Spider-Man has always had an interesting relationship with the symbiote race of Klyntars.
The web slinger first encountered symbiotes in Secret Wars issue 8 when he accidentally
bonded with what he believed was a black alien costume.
Turned out that costume was sentient, and wanted to bond to him permanently, but thanks
to the help of Reed Richards, Spider-Man managed to break free from its grasp.
The symbiote, whose name turned out to be Venom, would later bond with another man named
Eddie Brock, a journalist who was more like minded to the symbiote than Parker.
Ever since, the symbiotes have been a constant presence in the Marvel universe, with Spider-Man
coming up against a handful of them over the years.
So today, we’re going to be looking at a couple of those instances, and jumping into
some hypothetical territory too, with our list of the top 10 strongest syumbiotes who
can beat spider-Man.
Of course, we’re counting these potential defeats as spider-man fighting against these
klyntars one on one.
He’s managed to fair pretty well when partnered up with other heroes against some of them.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
10 Riot Let’s get one thing straight about the klyntars,
otherwise known as symbiotes; when a Klyntar has offspring, those offspring are always
exponentially stronger than their parent.
It’s a klyntar fact of life!
Riot is the offspring of Venom.
Back during the Venom Lethal Protector story arc, the nefarious Life foundation decided
to capture Venom and create ‘guardians’ that could be used to protect their wealthy
clients if there was a fallout during the Cold War.
Carlton Drake and his team forcibly extracted five Klyntar seeds from Venom, his unborn
offspring, and hatched them in a lab.
Out of those five, the symbiote known as Riot is the most violent and unpredictable.
Riot, along with his brothers and sisters, would lure Spider-Man and attack him, almost
killing him if it wasn’t for the appearance of our next number,
9 Venom There’s a reason why Venom makes such a
fantastic nemesis for the web slinger.
Despite Riot being technically stronger than Venom thanks to being his offspring, Venom
has an upper hand over many of the symbiotes who came out of the Life foundation, simply
because the symbiote has bonded with Spider-Man, and initially had a grudge with the web slinger;
a grudge that was doubled thanks to his new host, Eddie Brock, believing that spider-Man
was responsible for his career failures.
Nothing like a personal grudge to give you an upper hand!
Venom also knows intimate details about Peter, having been bonded to the hero in its very
first comic book appearance after Secret Wars.
8 Hybrid Remember how we mentioned that Venom had five
offspring extracted from him during Lethal Protector?
Well those offspring, after being defeated in that storyline and turning their back on
the life foundation, the four surviving ones merged into one creature called Hybrid.
Having been contained to the Vault, the prison for superhuman criminals, after the symbiote
invasion in Web of Spider-Man Super Special issue 1, they broke out, merged, and briefly
bonded with a guard named Scott Washington.
Hybrid is made up of Riot, Phage, Lasher and Agony, and briefly became a vigilante, de-fusing
when Brock began his hunt for symbiotes, leaving the four of them to be found by the US Army
and compiled into a team to fight our next number-
7 Carnage Carnage is a particularly evil symbiote who
bonded with mass murderer Cletus Kasady after Eddie Brock was briefly incarcerated with
the serial killer.
So, often, symbiotes will just discard their offspring without thinking anything of it.
This is something that Venom did when he re-bonded with Eddie when the anti-hero was in prison.
The symbiote, left in the cell, discovered Kasady, and bonded with him, entering a cut
on his hand and amalgamating with his blood stream.
He’s significantly stronger than both Spider-Man and Venom combined, and decided to use his
new found powers to go on a murder spree.
That’s when he first crossed paths with Spider-Man, who needed the assistance of the
Fantastic Four to combat him.
Spider-Man eventually had to recruit Venom as well, which luckily resulted in him being
captured, although that wasn’t the last of Carnage.
Spidey and Venom have had to team up on multiple occasions to take care of Carnage, whose thirst
for blood and chaos seems utterly insatiable.
6 Scorn Scorn first appeared in Carnage issue 4 in
2011 after Carnage was used to create a hybrid prosthesis combining technology and the symbiote.
This hybrid of sorts broke free, and bonded to Tanis Nieves.
Scorn is more powerful than both Venom and Carnage combined.
It’s more resistant to injury than both of them and Spider-Man combined, being able
to withstand blows from all three of them and be barely phased by it.
Scorn can exert herself to peak capacity for 48 hours straight, and even has a major one
up on Spider-Man’s spider sense.
Her sense is more exact, and is more specific as to where exactly the danger is that’s
triggering said sense.
Scorn also has the added bonus of being able to manipulate data and connect with all sorts
of technology thanks to being a hybrid, which allows her to easily hack into systems, break
codes or even restore information if she so chooses.
5 Anti-Venom First appearing in The Amazing Spider-Man
issue 569, Anti-Venom is birthed after Venom, who at the time was bonded with villain Mac
Gargan, attempts to rebond with Eddie Brock after the anti-hero had been cured of his
cancer by Mister Negative, Martin Li.
When Venom attempts to bond with him, Brock’s skin becomes caustic, and he’s enveloped
in a new white symbiote that was created by the antibodies in his white blood cells, charged
with Li’s lightforce energy.
He’s immune to heat, fire and sound attacks, and produces anti-bodies that can cure pretty
much anything, from parasites to radioactivity, to diseases and more.
And when he gets close to Spider-Man, he cancels out Spider-Man’s powers entirely.
Brock eventually sacrificed Anti-Venom though when attempting to cure people from the Spider-Island
virus.
4 Grendel Grendel is a symbiote dragon.
Actually.
Grendel was created by Knull, the symbiote god (more on him later), and leads a whole
legion of symbiote dragons which go around the galaxy and eat entire civilizations for
fun.
Grendel has also been around for ages, with records of it having terrorized those in medieval
times.
It’s also terrifying for another big reason; it’s not susceptible to the same kinds of
weaknesses that other symbiotes are affected by, meaning heat or sonic waves or intense
noise doesn’t bother it.
It wasn’t even Spider-Man or Venom who stopped Grendel; Thor had to get involved and eventually
managed to trap Grendel.
3 Toxin Toxin debuted back in 2004 in the Venom Carnage
crossover.
Toxin is Carnage’s offspring, and daddy dearest really doesn’t like him, all thanks
to fearing that Toxin would be stronger than himself.
Venom, upon realizing that Carnage was pregnant, so to speak, decided to seek out Carnage and
it’s offspring.
Carnage had planned to kill its spawn, but Venom tried to protect it, hoping to raise
it and have it become his new partner.
Toxin is the 1000th symbiote in their lineage, and thanks to that risked the chance at becoming
psychotic and violent due to genetic breakdown, hence why Venom as keen to keep an eye on
him.
But luckily for Venom, and spider-Man, Toxin turned out to be good, and worked as an ally
of both Venom’s and the web slinger’s.
He would first bond to NYPD officer Patrick Mulligan, and then to Brock after Mulligan’s
death, in which he developed a venomous bite; a fun new little ability alongside his already
boosted symbiote powers.
2 ZZXZ ZZXZ is a symbiote who feeds on brains; not
a surprising trait of the Klyntars, to be honest, but the desire to eat brains is one
that really motivates this symbiote.
It was discovered by the Shi’ar who claim it’s one of the most deadly and dangerous
criminals in the galaxy.
Appearing in X-Men Kingbreaker issue 2 from 2009, the last we saw of ZZXZ was it being
flung at the corrupted Charles Xavier from the Cancerverse, who was one giant brain.
As you can imagine, the symbiote began to feast, devouring him whole, and was likely
left floating in space after that encounter.
Compared to other symbiotes, ZZXZ feeds on a hosts brain rather than their adrenaline,
and is capable of a high degree of mimicry, able to blend into its surroundings and enhances
any super powers that its host has significantly.
1 Knull Knull is the god of the symbiotes.
He is an ancient evil deity who predates the existence of the universe itself, and is responsible
for creating the Klyntar race.
So what makes this Klyntar god so powerful?
He’s killed celestials.
He has divine physiology with powers exceeding most other deities, he possesses the ability
to create, control and manipulate eldritch darkness, which is the manifestation of the
primordial void that existed before the universe itself, which is also called the living abyss.
He can create symbiotes, and dominate them, manipulating them in a sort of mind-hive way,
directly controlling them and seeing through their eyes.
He’s lived for over 13.7 billion years, is self-sustaining, can shape shift and has
a regenerative healing factor.
And, fun fact, in Swedish, Knull is a vulgar word for having sex.
So all in all, he’s a pretty gruesome god whose on a crusade to annihilate all of existence,
but luckily for the marvel universe, he has a weakness for light when wielded with divine
power by other gods, so at least that’s reassuring.
There we have it friends!
What other symbiotes do you think have a chance at defeating spider-mna?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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