﻿It’s extremely rare for a comic book character to spring forth from the mind of one person.
Usually, the writer and artist share co-creator credit,
like how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster both came up Superman,
or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby basically gave birth to most of the Marvel Universe.
But sometimes, it can get even messier,
especially when it comes to a character as complex as Venom.
I’m Moose and today,
with some help from Todd McFarlane himself,
we’re gonna take a peek behind the scenes at Marvel Comics to find out
Who Created Venom?
He fully debuted in 1988’s ‘Amazing Spider-Man #299,’
but his history begins over a decade before that,
at least, according to legend.
But before we get there, we should start with the official byline:
which states that Venom was a co-creation of
David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane
Marvel wanted to do something special for the landmark 300th issue of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man,’
so writer David Micheline decided to make use of the alien symbiote that Spidey encountered four years earlier.
He introduced a mysterious unseen character that was immune to Peter’s spider-sense,
who was able to surprise our friendly neighborhood hero and nearly kill him before vanishing into the night.
When it came time for the big reveal, Michelinie planned to unveil Venom as a woman,
whose hatred of Spidey came from losing her husband and unborn child as the result of collateral damage during one of Spider-Man’s various supervillain battles.
His editor liked the idea, but didn’t think that a woman,
even one ensconced in a symbiote suit,
would visually seem like a threat to the webslinger.
So Michelinie came up with Eddie Brock,
a down-on-his-luck reporter who wanted revenge on Spidey for exposing his bogus story.
But that’s only half of the equation.
Michelinie might have had his arc all planned out,
but without a killer design from one of the most influential artists of the ‘90s,
Venom could have been just another forgotten villain like Rocket Racer or The Big Wheel.
Enter Todd McFarlane.
The artist’s star was on the rise at Marvel,
and he was looking for a new challenge,
But he had one condition:
He wanted to draw Spidey in his original costume.
I'll come on one condition. You gotta get him back in the blue in the red!
Because to me, as a kid, that's what it looked like. So, I gotta do the blue and the red, the blue and the red, the blue and the red.
So put it on somebody else, we'll create another character, then I can have the red and blue Spider-Man, and they'll still have the black costume.
So, Marvel obliged,
and got the wheels turning to remove Spidey’s black suit,
and introduce an iconic new villain at the same time.
The basics of the black suit were already set in stone,
but McFarlane transformed it into a massive monstrosity,
with blank, terrifying eyes,
and a demonic, toothy grin,
although in his first appearance,
the fangs and slobber are nowhere to be found.
The tongue part, I don't know why it has to be out all the time. I think that long tongues drawn in the comics look like my dog when its running.
For one image it looks super cool, but if I was doing the tongue, in the movie, it would be slow,
then it'd be fwoomp fwoomp fwoop,
then it'd be out, it would do something and be gone, it'd be another tool,
not just Gene Simmons "look at what I've got."
Todd McFarlane: Not the biggest fan of the tongue.
More on that later.
So, Michelinie and McFarlane came up with Eddie Brock, his hulking frame and his signature smile,
in other words, they created the character we know today as Venom.
But it gets a little more complicated when you consider that neither of them had any part in the alien suit’s creation or design,
they were just building on work that had begun years before.
The symbiote’s origin is a little more difficult to trace,
but the earliest claimant to its creation is writer/artist
John Byrne
Byrne became one of comics biggest names with his work on ‘Man of Steel’ and the Phoenix Saga,
but in the ‘70s, he was still paying his dues with one of Marvel’s lower tier heroes,
the Immortal Iron Fist.
He noticed that Iron Fist’s costume usually ended up shredded to pieces by the end of an issue,
only to show up the next month in pristine condition.
Byrne didn’t like the idea of the Living Weapon sewing together his leotard with a needle and thread,
so he proposed that his suit would be made from a bio-organic material that healed itself,
with no need for time-consuming stitching.
The concept never saw the light of day in Iron Fist,
but years later,
Spidey writer Roger Stern asked Byrne if he could take the unused idea and apply it to Spider-Man’s mysterious new black costume.
But that’s just the beginning,
because the idea of Spidey getting a new look in the first place came from a far more unlikely source.
Not a comics writer, or artist, or editor,
but a fan, named
Randy Schueller
From time to time, Marvel used to hold talent searches to recruit new blood.
'Ultimate Spider-Man' legend Mark Bagley came from one such contest,
but usually, they never amounted to much.
That didn’t stop superfan Randy Schueller from submitting a pitch in 1982, though.
In his story,
Spidey swings by the Baxter Building for a much-needed costume upgrade courtesy of Reed Richards,
and Mr. Fantastic whips up a new suit made of the same unstable molecules the FF use in their uniforms.
It comes equipped with fancy new cybernetic webshooters and increased clinging capacity,
along with a bold new look:
All black everything, with the only splash of color being a red spider splashed across his chest.
Much to Schueller’s shock,
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter actually wrote him back.
He bought the idea for $220, and gave the young writer the chance to script the story in exchange for the rights.
Unfortunately, Schueller was unable to flesh out his figment into a full-fledged comic book,
so Spidey’s new costume was put on the shelf for a few years,
until it was dusted off for ‘Secret Wars,’
the groundbreaking crossover by
Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck
‘Secret Wars’ began as a collaboration with toymaker Mattel.
They were interested in picking up the rights for Marvel’s characters,
but they wanted to tie it in with a big publishing event,
one where all the good guys and all the bad guys got together for whatever reason and just beat the crap out of eachother.
Marvel supervillains and superheroes figures, each sold seperately!
Here, Doctor Doom and the Doom Platoon, Magneto, Doctor Octopus!
There, Captain America and the Champions of Freedom, Spider-Man and Wolverine!
Their focus groups found that kids responded to words like ‘secret’ and ‘war,’
so Shooter, in his infinite creativity, called the crossover ‘Secret Wars.’
Another Mattel mandate was that the heroes had to change,
they needed toyetic new vehicles, accessories, playsets, and,
most importantly, costumes.
Shooter remembered Schueller’s original idea,
worked it into his script for 'Secret Wars,'
and handed it to artists Mike Zeck and Rich Leonardi to refine into Spidey’s new look.
They were already working on a new costume for Spider-Woman,
so they adapted their work-in-progress into Spider-Man’s black suit,
one of the most elegantly simple designs in superhero history.
Although Todd might disagree...
So you're not a fan of the black costume?
Not on Peter Parker!
When I looked at the black costume on Peter Parker, it's the equivalent of putting a yellow costume on Batman.
Okay, I guess there's a bat on it, but it's yellow! That's not Batman!
So that settles it, right?
Venom was created by Michelinie, and McFarlane, and Byrne, and Schueller, and Shooter, and Zeck...
and the Rest
That’s right, we’re still not done.
After all, Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were the ones who came up with the idea that the suit was actually a sentient alien symbiote,
instead of some weird technology cooked up by the Beyonder.
They also invented its weakness to sound,
which is how the suit was separated from Spidey in the first place.
It'd be pretty hard for Venom to exist, if Spidey and the black suit were just BFFs for life.
What about Peter David, the writer behind the Sin Eater storyline?
That’s the supervillain whose identity Brock thought he exposed,
only to have it blow up in his face when Spidey caught the real guy.
It’s a crucial part of Venom’s motivation,
but Michelinie and McFarlane had nothing to do with it.
There’s also the fact that a character keeps evolving well after his first appearance.
McFarlane’s original Venom looks creepy and cool,
but he’s still missing some trademark tropes.
Erik Larsen was the first to draw Venom with his slithering tongue and gallons of drool,
and future artists would continue to experiment with and evolve on the slimy, symbiotic psychopath’s design.
At the end of the day, Venom was still created by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane,
but that’s only the tip of the iceberg,
and everyone who contributed to the concept deserves at least a little shout out.
Comics are a collaborative, iterative medium, after all,
they’re built on decades of stories and continuity from dozens of different writers and artists,
but when it works,
they manage to come together into a cohesive, compelling world and
unforgettable characters that stand the test of time.
WE ARE VENOM.