These two have a long, complicated history and every time they meet it's always a coin
toss to see how they're going to react.
Will they fight?
Will they work together?
Keep watching to learn more about the bizarre relationship between Spider-Man and Venom.
In 2007's Spider-Man 3, Peter Parker's bonding with the Venom symbiote does more than change
the color of his costume and enhance his powers, it makes him a jerk.
The symbiote boosts destructive emotions in Peter, like anger and jealousy.
"When are you going to give a guy a break?"
"You want forgiveness?
Get religion."
Among other things, he hunts and attempts to kill Sandman and brings Gwen Stacy to a
nightclub in a manipulative plan to make Mary Jane jealous.
He even gets in a fight with the club's bouncers, which ends with him accidentally hurting Mary
Jane.
It's this last act that makes Parker realize what's happening and finally take action to
get rid of the symbiote.
In the comics, however, things worked out a little differently.
While the symbiote made Spider-Man do things against his will, it didn't do so by turning
him into an evil version of Peter Parker.
Rather than finding the costume on Earth like he did in the film, Peter picked it up out
in space during the events of Secret Wars, and shortly after he returned to New York
with his new suit, the symbiote apparently decided that its host was a little too lazy.
Most nights, the symbiote waited until Parker was asleep, took over his body, and went out
to find more crime to fight, all the while controlling its human host's unconscious body
like a puppet.
One of the first clues Parker has that something is wrong is when he constantly wakes up exhausted
even though, as far as he knows, he's been asleep in bed for hours.
While the symbiote doesn't turn Peter Parker into a jerk in the comics, it's clear it impacts
his mental state in other, more subtle ways.
How do we know?
Because it takes Peter, who's as much a scientist as Bruce Banner and Tony Stark, a pretty long
time to start examining a strange, unknown, symbiotic life form that he picked up on an
alien planet.
Despite the fact that it produces its own webbing and can shape-shift to look like anything
from a costume to regular human clothing, he doesn't get around to figuring out what
it actually is until things start to go very, very badly.
After picking up the alien costume in Secret Wars #8, Peter returns to Earth in Amazing
Spider-Man #252.
It's not until six months later that he finally approaches the Marvel Universe's resident
super-scientific genius, the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards, to help him figure out just
what's going on with his new costume.
For months, Spider-Man simply accepts the fact that he's wearing a freaky magical alien
suit he doesn't know anything about.
Clearly, the costume's messing with his head.
It's easy to argue that during Secret Wars, where all of Marvel's most prominent heroes
and villains were brought to another planet and forced to battle each other, Spidey was
desperate enough to just accept whatever he could find to boost his chances of survival.
Once he returns to Earth, though, maybe putting that thing under a microscope should've been
his first priority.
In 1985's Web of Spider-Man #1, the symbiote betrays the emotional connection developing
between it and Peter Parker by revealing a quality that you might not expect from a murderous
alien life form: compassion.
While Peter is slipping on his classic red-and-blue Spidey suit in his apartment, the symbiote
returns from being imprisoned in the Fantastic Four's headquarters and attempts to bond with
him once again.
Peter tries to return to the Baxter Building to get help from the F.F., but the symbiote
does everything it can to keep him away from the building.
Eventually, Peter gets enough control to make his way to a cathedral, taking advantage of
the symbiote's weakness to loud noises by using the ringing of the church bells as a
weapon.
In the process, Peter gets knocked out, and while it initially slithers away to escape
the bells, the symbiote returns to save Peter from the thunderous sound.
The narration tells us that its bond with Parker caused it to experience emotion for
the first time.
Before disappearing, we see the alien reach out, caressing Peter's cheek.
In spite of the Venom symbiote bonding with more than a dozen other characters since leaving
Peter Parker, there are two behaviors that show us how fixated it is on Spider-Man.
First, there's its tendency to bond with people in that are already in Peter's social circles.
Eddie Brock is the first and most obvious example, since he was a rival photographer
at the Daily Bugle the first time he merged with Venom.
"Photography, it's not just about, no offense, uh flagpoles, whatever, it's about lighting,
composition, drama."
Other hosts include Mac Gargan, better known as the Spidey villain the Scorpion, but he's
not the only established bad guy to hook up with the symbiote.
In the pages of Superior Spider-Man, the comic where Peter's identity was taken over by Doctor
Octopus, it temporarily bonded with Doc Ock's brain in Spidey's body.
After Brock, the man to have stayed with the symbiote for the longest amount of time was
Peter Parker's former bully and best friend, Flash Thompson, who used it to perform covert
missions for the government under the codename Agent Venom.
What's equally telling is how Venom manifests visually.
The symbiote has the ability to mimic any set of clothing, but no matter who the host
is or where they fall on the moral spectrum, Venom continues to base its appearance on
Spider-Man's.
The eyes of its mask and the spider emblem on its chest are clearly mirrors of Spidey's
costume, as is the fact that it continues to sling "webs" around, something other symbiotes
just don't do.
Spider-Man and Venom don't exactly have the best relationship, but occasionally, there's
something bad enough to force them to work together, and it usually comes from Venom
himself.
More often than not, if Parker and Brock are on the same team it's because one of Venom's
own spawn is up to no good, like the insane and powerful villain Cletus Kasady, better
known as Carnage.
"When I get outta here, and I will, there's gonna be Carnage."
Venom and Spidey famously teamed up against the villainous symbiote along with other Marvel
heroes in the 1993 event Maximum Carnage, a hugely popular storyline that inspired the
classic 16-bit video game of the same name.
There's a good reason why they had to team up, too.
Physically, Carnage is more powerful than Spider-Man and Venom combined, and even more
durable.
Among other things, the villain has survived being beheaded as well as being dragged into
space and ripped in half.
Even worse, Kassady was already a convicted serial killer before he got super-powers.
When his cellmate, Eddie Brock, escaped from prison, a scrap of the symbiote was left behind,
and a terrifying new villain was born.
In that respect, Carnage can be thought of as Venom's "son," but the symbiotes clearly
don't have the same warm, fuzzy feelings the rest of us have towards family.
Still, the fact that Venom chose to stay on Team Spidey when he had to choose between
siding with Peter Parker or teaming up with his own spawn says a whole lot about his complicated
relationship with Spider-Man.
It's clear the Venom symbiote has complicated feelings towards Peter Parker, but it's also
clear that those complex feelings are a two-way street.
Venom's place in the Marvel Universe is always cycling between anti-hero and full-on villain.
He can spend time as a less forgiving crimefighter, as he did in a series of solo titles that
started in 1993 with Venom: Lethal Protector, but cut to ten years later and 2003's Venom,
and he's right back to eating people for fun.
And yet, in spite of Venom's unpredictability and his shifting loyalties, Spider-Man never
gets proactive about shutting him down, even though he's the one with the great responsibility
of bringing the symbiote to Earth in the first place.
Instead, he's far more likely to form an uneasy alliance with him, like he did to battle Carnage,
and seems to hold out hope that the symbiote could be redeemed.
That might be a result of his bond with the symbiote leaving him with an emotional connection,
but there's plenty of evidence that Spidey might be right after all.
During its time as Agent Venom, the symbiote spent a long time bonded to one of Parker's
closest pals, Flash Thompson, who, in addition to being Peter Parker's best friend, was once
literally the president of the Spider-Man fan club.
"He's no Spider-Man."
"What is it with you and Spider-Man?"
"What?
He looks out for the neighborhood, has a dope suit, and I really respect him!"
Thompson's Venom was a much more traditionally heroic version of the character, and even
served alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy and a covert squad of Avengers.
While he was out in space, the symbiote revealed a previously unknown tragic past, starting
out as a relatively peaceful member of an alien species called the Klyntar before being
driven mad after mistakenly bonding with a genocidal maniac.
Thompson's innate sense of honor, however, showed the symbiote a better way to live and
use its great power a little more responsibly.
Whether that will stick remains to be seen, but for now, Venom seems to be pretty firmly
on the side of the good guys.
More or less.
"You gonna eat anybody else?"
"Most likely!"
Miles Morales is probably best known these days as the star of 2018's animated hit Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-Verse.
In the comics, like in the film, Miles was originally from an alternate universe to Peter
Parker, but was transported to the prime Marvel Comics universe by a cosmic event that restructured
the multiverse.
As a result, when Miles runs into Eddie Brock in 2018's Venom #3, it's their first meeting,
and their introduction doesn't go well.
With his symbiote being controlled by the dark god Knull, Venom comes close to killing
Miles.
The younger Spider-Man manages to temporarily incapacitate the symbiote, which gives Brock
takes over.
Eddie thanks Miles and tries to explain what happened, but Miles doesn't give him the chance.
Miles understandably presses the attack against Eddie, and Venom is forced to fight back.
While Miles has never met Eddie Brock before that issue, he isn't a stranger to symbiotes.
Back in his home universe, his life was thrown into disarray by that world's version of Venom
in 2013, during a story appropriately titled "Venom War."
Venom nearly killed Miles' father, and his mother died as a result of the conflict.
With that kind of history, it's easy to see why Miles wouldn't be inclined to give Eddie
the benefit of the doubt once he was attacked.
Eventually, in true Marvel Team-Up fashion, the fight led to Miles and Eddie working together
for the next few issues.
Time will tell what happens next time these two fan-favorites cross paths.
Marvel has been putting out issues of What If? on and off since 1977, giving readers
the chance to experience what stories would be like if they worked out differently.
Usually, the answer is that things would be pretty bad, but 1989's What If #4 takes things
to the next level.
The question this time around is "What if the alien had possessed Spider-Man?" and things
wind up a whole lot worse for everyone, including both Peter Parker and the symbiote.
The Venom symbiote of What If?
#4 never develops the same emotional attachment to Peter Parker as the main continuity's Venom
does.
Instead, it feeds on its host like a vampire, draining Peter's youth and vitality in the
process.
Once Parker's life force is spent, the symbiote starts looking for a bigger meal and chooses
the Hulk as his next host.
It interrupts the massive battle between the Hulk and the Avengers that readers had originally
seen in Incredible Hulk #300, and bonds with the Green Goliath.
As he does, Peter Parker's body is revealed to have been prematurely aged, leaving him
as a withered husk.
Peter dies not long after, and the Avengers pursue the Venom-infected Hulk until the symbiote
trades up once again, leaving the Hulk's body for Thor's.
The heroes finally incapacitate Venom by getting help from the Inhuman leader Black Bolt, whose
deafening scream forces the symbiote from Thor's body, and destroys Mount Rushmore in
the process.
Before the assembled heroes can banish the symbiote to another dimension, the Black Cat
kills it in revenge for Parker's death.
All things considered, it's a much less happy ending than we got in the regular comics.
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