Spider-Man and Venom have long been the best of archenemies,
but that complicated relationship hasn't quite made it onto the big screen. The comics feature
a true love-hate relationship with highs, lows, and occasional team-ups to stop alien serial
killers. This is the history of Venom's relationship with Spider-Man explained.
The Venom symbiote was first introduced in 1984 as part of the line-wide Marvel Comics
crossover—or, as some might call it, the glorified Mattel commercial— known as "Secret Wars."
The storyline sees numerous heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe
kidnapped into space by a godlike alien entity called the Beyonder, who deposits
them on a planet he dubs "Battleworld" and demands they fight one another.
In the eighth issue, Spider-Man, needing a new costume, is directed toward an alien machine that
can build him one. Of course, he picks the wrong machine, and is introduced to a small black ball
of unknown substance and origins — which quickly covers his body and takes the form of a costume,
giving Spider-Man a new look for the first time in the character's history
(and, presumably, giving Mattel another reason to make new Spider-Man toys).
Technically, Spider-Man's black suit predates "Secret Wars" by more than six months.
Spider-Man mysteriously vanishes from Earth at the end of "Amazing Spider-Man" #251 in April 1984,
but returns at the start of the very next issue wearing the black costume,
with the entirety of "Secret Wars" having occurred between the two issues. For the rest
of the year, the events of "Secret Wars" unfold retroactively in the pages of the crossover book,
while Spider-Man, wearing the black suit, continued to do his usual stuff in his own
comic. He occasionally considered how weird it was that his new suit responded to his every thought,
but he didn't have time to worry about it. Of course, he might have made time if
he knew what the readers knew: that the suit had started enveloping Peter while he slept,
dragging him around New York to fight crime as Spider-Man without his knowledge.
Eventually — after realizing the suit had powers he didn't even know about,
and after it had displayed increasing reluctance to leave his body — Spider-Man finally took it
to be examined by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, who discovered the costume's true nature.
Even for Spider-Man, it's not every day a super-scientist tells you that the costume
you've been wearing is not only a sentient alien, but a sentient alien that is trying to permanently
bond with you. Spider-Man's repulsed reaction is perfectly understandable from a human point of
view. For the symbiote, however, it was rejection, and rejection led to bitterness and hatred.
Spider-Man managed to free himself from the symbiote with the help of the Fantastic Four,
who used its weaknesses against sound and fire to trap it in a containment unit for future study.
Eventually, it escaped, and managed to trick Spider-Man into putting it back on by disguising
itself as his more traditional blue-and-red costume. It then attempted to forcibly bond
with him, an effort that Peter was only able to thwart by standing directly beside a set of
massive church bells, exposing both the symbiote and himself to their ear-shattering resonance.
The sound forced the symbiote to relinquish its hold on its unwilling host. However,
despite Peter's rejection, the symbiote saved his life by dragging his body away
from the painfully loud noise, foreshadowing the troubled future
of their relationship — even at this early stage, there was love mixed in with the hate.
It would be three years before the symbiote was seen again, but when it came back,
it came back quite literally with a vengeance. The final page of "Amazing Spider-Man" #299,
published in April 1988, introduced the character now popularly known as Venom,
though he didn't have knives for teeth or the long, slavering tongue quite yet.
"We are Venom."
After being separated from Spider-Man in the church, the symbiote had found a new host — Eddie
Brock, a former journalist whose life and career had been ruined, in his mind, by Spider-Man.
Preparing to commit suicide, the Catholic Brock went to a church to pray for forgiveness. Instead,
he found the symbiote, which bonded to him — not just physically, but emotionally, through their
mutual hatred of Spider-Man. Naming themselves Venom, Brock and the symbiote instantly became
the webslinger's deadliest foe. Not only did they not set off Peter's early warning spider-sense,
but they knew his true identity, and were able to threaten his loved ones.
While Spider-Man was never able to defeat Venom in direct combat, he survived the late '80s and
early '90s largely due to trickery. In their first meeting in "Amazing Spider-Man" #300, Peter uses
his knowledge of how the symbiote works to defeat Venom, while in "Amazing Spider-Man" #317, he
pretends to take the symbiote back, revealing that the alien still secretly wants to be with Peter,
not Brock — and the symbiote's attempt to break its bond with Brock knocks them both unconscious.
Venom's next two major appearances set up a major shift in his relationship with Spider-Man,
which would see them reluctantly team up in the face of a greater danger. "Amazing Spider-Man"
#333 features the apparent death of the Venom symbiote at the cancerous hands of
the villain Styx. Depowered, Eddie Brock is imprisoned for his crimes and placed
in a cell with a serial killer named Cletus Kasady. The symbiote, however, isn't dead,
and it soon seeks Eddie out and breaks him free. They continue to menace Spider-Man,
this time fighting him on a deserted island. Peter tricks Venom for a third time by faking
his own death, escaping the island while Brock and the symbiote relax on the beach,
content in the knowledge that their quest for revenge is complete.
Venom might have lived out the rest of his days on that island in peace, if not for the spawn
the symbiote had left behind in Eddie's cell. This second symbiote would bond with Kasady,
transforming him into the murderous villain known as Carnage. For all Venom's hatred of Spider-Man,
he’s always had a code of honor that usually prevents him from killing the innocent,
or allowing innocent deaths to occur. But Carnage's bloodlust was indiscriminate, and
when Spider-Man asked for Venom's help in stopping the killing spree, Venom agreed. It was the first
time they would team up to take down Venom's crimson offspring, but certainly not the last.
After dealing with Carnage together, Spider-Man and Venom eventually worked
out a truce. That story involved both Peter's long-lost parents,
recently returned and soon to be revealed as imposters, and Eddie Brock's ex-wife, Anne Weying.
"Amazing Spider-Man" #375 was billed as "the final confrontation," as Spider-Man battled
Venom in an abandoned theme park, determined to stop him for good. Anne, who had helped
Spider-Man locate her former husband, arrived on the scene to try and help, but ended up nearly
being crushed by a falling ferris wheel. Venom and Spider-Man were forced to join forces to save her,
and afterward, Anne helped Venom realize that Spider-Man regularly saves innocent lives.
This revelation finally led to a truce between the two,
with Venom swinging away to San Francisco and into his own limited series, "Venom:
Lethal Protector." It was actually Spider-Man who ended up breaking the truce in that series
when he went hunting for the escaped Venom, but by the end, the two were working together again,
with Venom having completed his transformation into a hero… or at least an anti-hero.
Venom spent a solid decade from the mid-90's to the mid-2000s hanging around the Marvel Universe
as a popular anti-hero, starring in numerous limited series and finally getting his first
ongoing title in 2003. Over this period, he had more adventures with Anne Weying,
who spent some time as She-Venom, and attempted to train (and then, when that went south,
fight to the death) a new symbiote and host entity called Toxin -- among other adventures.
It was eventually revealed that the Venom symbiote was the only thing keeping the cancer inside Eddie
from killing him. Eddie, meanwhile also started to question whether being bonded to the symbiote
was influencing him towards violence, a theory seemingly confirmed by his eventual slide back
into villainy, and specifically a hatred for Spider-Man. The truce between the two
officially ended when Anne commited suicide, and Venom believed Spider-Man was the cause.
In 2004, the symbiote went full villain once again,
though Eddie Brock did not. Having experienced a religious re-awakening after watching "The
Passion of the Christ," Brock finally gave up being Venom,
selling the symbiote at a supervillain auction. The symbiote first possessed the son of the mob
boss who bought him before finding a more suitable host in Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion, and remained
an antagonist of Spider-Man and various other Marvel heroes for the remainder of the 2000s.
From 2011 to 2017, Venom's host was a very different Spider-Man character — Flash Thompson,
former Spider-Man admirer and Peter Parker bully, who lost his legs while serving in
the military. When the government decided to put the Venom symbiote to use, it gave it to Flash,
allowing him to walk again and transforming him into the heroic Agent Venom.
The symbiote wasn't bonded to Flash at first — he was only allowed to
use it for 48 hours at a time — and their relationship was an openly antagonistic one,
with the symbiote taking any opportunity to seize control and perform monstrous acts of violence.
Most of Agent Venom's story doesn't directly involve Spider-Man, but their paths crossed in
unusual fashion in the pages of "Superior Spider-Man." The premise of this title
involved a mind swap between Peter Parker and his longtime nemesis Otto Octavius,
aka Doctor Octopus, who continued to fight crime as Spider-Man while in his rival's body.
As Spider-Man, Octavius forcibly extracted the symbiote from Flash and became host to
it himself — calling himself the Superior Venom. In a fascinating reversal, however, the symbiote
sensed something wrong with its old flame. While it briefly tasted freedom by taking full control
of Spider-Man's body, it was expelled by a remnant of Peter's mind and returned willingly to Flash.
Things didn't get any less weird for Agent Venom after dealing with the Superior Spider-Man — in
fact, he ended up going to space and joining the Guardians of the Galaxy. One of his adventures
while on the team finally gave an origin story, and even a home planet, to the symbiotes.
This story introduced Klyntar, home of the symbiote hive. Originally a species of conquerors,
the Klyntar had repented of their ancient evil ways, seeking instead to become a force for
good. They formed the Agents of the Cosmos, an organization of symbiotes bound to worthy
hosts who were dedicated to fostering peace and justice throughout the universe. Some symbiotes,
however, had been corrupted by their hosts, and the Venom symbiote was one of these.
Upon its arrival back home, the Klyntar were able to cleanse it,
a process that included a near-total memory wipe of its previous hosts. As a result, when Agent
Venom returned to Earth and once again encountered Spider-Man, it had no memory of him. The symbiote
even apologized to Spider-Man and expressed a desire to one day earn his forgiveness.
If the Klyntar memory wipe set the stage for a reconciliation between Venom and Spider-Man,
the events of 2018 and 2019 brought their relationship full circle. By that point,
the Venom symbiote had been separated from Flash Thompson, and after a brief
fling with an ex-soldier named Lee Price, it became bonded to Eddie Brock once again,
and they were once more the star of a "Venom" ongoing series.
"It is happening again."
When Carnage bonded with legendary Spider-Man nemesis Norman Osborn to become the Red Goblin,
Spider-Man and Venom, as usual, teamed up to oppose him. In order to defeat Red Goblin, Brock
willingly gave up the symbiote to Spider-Man, who donned it again in "Amazing Spider-Man"
#800. After the Red Goblin's defeat, the symbiote was transferred peacefully back to Brock. It was
a sequence of events that demonstrated how far the two characters had come.
And as if to reinforce it, during the 2019 event "Absolute Carnage," the symbiote itself
convinced Brock to join forces with Spider-Man yet again — a story that ended with Eddie Brock,
who had sworn to kill Spider-Man on numerous occasions, actually giving his old enemy a hug.
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