(dramatic music)
- [Spider-Man] Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man here.
Things have been crazy lately.
Taking down all your not-so-friendly neighborhood baddies,
plus studying at Horizon High,
and trying to have some sort of social life.
What can I say?
A spider's work is never done.
But even though the team from Horizon
has yet to win the Stark Expo,
the Spidey life does have some perks.
Like meeting my all-time hero,
- [Announcer] Tony Stark!
(crowd cheering)
- [Spider-Man] Tony gave me some great advice,
- Kid, never show up to the first half of your own party.
- [Spider-Man] Okay, that part's not relevant here.
But he also said to keep good records
of everything you've learned to reference later.
I forget the exact words,
because I was kind of blown away
that the Tony Stark was talking to me.
So at the advice of my good friend Iron Man,
I'm consolidating all my knowledge
about one of the biggest baddies ever.
I'm talking about the Venom symbiote.
Where it comes from, what we know about it,
and how to take it down.
And since sourcing your work is important in science,
I'm relying on info from Mr. Stark himself,
Horizon High headmaster Max Modell,
my own scientific observations,
and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Who are they?
They're a rugged group of,
I guess it's fair to call them heroes?
Who frequently manage to save the galaxy despite themselves.
Symbiotes have been inhabiting the galaxy for ages.
Bonding with various aliens
to create symbiotic relationships.
At some point, Thanos came along.
Of course, Thanos was up to no good.
He experimented on his own daughter, Gamora,
in an attempt to weaponize the symbiotes.
Testing symbiotes on his daughter
was a terrible thing to do.
But terrible things are kind of, well, Thanos' thing.
Gamora escaped Thanos
and joined the Guardians of the Galaxy,
hoping her symbiote encounters were far behind her.
But then the Guardians came across symbiotes
on Groot's abandoned home planet.
Like, a whole army of them.
Turns out that was the site of Thanos' awful experiments.
The Guardians were all like,
"We've gotta blow up this planet."
and Groot was like, "I am Groot."
'Cause—well—that's all he ever says, but,
but what he meant was,
that he agreed they had no choice
but to destroy his planet to stop the symbiotes.
Even Peter Quill, who jokes about everything,
couldn't come up with anything funny to say about that.
Even though the planet was blown up,
a fragment of it, still infested with symbiotes,
was shot into space.
Actually, this may be a great time for a Science Sidebar.
What exactly are the scientific properties of a symbiote?
It's lighter than plastic, but stronger than steel.
It can take the form of anything.
And is almost indestructible.
Stay tuned for their weaknesses, by the way.
Symbiotes also try to bond
with whatever they come in contact with,
or at least, most do anyway.
They can read their host's mind.
Learn, adapt, and even take over the host completely.
And, as Miles learned the hard way,
- Venom doesn't trigger our Spider-Sense!
(Venom snarling)
- Ah, ugh!
Message received by all the bones in my body.
Got all that?
Here's where I entered the picture.
Somehow, the Space Administration
had a sample of the symbiote.
How they got it is classified,
but if they had any idea how dangerous it was,
they probably wouldn't have donated it to a high school.
Even one with a super high-tech lab like Horizon High.
The headmaster, Max Modell,
worked to stabilize the mystery substance,
which we called V-252,
hoping to add it to the periodic table as a new element.
My friends and I helped him study it.
And yeah, it broke out.
Even without knowing that symbiotes were all about chaos,
we probably should have seen that one coming.
The symbiote could have bonded with anyone.
But of course, it chose me.
There's that old Parker luck again.
When people saw the new Spider-Man, they were concerned.
But at first, I loved being bonded with the V-252.
You know what?
Now would be a good chance for another Science Sidebar.
What were the symbiote’s effects on me, Spider-Man,
when we bonded?
The symbiote morphed over my body.
I had unlimited organic webs.
I was faster and stronger.
And it changed my personality…
For the worse.
Becoming harder and harder to control this rage.
So, except for the emo part, all good, right?
But I started to suspect that the V-252 was a living thing.
An alien life form!
And then, I couldn't get rid of it.
I finally got it off with Norman Osborne's help,
if you can believe that,
and put it in a containment unit for safekeeping.
Oh, and remember the Guardians of the Galaxy?
Well, here's where our paths merge.
The Guardians received a distress call from Ant-Man.
He and Iron Man were attacked by a symbiote
that was hiding in Thanos' Sanctuary Asteroid.
You can imagine their surprise,
because the Avengers had been studying the asteroid
for a while before the symbiote made its appearance.
The Guardians tracked the symbiote with their scanners
to a subway tunnel where they found me,
and the first time we met, it didn't go so well.
But once we started working together
and discovered we had the same name,
we got along okay.
And we found something none of us had seen before.
A red symbiote.
We didn't know much about it.
For instance, why wasn't it trying to bond with any of us?
Well, that was because it already had a host in mind.
And that host was Thanos.
He was all,
- This symbiote is merely a shell,
I will turn this entire city
into a symbiote army that I control.
Should you survive, you will have the honor of joining them.
- [Spider-Man] Or something like that.
You get the idea.
It's just a very on-brand, terrible Thanos plan.
To complete said terrible plan,
he had to track down the V-252,
which was still at Horizon High.
I couldn't let Thanos destroy a school,
especially my school, and certainly not on taco day.
So, yeah, I ended up bonding with the V-252 again
to keep it away from Thanos.
More accurately, I was forced to bond with it by Rocket.
I guess it was the right thing to do,
but you really gotta let a guy make these decisions on his own.
And the thing with symbiotes,
it's always a matter of who's in control.
This time the person controlling the V-252
was Thanos, with me attached!
Luckily, Rocket's also a science wiz
and figured out how to turn the red symbiote into a solid,
get the V-252 off me, and capture Thanos.
So, work done right?
End of symbiote problem,
finished, finito, totally taken care of.
Except, of course not.
Remember what we're dealing with here.
See, the V-252 was still on Earth.
Not knowing it was alive,
Max was still working with it,
Thinking he could stabilize it for the Stark Expo.
And I guess it was a good thing the V-252 was still there,
because Ghost, a baddie who can disable tech,
attacked Tony's Arc Reactor.
The symbiote was the only non-tech thing at the expo,
so I might have bonded with it just a little.
I know, I know, I should have learned my lesson,
but when Tony Stark's life's at stake, what are you gonna do?
After that, Tony,
who was alive thanks to me just for the record,
decided the V-252 was best kept at Avengers compound.
Before he left, he paid me a little compliment.
“Mr. Parker, it was a pleasure to meet you,
Max tells me
you're the most brilliant and handsome scientist
he's ever met in his entire life ever,
and that Horizon High should be renamed Peter Parker High.”
- Or something like that.
Some days, being me isn't so bad.
But of course, that's not where the story ends.
The V-252 escaped the Stark containment unit,
and I finally gave the not-so-little guy a name.
From that wet, gnarly grin, I'd say V stood for Venom.
Venom merged with Flash Thompson.
So the symbiote didn't have much brain power to work with,
but he was strong.
You know what?
This might be a good time for a final Science Sidebar:
How to defeat a symbiote.
They really hate being blasted by heat or electricity,
like Thor's lightning.
“Feel the wrath of mine hammer!”
- I mean, who wouldn't?
But symbiotes react particularly badly to it.
And then Max discovered that sound waves
disrupt the symbiote's structure,
So we could take him down.
But the Space Administration's tests
desensitized him to sonic attacks.
So we had to up the volume.
(air-horn blaring)
Class dismissed.
After I separated Venom from Flash,
the symbiote was safely contained
at the Space Administration.
Emphasis on “was.”
Note to self:
maybe invent some symbiote-proof glass
for next year's Stark Expo.
Anyway, it bonded
with my rival photographer at the Bugle, Eddie Brock.
And this time, it wasn't so easy to get them apart.
- [Venom] The fun has just begun, Parker.
- But Miles invented a blaster
using equipment from the Space Administration
that put the symbiote in a coma state.
And it worked…
For a while, at least.
But Venom just won't leave me alone.
- The Spider is near!
- [Spider-Man] Obsessed much?
I was thinking I knew how to defeat a symbiote.
Done it before, easy-peasy.
But this time, Venom had something up his sleeve.
Or rather, nothing up his sleeve.
Because he upgraded to no longer needing a host.
- What?
There's no host in there?
- They experiment, I evolve.
- [Spider-Man] I realized I had to bond with Venom—
Yes, again—in order to get overloaded with energy,
and get rid of him for good.
So I teamed up with some friends,
and we went a little Thor on him.
- One overload coming up, yah!
- Argh!
What?
Argh!
What is this? I will...
- [Spider-Man] So, that's where things stand now.
Basically, the TL;DR version is the symbiotes are dangerous,
and really really good at making a break for it.
And Venom in particular has it out for me.
Pretty sure we haven't seen the last of him.
Because if there's one thing I've learned,
it's that just when you think your enemies are defeated,
they're already plotting a comeback.
(Venom growls)
(dramatic music)