8 Norman Osborn, twice Norman Osborn has bonded TWICE with the Venom
symbiote in alternate timelines.
Once was featured in one of the many universes in the Spider-Verse stories; in this one,
Norman Osborn had become the US president, and in an unprecedented move, he created something
called the Variable Engagement Neurosensitive Organic Mesh which is basically an altered
version of the symbiote; something that he and his followers could wear in order to ‘clean
up America.’
And yes, he was totally a fascist.
He even said the words “It had to be this way, Spider-Man!
We’re in the business of making America Great Again.”
Yup.
The second time was a little less political, and occurred in the MC2 Universe.
Enter Normie Osborn, the son of Harry Osborn who, thanks to Spider-Girl, went from being
a baddie to trying to be a good guy.
But then the Venom symbiote finds him, bonds with him, and Normie actually ends up reforming
it, with the symbiote sacrificing itself later on down the line to help Spider-Girl fight
the Hobgoblin.
7 Thor Remember that what If issue we were talking
about earlier?
The one in which the Hulk bonds with Venom?
Well, the character that the symbiote ditches Hulk for is none other than Thor.
Thor fought the Hulk Venom, and despite winning the battle against it, the symbiote managed
to creep out and bond with the god of thunder.
While Thor struggled mentality with the symbiote, it hid out in Mount Rushmore, and was finally
defeated by Black Bolt with his hypersonic voice, and inevitably destroyed by Black Cat
wielding a sonic gun.
6 Groot During one Guardians of the Galaxy story arc,
Venom (who was bonded with Flash Thompson at the time) makes an appearance, with the
narrative’s focus being the Klyntar returning to his home planet.
Venom ends up fighting against the Guardians, and after breaking out a glass jar they had
trapped him in, he bonds with Groot, resulting in the character repeatedly shouting “I
am Venom!”
Other Guardians briefly became hosts, too, include Rocket Raccoon and Drax.
5 Patricia Robertson Venom’s bonding with Robertson is often
seen as a bit of a disaster.
In a story written by Daniel Way under Marvel’s Tsunami imprint, there was this really, REALLY
weird 18 issue Venom story arc in 2004.
Essentially, it was revealed in issue 11 of that arc that there was a Venom clone, which
had come to be when Venom tried to kill the Thing by shoving his tongue down his throat
(yes, actually) and the Human Torch burnt it off.
A civilian found the tongue, and tried to sell it on eBay where a man made out of nanites
contacted him.
This nanite man was apparently the nanites who inspired Noah’s Ark since they tried
to wipe out humanity, but decided not to go through with it, and left Earth.
Except a few stay on the planet in the form of this old dude, whose plan was to wait for
an alien symbiote to be on Earth so they could use it to cause the apocalypse.
Confused?
Yeah, so was everyone who read this story arc, too.
Anywho, nanite old dude man guy cloned the tongue, and the symbiote was let loose, until
an army lieutenant by the name of Patricia Robertson shows on up, and becomes bonded
with it, becoming She-Venom.
And her character was pretty poorly written.
Her symbiote clone ended up merging with Brock’s Venom and after that we pretty much never
heard of her again.
4 Deadpool Deadpool is technically the first human host
that Venom ever had.
This was revealed during Secret Wars, when Deadpool stumbles upon the symbiote in captivity
on Battleworld.
He puts it on, realizes its alive and was interfacing with his mind, and Venom just
can’t really handle him very well, considering Deadpool is already so insane.
Deadpool then returns the symbiote moments before Spidey shows up, searching for a new
costume to replace the one he had that was damaged in battle.
But overall, the encounter with Deadpool is a comical one.
This actually isn’t the only time Venom has bonded with Deadpool, either.
It also happened in a what if title.
3 The Sub-Mariner Spider-Man 2099 was a character that first
appeared in a preview in The Amazing Spider-Man issue 365, who comes from the year 2099, and
is a fellow named Miguel O’Hara who has managed to recreate sider-Man’s powers.
He got his own series of the Marvel 2099 comic line in 1992,
In the story, he encounters a character named Roman (which is Namor spelt backwards).
He’s an Atlantean terrorist, who would be caught by Spidey only to later escape captivity
and accidentally caused the Venom symbiote to be released.
Venom bonded with the Sub-Mariner, transforming him into a very pirhanna-esque creature who
had sharp teeth on the end of his tongue.
The best part is, since that went down in the series’ final issue, whatever happened
to the Venom Sub-Mariner was never resolved; he dived down into the ocean and escaped,
never to be heard from again.
2 Mac Gargan Venom once recounted his time with Mac Gargan
as bad, with “thoughts like poison stingers” and that it was a “thrill to kill”.
Mac was a mean spirited Venom, which kind of makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Gargan, most known for being the man behind the villain Scorpion, bonded with the symbiote
during Marvel Knights Spider-Man.
Working under Norman Osborn, he was meant to be refitted with a new Scorpion suit when
Venom popped up, and the combination was pretty ruthless.
Gargan was very into being Venom, ended up working under Osborn as a Dark Avenger and
a Thunderbolt, and would go around pulling off a whole lot of evil stunts, killing with
zero remorse.
At the time, Carnage was thought to be dead, so Gargan really stepped up to give readers
the symbiote brutality that we all know and love.
Eventually, though, all good things come to an end, even for Mac.
The government would remove Venom from him at the end of Dark Reign, and he would return
to his Scorpion alias.
1 Spider-Man While Deadpool may have been the first human
host, Peter Parker’s Spider-Man is the character that introduced the world to the Venom symbiote.
But, as we mentioned in our intro, there’s quite the history behind how that came to
be.
Back in 1982, Marvel received a letter from a fan in Illinois named Randy Schueller, who
came up with this idea that Spider-Man should get a new costume that would later become
an alien character.
Editor in chief at the time, Jim Shooter, responded to the letter, and they paid Schueller
a whooping $220 for the rights to the idea.
Vaguely inspired by the costume design for the new Spider-Woman character, they went
with a black and white outfit, working under a premise conceived by John Byrne for Iron
Fist that the costume was made of self-healing biological material, so that when the costume
was being torn apart in battle it could be repaired easily by the next issue.
It wasn’t until writer Tom DeFalco and artist Ron Frenz came on board that it was determined
that the costume was a sentient alien vulnerable to high sonic energy.
Spidey puts on the suit, looking for new threads, after being kidnapped by the Beyond to his
planet to fight in his ‘secret wars’.
When he returns to Earth after Secret Wars, he begins to notice that the costume is acting
strangely, so Mister Fantastic helps him remove it, and that’s when they discover that it’s
actually a living organism.
Mister Fantastic keeps it in captivity in his HQ, but the symbiote breaks free, and
eventually finds Eddie Brock, bonding with him and creating Venom in issue 300 of the
Amazing Spider-Man, where the two would also duke it out for the first time.
There we have it friends!
As you can tell, Venom’s definitely made the rounds in his time.
There’s actually a ton of other characters who he’s bonded with that we didn’t mention
on this list, so if you’d guys be interested in us doing a part 2, make sure you give us
a shout in those comments below.
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