Symbiotes are arguably some of the most horrifying creatures to be established in comic books.
Not only are they unique in characterization, but the Klyntars have a very specific aesthetic
that makes them stand out in comparison to other fearsome creatures found in our favourite
panels.
So today, we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 10 scariest symbiotes!
We’ll be talking about symbiotes who are not only scary in terms of their actions or
behaviour, but also pretty darn petrifying to look at.
So with that in mind, let’s jump in!
10 Venom I sometimes feel a little bit bad about these
symbiote lists; Venom, whose sort of the poster boy for the Klyntar race, often ends up in
early on in our lists.
Yes, he’s powerful, but compared to his offspring, thanks to the genetic rules of
his race, he isn’t the strongest Klyntar on the block.
And in terms of being the scariest, well, despite making one hell of an impression when
he first hit the scene beyond being just an alien costume back in April of 1988 in The
Amazing Spider-Man issue 299 and 300, he was utterly terrifying.
These days, as an anti-hero, the character is arguably one of the more scarier looking
superheroes of the Marvel universe.
But Venom, and Todd McFarlane, are largely to thank for the horrific aesthetic of the
other Klyntar characters that will be appearing on our list coming up; the symbiotes have
become utterly iconic and unmistakable in terms of appearance, and that’s a legacy
that continues to preserver in comics to this day.
9 Hybrid Hybrid ain’t a pretty amalgamation, that’s
for sure.
Hybrid is a combination of four of Venom’s offspring: Agony, Phage, Lasher and Riot.
Having previously appeared in the Venom Lethal Protector series back in 1993, these symbiotes
went through a bit of a rough time after they were defeated by Eddie Brock, and found themselves
in the Vault, a prison for super villains, being experimented on in a lab facility.
After they had broken out of confinement, they fused together into a single symbiote
and bonded with a host named Scott Washington, who was a guard at the Vault.
They would later be defused, but would end up fusing once more during the Deadpool vs
Carnage series, defeating Carnage and then passing from Deadpool to a dog that had been
trained to bond with Lasher.
8 Krobaa Krobaa is likely the least known symbiote
on our list, but just one look at it screams frightening.
So Krobaa is an entity that comes from the pits of darkness, naturally.
It bonded with a scientist and drives him mad, causing him to go on a rampage of New
York (which, when you really think about it, is unsurprisingly common in the Marvel Universe
it seems).
It’s also one of the only symbiote characters to appear in the comics that doesn’t have
some sort of familial connection to Venom, and isn’t one of his offsprings, first appearing
in Venom Seed of Darkness in 1997.
But, despite it’s appearance, it went down in a pretty lack lustre way, being defeated
by Eddie Brock thanks to the flash on his camera.
Jeez.
7 Riot Riot is one of the symbiotes who makes up
our previous number, Hybrid, but he’s arguably scarier on his own.
The character, who first appeared in Lethal Protector, came to be after the Life Foundation
removed multiple offspring from Venom in hopes to use them as super soldiers.
Riot, along with his siblings, were bonded to various mercenaries that worked for the
foundation, with his being Trevor Cole.
Trevor was particularly volatile, described by his peers to be unhinged, thus making Riot
a much more violent and vicious symbiote compared to his siblings, which is saying a lot.
Riot would later bond with a new host in hunting down Carnage, a group formed by the government
after being retrieved from his Hybrid state, which would eventually lead him and his siblings
into encountering Deadpool.
Riot will also be making his cinematic debut in this year’s Venom movie, bonding with
Riz Ahmed’s Doctor Carlton Drake, who runs the Life Foundation.
The character’s origins will obviously be slightly altered, being with a different host,
but since the Venom movie is removed from the symbiote’s Spider-Man alien costume
storyline, that should be no surprise.
6 Venomsaurus Rex What happens when a T-Rex bonds with a Klyntar?
This big fella, that’s what.
While some of you might be like, push, dinosaurs are cool!
Consider how utterly horrific it would be to come face to face with not only a real
live dinosaur, but one with the blood lust of a Klyntar symbiotic.
Real life dinosaur, count me on board, but one that wants to eat my brains for sustenance?
Yeah, I might pass.
There’s not a whole lot to say about the Venomsaurus Rex, aside from the fact that
it’s a symbiote who was bonded with a savage t-rex, and has made a handful of appearances
in the Marvel universe over the years, including in the Venomverse, and Old Man Logan.
5 Scream Scream fits the bill as one of the scariest
symbiotes for both being aesthetically chilling and straight up bat s*** crazy.
For starters, Scream was another of the Venom offspring characters to first appear in Lethal
Protector.
But unlike her four other siblings, she would’ve survive into the later Hybrid plot lines.
Rather, she was killed off in Venom vol 1 issue 15 in 2012 after Eddie Brock began to
hunt down symbiotes, trapped her by paralyzing her with a sonic emitter, and then stabbed
her multiple times in the head with a heated dagger.
Forget symbiotes, Eddie Brock should be at the top of this list!
Dude gets gruesome at times.
Anywho, Scream’s host Donna had a history of psychotic episodes prior to her becoming
one of the Life foundation’s hosts.
After bonding with Scream, she attacked a mall in California, and was initially defeated
by Venom and Spider-Man thanks to a metabolic accelerator.
The Life Foundation managed to recover her and her siblings, though, and later, she returned,
killing the hosts of the other symbiotes with a powerful psychic ability (thanks to Donna’s
schizophrenia apparently), and framed Eddie Brock for all of their murders, which pissed
off her symbiote siblings quite a bit.
4 Mania Mania, also known as Maniac in later years,
is one of the most vicious symbiotes to date.
A clone of Venom’s, specifically his tongue, this symbiote was initially created as a means
of exterminating all life on Earth, but refused to bond with any of the hosts it was exposed
to.
Instead of bonding, Mania would brutally maul and murder each of these potential hosts for
fun.
At one point, it comes into contact with a perspective host who is a prison inmate, who
manages to reject the symbiote.
So how does Mania react?
By bonding with an elderly mental patient and taunting the inmate about how he was raped
in prison, and then proceeding to reenact the event before murdering him.
All in all, pretty f***ed up character, yeah?
Mania would go on to mass murder a bunch of individuals before a new host by the name
of Lee Price took over the symbiote and reshaped it, calling themselves Maniac instead.
3 Grendel Grendel, compared to some of the other characters
on this list, hasn’t had a whole lot of panel time.
But that doesn’t make Grendel any less terrifying.
So this creature is a dragon symbiotic that was a servant of Knull.
More of Knull later.
Grendel would take on Eddie Brock’s Venom and Miles Morales’ Spider-Man in the 2018
Venom run, volume 4.
Grendel has the blood of multiple civilizations on his, well, teeth?
It ravaged societies during the earlier medieval period, including Norse soldiers, which caused
Thor to trap it inside a glacier.
Flash forward to 1966, SHIELD discovered it, and ran many experiment on it, which ultimately
led to a bunch of destruction in Vietnam during the war.
It would later be incapacitated and put to sleep until it was awakened by Knull and unleashed
on New York.
To make matters worse, this symbiote dragon isn’t affected by sonic waves or heat, and
rather, was defeated thanks to Thor’s lightning and Spider-Man’s venom blast, which caused
it to destabilize and unravel into a giant amorphous mass.
2 Knull Knull may not look as scary as any of our
previous numbers on our list initially, but it’s more so his capabilities that make
him utterly terrifying.
Knull is often considered as the symbiote god.
He’s the deity that created the klyntars (an origin that was crafted in that 2018 Venom
run).
So long story short, Knull’s existence predates that of the universe’s.
Back when the Celestials created the universe, Knull had some serious beef with them, and
fought against them with a living sword called the All-Black that was created from his shadow.
He chopped off one of their heads, and was cast back into the void by the other Celestials
in retaliation.
But Knull used that severed celestial head to forge a symbiote sword and symbiotic armour,
right from the eldritch darkness that he commanded, and set out on a mission to kill all of the
other gods.
When coming out of the void, he landed on a desolate planet, and created an army of
symbiotes, who would later rebel against them; they imprisoned him in the core of their planet,
which they would call Klyntar, which is their word for cage.
So if that isn’t enough to vouch for why he’s scary, dude is a literal god, who has
divine physiology, is self-sustaining, immortal andhas lived for over 13.7 billion years,
can shape shift, create life, and also wants to commit mass god genocide.
So yeah, not an overly pleasant being to encounter.
1 Carnage Well, Carnage may not be able to compete with
a god in terms of power, but it would be criminal to not give the symbiote the top spot on our
list.
He’s by far the most terrifying, nefarious and sinister of the symbiotes, and has the
aesthetic to match it.
Carnage has one of the more interesting stories of the symbiotes in the Marvel universe.
Eddie Brock had landed himself in prison at one point, and had the unfortunate experience
of having an individual named Cletus Kasady as his cell mate.
Kasady was a psychotic murderer, serving 11 life sentences at the time.
Now at this point, it was believed that the Venom symbiote was dead, but turns out it
was just incapacitated, and bonded with Eddie once more, allowing him to break out of prison.
But, without Eddie knowing, Venom had done something; it left behind one of its spawn
in the prison, which ended up bonding with Casady, making him the 999th naturally born
symbiotic.
Thus Carnage was born, and he was bigger and much badder than Venom.
Casady, being such a ruthless and contemptuous killer, made Carnage even more so, and over
a period of several months he would go on a killing spree leaving the words Carnage
Rules in blood at the scenes of crimes.
Carnage has been a long lasting character in the Venom mythos, an antagonist character
always trying to kill his father since first appearing in Amazing Spider-Man issue 345
back in 1991.
There we have it friends!
Do you agree with our picks?
Or do you think there’s other Klyntars out there much more deserving?
And which ones give you the heebe jee-bees?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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