The Venom symbiote has been around the block!
There have been multiple characters in the Marvel Universe, from Earth 616 to a bunch
of alternate universes, in which Venom has bonded with more than just his main man Eddie
Brock.
Some of them are unusual pairings, others are comical, and others wickedly cool.
So today, we’re returning to our list of the top 10 characters that wore the venom
symbiote, coming at you with a part 2.
Let’s jump in!
10 Carol Danvers Once upon a time, Carol Danvers aka Ms Marvel
at the time teamed up with Spider-Man to take on Mac Gargan’s venom.
Mac, who we talked about on the part one of our list, was a particularly nasty Venom,
and pretty violent and unhinged.
So our two heroes worked together in a story penned by Brian Reed that depicted Carol easily
stripping Gargan of Venom.
Although that didn’t work out as neatly as planned.
The symbiote would then jump on Carol and make her his host, resulting in a Venom that
had blames bursting out from its head and chest that could fly.
Spider-Man was able to resolve the issue quickly by pushing her into some power lines and knocking
the symbiote off of her, which then caused it to go back to Mac to finish the fight.
Perhaps the best part of this bonding though is when Venom initially bonds with Carol,
he runs around and shouts out “Ms Marvel is now my favourite super hero!” which is
kind of adorable and endearing, isn’t it?
9 Human Torch On Earth 20051, also known as the Marvel Adventures
universe, the venom symbiote decides to bond with Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch.
You can imagine how long that lasted.
The Marvel Adventures universe covered a story line in which Spider-Man gets the black sentient
alien costume, and after the Fantastic Four remove it from his body, like they do in its
original run with Spider-Man before it was known as the venom symbiote, it decides to
hop onto the Human Torch.
Johnny says, “wow!
It really can read my surface thoughts!
Let’s see if it looks as cool after I flame on!”
The second he bursts into flame, the venom symbiote immediately jumps ship.
The symbiotes have two primary weaknesses; sonic sound waves and fire.
So you can imagine how much Venom must’ve enjoyed that little interaction.
8 Red Hulk In Venom Vol 2 issue 13, in a story arc called
Circle of Four, Thaddeus Ross bonds with Venom and it’s a little terrifying.
So for context, the story involved a demonic invasion by Blackheart, Mephisto’s son in
an attempt to bring hell on Earth.
It kind of worked, with Las Vegas getting much hotter than it usually does, which is
saying a lot.
Flash Thompson let Venom bond with Ross’ Red Hulk, who proceeded to beat the pulp out
of Blackheart and saved the day, putting everything back in order, and by the end of it, Venom
jumped back to Thompson, proving to Captain America that Flash could control the symbiote
after all.
7 Kron Stone of Earth TRN-590 Kron Stone is a character from Earth 928,
who is a bit of a sadistic villain and the half-brother of that Earth’s Spider-Man,
Miguel O’Hara.
On this Earth though.
TRN 590, appearing in Spider-Man 2099 vol 3 issue 10 back in 2016, he bonds with the
Venom symbiote and becomes a pretty horrific and futuristic version of the villain, and
a member of the Sinister Six.
Initially, Kron was the dude who killed the Punisher’s family in the year 2099, and
was almost taken out by Frank Castle, left to die in a sewer.
This is where he encountered Venom, who had been chilling in the sewers for decades as
a means of trying to evolve.
He made Kron his host, and exhibited a few new abilities, like an acidic touch and a
body that could become fully liquid.
Eventually, Kron’s venom would fight against Miguel’s Spider-Man, Miguel would win, and,
upon discovering it was his half-brother beneath the symbiote, he managed to separate the two,
and confined Venom in his lab.
Venom would later break out and then bond with Namor, who we talked about on our part
1 of this list.
6 Rocket Raccoon We talked a little bit about how Venom got
cozy with the Guardians of the Galaxy on our part 1 list, particularly Groot, so naturally,
on this list, we’re returning to that odd story arc and taking a glimpse at the symbiote’s
bonding with another one of our favourite galactic heroes, Rocket Raccoon.
And look at the rabbies on him!
Or maybe rabbies.
Completely unconfirmed whether or not that’s rabbies.
But if you have to ask if something is rabbies, it’s probably rabbies.
ANYWHO!
This occurred when Flash Thompson was Venom’s host, and went up into space with the symbiote
in order to help ‘recalibrate’ him up on his home world of Klyntar.
The journey there clearly wasn’t an easy one, and Venom escaped from containment, decided
to hop onto Groot, and after receiving a beating from Drax, jumped ship to sweet little Rocket,
and insisted everyone get the hell off of his ship.
Rocket’s tenure didn’t last that long though, because Venom would then jump on over
to Drax instead.
5 Mercurio the 4D Man After heading home to Klyntar with the Guardians,
Venom rebonded with Flash Thomson and became Agent Venom, who was inducted into the Agents
of the Cosmos, travelling around the galaxy to planets that they sensed were in trouble,
being a hero and whatnot, disabling devices that destroyed planet ecosystems.
The dude behind these devices was Mercurio, a space pirate war lord; a character that
was normally a Thor villain.
Venom was captured by one of Mercurio’s minions (a panda named Pik Rollo who he was
blackmailing), and was separated from Thompson.
But it didn’t turn out to well for the space pirate; Venom was actually tricking him in
order to get information from him by bonding to him.
After separating from him and returning to Thompson, he brutally beat down on Mercurio,
to the point where Thompson had to stop him; being bonded to the space pirate made him
excessively violent.
4 Hawkeye The 2015 Secret Wars story arc explores the
Marvel Universe, Earth 616, combining with other various alternate universes, including
one in which 2006’s Civil War, the comic that the MCU film Captain America Civil War
is loosely based off of, was never actually concluded.
In this alternate universe, in Secret Wars: Civil War issue 3, Mac Gargan, who was Venom
at the time in 616, was dead, and a mute Venom was working for Captain America on his side.
Venom went on a covert mission with Peter Parker as part of his strike team to collect
something for Beast’s machine, and who he was bonded to was none other than Clint Barton!
He makes a super brief appearance, being super stealth, and sneaking up behind King Ock,
who was the corpse of King Pin controlled by Doc Ock tentacles.
Rather than using his bow and arrows though, he created a venom bow and flung Elektra’s
billyclub at King Ock like an arrow.
At the time, he was a tad mysterious, but was later revealed to be Hawkeye.
3 Symbioids of Earth TRN517 This ungodly creation is a product of the
Marvel super Hero Contest of Champions, specifically the 2015 one.
But, for context, back in 1982, there was a storyline called the Contest of Champions
in which the Grandmaster challenges Death for the life of his fellow Elder, the Collector,
who had recently been killed off, using superheroes from Earth to fight one another.
But in the 2015 one, the story occurs in the aftermath of the 2015 Secret Wars, with the
Collector and Grandmaster using the remnants of Doom’s Battleworld to set the stage for
a new competition, calling it Battlerealm.
Known as Symbioids, these terrifying looking beasts are the combination of the Adaptoids
of Battlerealm and the Venom symbiote.
The adaptoids are the duplicates of the Super Adaptoid, a creation made by Advanced Idea
Mechanics from unstable molecules and a portion of a cosmic cube.
These Symbioids were used by the Collector as obstacles in the contest of champions.
They had the abilities of the symbiotes and the Adaptoids, which are capable of copying
the powers, appearance and equipment of any superpowered being in close proximity, and
can only copy the powers it has witnessed.
2 Punisher Gotta love a What If imprint!
Last time on our part 1 list, we talked about two characters donning the Venom symbiote
in a particular Marvel What If issue; Venom had managed to find his way to the Hulk, making
Bruce Banner his host, and later jumping ship onto the Asgardian god of thunder, Thor.
But, for this number, we’re taking a look at a very specific What If title; What if
Venom had possessed the Punisher, from 1992.
It has a similar story as the Hulk’s and Thor’s; what if after spider-Man had gotten
rid of his sentient alien black costume and instead of it bonding with Eddie Brock, it
bonded with Frank Castle instead?
Punisher Venom, after realizing that he can manipulate the symbiote webbing into bullets
to fire at his enemies, goes on a bit of a rampage and kills Microchip, Tombstone and
later Kingpin.
He’s eventually stopped by Spider-Man, Daredevil and Moon Knight, with Spidey busting out a
sonic blaster he scored from The Fantastic Four.
But when he shoots it at Punisher Venom, it’s too late.
Venom has fully bonded with Castle, but the blast is enough for Castle to regain control
of his mind and confront Venom, eventually succeeding by threatening to kill them both
if Venom didn’t cooperate, and telling Spidey that he’s tamed the symbiote with the intention
of using him as an instrument of vengeance.
1 X-23 Life ain’t too bad for Laura Kinney these
days.
After having a wildly successful cinematic debut in Logan back in 2017, and she just
recently finished a run in her own comic she’s headlining in the form of the All New Wolverine
in the All New All Different Marvel relaunch.
She’s also gotten to bond with Venom, which is pretty rad.
Or at least for us readers.
In the Edge of Venomverse, Laura’s Wolverine got a new detail added to her origin story.
For those unfamiliar with the character, she’s the clone of Wolverine, later becoming his
adopted daughter, and after breaking out of the test facility where she was created and
experimented on, she would later attend school at the X-Mansion and become a member of the
X-Force.
She basically has all of daddy dearest’s abilities, except her entire skeleton wasn’t
fused with adamantium before she managed to escape.
In Edge of Venomverse issue 1, in an attempt to escape from her captors, she gets cornered
and gassed, with the only way out being to smash her way through a glass containment
cell.
And guess whose inside that containment cell!
Venom, feeling her hate and rage, bonds with her, and results in her kicking some major
butt.
She ends up escaping, living a fairly solitary life with Venom, who she manages to control
quite well, until she encounters a gang of kids and ends up sharing the symbiote with
them.
She’s eventually pulled out of her reality into the Venomverse reality to help fight
their war.
There we have it friends!
So, which of these hosts that we’ve discussed so far are your favourites?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know your thoughts.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, definitely check out part 1 of this list!
We’ve also got a bunch of other great videos about Venom and all things Marvel on our channel,
so head on over and subscribe, or just click on the nifty little playlist that’s currently
flashing on your screen.
In the meantime though, thanks for watching!
I’ve been your host Kelly Paoli and I’ll catch you all in the next video!