It’s no understatement that Venom is one hell of a terrifying character.
Besides being absolutely beloved, the Marvel symbiote is known for acting out in ways that
should more like they’re plot points in a scary movie.
From body horror to mind manipulation and even straight up eating victims, there’s
no shortage of ‘what the hell’ moments in Venom’s history in the comics.
So today we’re counting down the top 10 scariest Venom moments, breaking down some
of his most disturbing actions and some of his more cringe worthy behaviour.
Let’s get to it!
10 Ate all of Peter Parker The Venom symbiote has shown a taste for human
flesh before (more on that later), but in one instance, in What If issue 114 from 1998,
Venom consumes all of Peter Parker’s body.
But not in the way you’d think.
So this issue, which marks Secret Wars 25th anniversary, features Venom taking over Peter
Parker’s body.
The what if scenario revolves around what if the heroes had never escaped Battleworld
in Secret Wars.
So for years, Parker was venom’s host, and in the story, despite time passing and the
trapped heroes now having children who become active superheroes, Venom is still with Parker.
It’s revealed during a battle when Venom gets blasted with a Sonic weapon that his
host has changed over time too; Venom had fully consumed all of Parker, with only Peter’s
skeleton remaining underneath the symbiote.
9 In Frank’s Mind This number is yet again another What If,
from What If issue 44 from 1992, in a story called What if Venom has Possessed the Punisher?
Frank Castle just so happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, just moments
before Eddie Brock, and ends up becoming Venom’s host instead.
Initially, the Venomized Punisher uses the symbiote to get an upper hand on his war on
crime, but eventually Venom pushes him to try to kill Spider-Man, pushing Frank and
dominating more of his mind.
Eventually, the Venomized Punisher ends up taking on Spider-Man, along with Moon Knight
and Daredevil, and gets shot with a sonic blast.
We then see Frank wrestle with Venom in his mind, fighting for control in some of the
most bad ass and terrifying panels, courtesy of Kurt Busiek and Luke McDonnell.
8 Bonding with the Guardians The Guardians of the Galaxy have always been
a beloved group, but have especially boomed in popularity thanks to the MCU counterparts
up on the big screen.
And what’s scarier than having the things you love completely disfigured and deformed?
To an extent, that is; the Venom symbiote manages to jump ship from Flash Thompson’s
body while in space with the Guardians during one of the Guardian’s stories.
Venom, who had been contained, escaped it’s confinement and bonded first with Groot, to
which it kept shouting “I AM VENOM!”.
Then, Venom jumped ship over to Rocket, in which Venom announced that he wanted everyone
off the ship so he could commandeer it.
That didn’t go as planned though, because Drax attacked Venomized Rocket and then the
symbiote jumped ship to him.
All in all, every single one of these venomized versions of the Guardians are down right terrifying
to look at.
Luckily, they didn’t stay venomized long.
7 Murdering Betty Brant In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Earth 1610,
Venom kills Betty Brant in a fairly brutal way, in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man Vol 2 issue
16.1.
Betty, who worked at the Daily Bugle, was hunting down the truth behind the identity
of the new Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s successor, and found the corpse of a genetically altered
spider, Dr Conrad Marcus.
Marcus, who had stolen one of Roxxon’s samples of the Venom symbiote, bonded with it, and
then hunted down Brant, killing her.
It’s jarring, and unexpected, and reminded readers of the Ultimate Marvel universe how
fickle life is.
6 Making out with the Thing This is perhaps one of the weirdest things
that has ever happened in a Venom storyline.
In Venom issue 11, from the 2003 run, there was a lot of weird crap that went down.
Essentially, Venom takes on the Fantastic Four, and has a disturbing tussle with The
Thing.
How does Venom fend him off?
By using a particularly…creative tactic.
He makes out with him, right after shouting out “It’s Slobberin time!”
Cheeky.
Venom sticks his tongue down the Thing’s throat in an attempt to choke him to death.
Luckily for the thing, the human torch burns off Venom’s tongue, with the Thing spitting
off the severed bit after the symbiote has been detached from it.
5 Two Hosts The Klyntar have always had a very straight
forward MO - bond with a host.
But turns out once upon a time, Venom tried to bond to two different hosts, both at once.
And by once upon a time, we mean in his very first encounter with Spider-Man.
For context, because of how Peter Parker had bonded with the symbiote and rejected it upon
its first appearance, it had a grudge for Spider-Man.
Eddie Brock also had a grudge against Parker, blaming him for ruining his career.
So when the two first hashed it out, at one point, Parker invites the symbiote back, begging
it to bond with him again.
So Venom tries to jump ship from Brock and bond with Parker, but Brock tries desperately
to hold on to Venom, resulting in Venom torn between the two of them.
Venom eventually can’t deal, and is knocked unconscious.
4 Ate It’s Clone Narassistic much?
In the 2003 Venom series, there was a whole plot line in which aliens posing as government
agents cloned Venom with the intention of using it to wipe out humans.
The clone came from the DNA from Venom’s severed tongue that we mentioned in our earlier
number; some dude collects it off the street after the battle is done, and it ends up in
the wrong hands.
The clone went on a rampage, with the intention of killing the OG Venom.
At the end of the series, Brock’s Venom ‘absorbed’ the clone just as the series
ended.
And by absorb we mean he basically ate it.
But that wasn’t the last of this clone; it would return and eventually become Mania,
expelled from Venom in an attempt to cleanse itself.
3 Sexual Assault Venom once tried to sexually assault one of
Eddie Brock’s girlfriends, Beck.
This one comes from the 1993 three part mini series Venom: The Madness, and explores Brock
coming to terms with living with the symbiote, which festers into a great deal of insanity
and Brock and Venom try to cope with one another.
Venom doesn’t believe that Brock’s attempt for ‘true symbiosis’ is possible; rather,
it believes that one side will always be dominant, and it’s adamant on proving to Brock that
it is the dominant one in their relationship.
Throughout the series, Venom would periodically take over Eddie, including in an instance
where it attempts to assault Beck, who shouts out stop it as Venom is visible seen overpowering
Brock.
Thankfully, the assault is interrupted by none other than Juggernaut, who crashes into
the apartment and begins to beat down on Venom.
2 Necrophilia Venom doesn’t only assault the living; it’s
also perfectly comfortable with desecrating the dead.
Or at least in this What If tale, it is.
In What If Spider-Man the Other, the symbiote, who had paired with Mac Gargan, ditches the
villain, deciding that it’d like to bond with Peter Parker once more.
Only problem is, in this alternate reality, Peter ain’t doing to well; his body is cocooned
beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and when Venom shows up, Peter chooses death over bonding
with the creature.
That doesn’t stop Venom though.
Its begins to bond with Peter’s corpse, a long permanent process that takes several
months to complete.
Once the bonding is done, Venom heads on over to Mary Jane Watson’s apartment.
MJ rejects it, calling it out as Venom.
Venom, who has begun calling itself Poison, decides to not give up on acquiring another
half for itself, so it heads to the Forest hills Cemetery and exhumes Gwen Stacy.
It reanimates her corpse and gets it on with her.
Lucky for us, that happens off panel.
1 Cannibalism One of Venom’s most notable traits, along
with other Klyntars, is that it likes to eat brains.
This was quite prominent in the Venom: The Hunger series, in which he DOES end of eating
human brains at one point.
Turns out the logic behind this is that there’s a certain chemical found within brains, the
same chemical which is apparently also in chocolate (hence Venom’s sweet tooth, which
is seen periodically in other comics.)
Eddie Brock always tried to prevent Venom from dining on human flesh though; something
that one of Venom’s other hosts, Mac Gargan, didn’t share the same restraint for.
Gargan’s Venom dined on brains, and human flesh, on several occasions, which technically
makes Gargan a cannibal.
And those moments in the comics definitely ain’t pretty to look at.
Gross.
There we have it friends!
The scariest, and most disturbing, Venom moments!
What other moments in the comics do you think we should have included on our list?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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