Cobwebs #48: Lethal Protector

Well, the new season of The Walking Dead is about to start up that gets me to thinking about eating brains.  When I think about eating brains, I start think about everyone’s favorite symbiote – Venom!  This month we check out the source material for the new movie – Lethal Protector!

This month’s column comes about as a result of the new Venom trailer recently released.  Haven’t seen it yet?  Well, close your eyes and click play below.

 

 

I’ll let you express your excitement or distress over the upcoming movie in the comments section.  What we are going to tackle today is what source material is being used for this movie script.

At the Comic-Con Experience 2017 in Brazil last December (maybe my friend Andre got to go), they revealed that the source material comes from two series –Lethal Protector and Planet of the Symbiotes.

Both of these arcs were written by David Michelinie.  I asked Michelinie if he, the creator of Venom (yes, I said creator – not co-creator — read this earlier post and you will agree with me) and the writer of both source series, was brought in as a collaborator for the movie script.  His response?  “Nope, nobody from Marvel or Sony ever contacted me. Typical.”  Hopefully he’ll at least get mentioned in the credits.

You can read Lethal Protector on Marvel Unlimited, but you can’t find Planet of the Symbiotes. I assume that will change as we get closer to the movie.

So let’s talk about Lethal Protector.  It was the ‘90s.  It had a special foil cover.  It was a #1.  You bought the issue.  We all did back then.  I bet even JR bought a copy of it back then.  We bought it even though Spidey was on the cover telling us this was crap.  Don’t believe me?  This is in the bottom corner on the cover:

I should point out that I like David Michelinie.  It is because he chose to play MJ and Peter’s relationship in a positive light that it is so fondly remembered today.  He had some really great stories.  Lethal Protector isn’t up there with his best.  This is largely due to management trying to run the show instead of the talent.  More on that later.

The Story – so if you need a refresher, here are all six issues in a nutshell –

This takes place after Spidey and Venom make a deal to just leave each other alone.  So Venom leaves and goes to San Francisco where apparently Eddie Brock grew up (potential Cobwebs Final Exam question!).  He decides to take care of the innocents and goes around killing or maiming bad guys a la Punisher style of justice.

Spider-Man flies to San Francisco because he has decided to renege on his deal.  Venom, for his part, just ends up wanting to protect a group of homeless people (a gaggle of homeless people?) who are getting picked on by some land developers.  Spider-Man shows up, it’s a big mess, and in the end, everyone gets away and Spidey is left to figure out what is going on.

There is some underground complex that the homeless live in, a man named Roland Treece wants those homeless people gone due to the fact that there is gold in dem dar hills and he wants it.  It must be a whole lot of gold because he spent however much dollars it takes to produce “diggers” (with diamond drills, no less) who go into the tunnels to hunt them.

Turns out the diggers also happen to have a “sound shovel” device, because of course they do.  The fight between Venom and the diggers goes into a tunnel which collapses and they fall through to another layer of city underneath them.  One that appears to be stuck in the Wild West time period.  Apparently this is an old San Francisco that sank underground during the earthquake of 1906.

So this homeless community (which technically has a home since they all live in buildings underground) has a council that meets to and decides Brock is too dangerous to stay with them.  All the nice looking clean homeless people want Brock to stay.  All the dirty crazy-looking homeless people (including a one-eyed preacher who’s looking for demons everywhere) want Brock to leave.  Brock decides that if he takes gets rid of Roland Treece guy, then maybe the homeless people will let him live in their homme (yes, I know that sentence is slightly messed up).  He gets caught at Treece’s office and the security guards, packing enough firepower to support Isis, shoot him 27 times (I counted), but Venom is bullet-proof, so he just beats them up. (so far he hasn’t killed anyone and we are in the third issue of a series called Lethal Protector!).

Because this is the ‘90s and we need overly complicated plots, Venom gets away only to be hit with some energy beams by a guy named Orwell Taylor, the father of a Vault guard that Venom killed in an escape way back when.  He’s dedicated his life to killing Venom and has been waiting in San Francisco all this time for Venom to show up.  He leads a group called The Jury.  After some fighting, Venom gets away and we don’t see The Jury for the rest of the series.

Meanwhile Spider-Man tracks down Brock’s father and their old house keeper, but they don’t know anything. We do get a sad story about how Brock’s mother died while giving birth to him and Eddie spent his entire life trying to get his father’s approval to no avail.

 Meanwhile, Roland Treece catches Venom and gives him to a new bad guy – Dr. Carlton Drake, head of a group called the Life Foundation.  They don’t want Venom; they want his children.  So they pull out a seed which they have determined is the last chance that Venom can procreate.

Now why isn’t Last Son of Venom anyone’s handle on our site?

Spidey finally finds where they are keeping Venom as the Life Foundation almost kills brock removing the symbiote from him.  To stop him, they sic five, count ‘em – FIVE, symbiotes on Spider-Man.  These guys mark the last of Venom’s children.  He has Carnage and these five “seeds”.

Spidey holds his own against the five symbiotes, which all have slightly different powers.  Eddie Brock (now with less symbiote!) shows up and tries to get those symbiotes to bond with him, only to have them all just punch him in the face.  They run away and find the Venom suit unguarded (that was convenient!) so Brock bonds back again.  When the others show up, Brock shoots the Symbiote Siblings (OK, that wasn’t their name, but it should have been) with a “maturing ray” and all five of his children are turned to dust (or symbiote flour).  Spidey is not happy with that (because even then there was the specter of ‘No One Dies’).  Sensing he failed, Dr. Drake blows up the whole facility. 

Speaking of blowing things up, Treece has decided to just kill all the homeless by blowing up the park so that he can look for the gold in peace.  Spidey takes on the Diggers while Venom proves he truly is a hero by braving a fire to take Treece into custody.  Spidey goes home and the homeless society decides to bring in Brock as a member.

All in all, Venom proves to very much be a protector, but doesn’t actually kill anyone (except his five symbiote children), so is not as lethal as you would think from someone who constantly wants to eat the brains and entrails of others.

All in all, a pretty ‘90s story.

By the way, none of the Symbiote Siblings are named in this series, they later get host names and two of them get symbiote names in the Marvel Handbook.  For completion sake, they are:

• Yellow – Scream (Donna Diego)
• Green – Lasher (Ramon Hernandez)
• Indigo – (Trevor Cole)
• Orange – (Carl Mach)
• Violet (Leslie Gesneria)

Interesting fact, Michelinie didn’t want to take Venom in this direction.  I asked him what he had wanted to do with Venom if he had just been left alone allowed to write his stories.  He said,

I’d toyed with the idea of separating Eddie Brock from the symbiote, which would put Eddie in a coma and have the symbiote search for a new host. It would join with several others over a period of time: a good guy, a bad guy, an average human just trying to get by, maybe even a dog or some other non-human. Eventually the symbiote would choose to return to Brock and join with him, operating him like a hand puppet to do something that would snap him out of the coma and voila! the real Venom would be back.

 

He also talked about how just as Spider-Man is Peter Parker in the Spider-Man suit, Venom was Eddie Brock in the symbiote, so he wanted to explore that concept more with Venom.  He mention that he had is set up so that any symbiotes, besides Venom and Carnage – who were immune for reasons he cannot remember at this point, to dissolve in Earth’s atmosphere.  The idea was that Venom and  Carnage would be unique. He followed it up with –  Considering the onslaught of symbiote types at Marvel since then, I’d have to call my plan an epic fail.

Michelinie really wasn’t sold on this idea of Venom as a good guy.  In an interview here on the Crawlspace (episode #46), he said that he was approached twice and turned it down.  He had no desire to turn Venom into a hero.  However, after he realized that this was going to happen, he decided to try and save his character, he would do it himself.  You can see this as the story progresses:

• Venom is moved away from New York so that he can establish himself.
• Spider-Man comes to San Francisco so that storyline is used up. All further stories (for this was just the beginning of a series of limited series) can focus on Venom as his own character.
• Michelinie just killed of all chances of making more symbiotes by introducing Venom’s five offspring and then killing them.
• Venom has a warped sense of protecting the innocents. Now he has a group of innocents that he needs to protect, thus locking him into this setting.

Because Michelinie worked hard to separate Venom from Spider-Man in this series, it is a perfect choice for source material to use for this script.  All you have to do at this point is just come up with a reason that the symbiote is here.  That’s ready made with the Life Foundation.  With it set in San Francisco, it allows Sony a chance to play in the Marvel Universe without screwing up the Marvel Universe.  Even if Marvel never officially acknowledges Venom, it could still exist over there on the other side of the country.

According to IMDB, the Venom movie will take on characters from Lethal Protector. Eddie Brock, Dr. Carlton Drake, Dr. Emerson, and Donna Deigo (Scream).   I am betting there will be a scene with multiple symbiote suits that Venom must fight.  I’m also betting that in the end, they will reveal that while they lost the five symbiotes and the Venom suit (assuming Brock kills the five and then leaves to go on his own), they still have one more symbiote – a red one code named Carnage…

If you are wanting to stay up to date on all things Venom movie, then you can join the email group for Sony at the official Venom site: http://www.venom.movie/site/ or follow their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/VenomMovie/about/?ref=page_internal

 

Because people expect nerdy things from me and because we are doing a weird Spidey-less Venom in this movie, I’m citing this article in the stupidest citation format out there – Turabian.  For those who have come to expect MLA greatness from me, forgive me as I go citation slumming this go around.

 

Sources:

“Celebrity Interviews.” Spider-Man Crawlspace. Last modified February 8, 2018. Accessed February 19, 2018. http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2018/02/03/crawlspace-celebrity-interviews/.

Chitwood, Adam.  “The ‘Venom’ Movie Will Be Primarily Based on These Two Comic Runs.” Collider. Last modified December 9, 2017.  Accessed February 15, 2018. http://collider.com/venom-movie-comics-lethal-protector-tom-hardy/#images.

Sony Entertainment. “Venom Trailer”. Filmed [February 2018]. YouTube video, 1:49. Posted [February 8, 2018]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxFdtWmjto.

“Venom: Full Cast and Crew.” Internet Movie Database. Accessed February 15, 2018. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270797/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast.

“Venom: Lethal Protector #1-6.” Supermega Monkey’s Marvel Comics Chronology. Accessed February 19, 2018. http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/venom_lethal_protector_1-6.shtml.

Images:

All scans are from Marvel Unlimited

Five Venoms

Covers

David Michelinie

Venom Movie Poster

Credible Hulk 2 – Thanks for the image, Brad!

 

 

‘Nuff Said!