When you think of the symbiotes in comics, the characters who probably come to mind are
Venom and Carnage.
Hell, you probably think of Spider-Man, too.
But there’s another symbiote on the block that’s got people pretty excited, and its
name is Riot.
Riot may not have been the most popular symbiote character to exist in the Marvel universe,
but he’s quickly becoming one of interest, thanks to the upcoming Sony film Venom, starring
Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, aka Venom.
So who is he?
And what can we expect from him in the film based off of his appearances in the comics?
Well, today, we’re diving deeper into the character’s part with our list of the top
10 Riot Surprising Facts.
Some of which may not surprise you if you already knew a thing about Riot.
Just saying.
10 Venom’s Offspring Riot is an offspring of Venom’s.
In his first appearance in the 1993 Venom Lethal Protector series, he was created when
the Life foundation forcibly extracted five Klyntar seeds from Venom.
So for context, let’s jump back a sec.
The Life foundation, which is a name you’re probably hearing a lot more often now that
they’re featured in the Venom movie, is an organization that, in the comics, sought
to provide a ‘comfortable life’ for their wealthy clients in case of something referred
to as a MAD occurred.
MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction, meaning if there was a nuclear attack or some
sort of terrible fallout, the Life Foundation would have your rich ass secure.
They wanted to create superhuman ‘police’ to help protect their clients and this so-called
future, so the head of the Foundation, Carlton Drake, whipped up a plan to collect unborn
offspring from Venom.
The organization captured Venom in San Francisco, took him to a lab in the Mojave Desert, and
extracted these seeds.
Drake then used them to bond with a group of hosts to create the Foundations’ Guardian
Symbiotes. 9 His Powers
The Riot symbiote, like many of the Klyntar race, has a variation of exceptional powers
he’s capable of.
He’s got superhuman strength, with Riot appearing to have the greatest physical build
out of all of the Lethal Protector symbiotes, although his exact strength level was never
revealed in the story.
He’s got superhuman durability, stamina, superhuman speed that allows him to move faster
than the human eye, an accelerated healing factor, he can crawl up walls, has an immunity
to Spider-Man’s spider sense, webbing generation, camoflauge capabilities, constituent matter
generation, and constituent matter manipulation, which he uses to form weapons out of himself.
Riot, in particular, liked to created massive bludgeoning weapons from his arms, like maces
or hammers, which many speculate is due to his first host’s aggressive mentality.
But more on him later.
And, similar to all of the other symbiotes, his weaknesses are fire and sonic sound waves.
8 David Michelinie One of Riot’s creator writer David Michelinie
is pretty darn familiar with the race of Klyntars.
This is because he also had a major hand in creating Venom, alongside Todd McFarlane.
Michelinie and McFarlane were the ones who crafted the persona of Venom and Eddie Brock;
prior to this, Venom had only appeared as the sentient alien costume that Peter Parker
encountered during Secret Wars, and that Mister Fantastic had removed from his body.
The symbiote would break out and then find Eddie Brock, bonding with him.
But, back to Riot.
When Michelinie created him, it was as part of the Lethal Protector story arc we mentioned
earlier, with the character first appearing in issue 4 in May of 1993.
Michelinie is also known for creating Carnage a year prior.
He’s also responsible for working on many a DC comics title, too, and aside from artist
Paul Ryan, is the only comic book creator to contribute to both of the wedding issues
of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, AND the wedding issue between Superman and Lois
Lane.
7 Carlton Drake In the Venom film, it’s Dr Carlton Drake
who ends up bonding with the Riot symbiote, who goes head to head with Eddie Brock’s
Venom.
But in the comics, that’s not the case.
Drake in the comics is simply the leader of the Life Foundation, who just happens to have
some sort of extensive knowledge of the symbiotes, or at least enough to recognize that they
carry seeds around in them that can be used for reproduction, and that those seeds can
be extracted.
His first appearance is in the 1988 issue Amazing Spider-Man number 298, which was also
the first appearance of the Life foundation.
And his last was in Spider-Man The Arachnis Projects issue 6 in 1995.
The first appearance had Drake hiring costumed assassin Chance to steal weapons for him,
and electrocutes the assassin when he fails to do so for him.
This occurred after Peter had gotten the new black and white costume that would later be
revealed to be a sentient alien, who would later become Venom.
The issue also features a mystery man at its end who is looking at a collage of Spider-Man
newspaper articles, vowing to get revenge on the hero.
That man is Eddie Brock, who had ruined his journalism career by exposing the identity
of a villain.
Riz Ahmed plays Drake in the film.
6 Trevor Cole Trevor Cole was Riot’s first host.
A mercenary for the Life foundation who worked as part of their security team, Cole was chosen
to be a part of the experiment that bonded the Venom offspring to humans.
Cole is memorable for being incredibly aggressive and unsympathetic, and more ruthless than
his siblings that appeared in Lethal Protector.
During that story arc, Riot and the other Guardian Symbiotes were defeated by Venom
and spider-Man, and the Riot symbiote was artificially aged to dust and Trevor’s body
was caught in an explosion.
The Riot symbiote did survive, though, unlike it’s host.
5 The Hybrid That wasn’t the last we saw of Riot.
The symbiote would later be contained by Venom, along with its sibling symbiotes, and would
be sent to the Vault, which is a prison for superhuman criminals and a specific wing to
contain extraterrestrial ones.
From there, they were sent to a facility in which scientists would conduct painful experiments
on them, as seen in Venom The Hunted issue 1.
During Web of Spider-Man super special vol 1 issue 1, Venom stops a giant carnage by
releasing a cry of pain that the symbiote race is forced to commit mass suicide.
We actually discussed this ability on our Venom weaknesses list, which you should definitely
check out after this video.
Anywho, the psychic shriek killed the invading symbiotes, and Riot, experiencing this shriek
along with his siblings (minus Scream, who was dead), managed to break out and merge
into one creature; a Hybrid symbiote.
Calling itself Hybrid, it merged with a guard at the Vault named Scott Washington.
Eventually stopped by Eddie Brock, the US Army would find the remains of Hybrid.
That brings us to our next number, 4 Howard Ogden
In the Carnage USA series, the Army separated Hybrid into the four original symbiotes that
bonded together to create Hybrid; Riot, Agony, Lasher and Phage, and bonded them with the
members of their Mercury Team in order to take on Carnage.
Petty Officer Howard Ogden was the man who was bonded with Riot, who trained with Riot
for months in preparation to fight Carnage.
According to one of the other members on the Mercury Team named Rico Axelson, who bonded
with Phage, Ogden did not fully pass his mental health test.
Which I suppose makes him fitting for Riot in the long run.
Ogden and the rest of the Mercury Team were eventually killed off by Carnage, with the
symbiotes surviving but the hosts dying.
The symbiotes, including Riot, were returned to the military, and put back in their containers.
3 Deadpool That wasn’t the end of the Mercury Team,
though.
In Deadpool vs Carnage, Carnage sought them out, and Riot and his siblings, which initially
seemed like the villain was going on a random killing spree in Oklahoma with his girlfriend
Shriek.
Carnage found the team in an underground base above an abandoned town, and killed all of
the Mercury Team, but thanks to a German Shepard (named War Dog), Lasher was freed, who then
managed to save Riot and the other symbiotes before it was too late.
Deadpool then showed up, and Carnage cut him up into pieces.
Lasher, Riot and the other symbiotes found Deadpool that way, and bonds with him and
War Dog, created a Deadpool symbiote hybrid, with Riot clearly possessing his right arm.
Deadpool then goes after Carnage, disguises Shriek as himself to be a decoy, and Carnage
nearly kills her, which allows for Deadpool to capture him.
2 War Dog By the end of Deadpool versus Carnage, the
symbiotes release Deadpool as a host, and the merc with a mouth gives him to War Dog.
That may seem super weird, but War Dog was actually a pretty big part of the Mercury
Team.
He was owned by Chief petty officer Marcus Simms, and had been trained to bond with the
Lasher symbiote.
So after helping Deadpool fight Carnage, Deadpool gives War Dog/Lasher the other symbiotes,
including Riot, in order to return them to the government.
Gotta love dogs.
I guess when you don’t have a host, getting around is a real tough thing for a symbiote
to do.
Anywho, after War Dog carries Riot and his siblings away, the character hasn’t been
prominent in any other story arcs; we also don’t know if Lasher/War Dog took the symbiotes
back to the government as promised, either, so there’s a very good chance that the symbiotes
are out there somewhere ready to stir up more trouble in the future.
1 His Name Perhaps the most interesting fact about Riot
is that the character actually didn’t get the name of Riot until 19 years after he was
first introduced!
It wasn’t until Carnage USA issue 2 in March 2012 with Howard Ogden as its host that the
symbiote started being called Riot.
And the reason why the name Riot was chosen was because of two factors.
The name Riot was the name of an action figure who was a part of the official toy line, which
had been described as having multiple limbs, with its body being the size of a house in
scale.
This action figure and the Riot name struck a note with fans, who started referring to
Trevor Cole’s symbiote as Riot.
So years later, when Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain were working on Carnage USA, they canonized
the name, along with the names of the other symbiotes, Lasher, Agony and Phage.
There we have it friends!
Are you excited to see Riot up on the big screen?
And were you familiar with the character prior to the announcement that the symbiote will
be the big bad in the upcoming Venom movie?
Give us a shout in the comments below and let us know!
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