The Vindication of Venom Part 1: Introduction and Background Context

In addition to crossovers, events and a movie, this year is the 30^th anniversary of Venom and to mark the occasion Crawlspace has graciously permitted me to guest post an essay series I wrote analyzing the character’s debut.

Introduction

This essay series is my attempt to address some of the criticisms surrounding the most famous Spider-Man villain of all time, Venom.

To be specific I will be tackling the original earliest portrayal of the character from Amazing Spider-Man #300 and the criticisms levelled at him in that issue.

I am not endeavouring here to look at the Lethal Protector era of Venom, the Daniel Way run of Venom or even versions of Venom from later on in the David Michelinie run of Amazing Spider-Man and make a case for why they aren’t so bad. This is very much taking Venom as we originally met him in 1988.

Fair warning, not only will there be SPOILERS if you’ve not read many Venom tales, but this series as a whole is VERY lengthy. Each part is an essay unto itself of (on average) at least 2000 words in length with (at the time of this writing) 12 parts over all.

Because of this I will also be reusing several relevant images throughout each part to refresh your memory, maybe help out any new readers brave enough to dive in and to just more clearly illustrate my points; the same goes for some of my general points.

 

With that all said let’s kick off by laying down some foundations for what is to come.

My Thesis

Whilst I have many points to offer in rebuttal to the common criticisms of Venom in ASM #300, my thesis if you will boils down to two essential lines of argument. These are:

1. That Venom/Eddie Brock was a more poorly conveyed character than an outright poorly conceived one. That is to say he isn’t a character who ‘doesn’t make sense’ (as is often the criticism). Rather the nuts and bolts of what makes him tick, whilst present when you look closely enough at the story, are not explained as clearly as they could have been.
2. Readers of the time of ASM #300’s release projected expectations onto the character and story that are not in fact warranted by David Michelinie’s original concept and intentions for the character. Readers of later generations similarly project unwarranted expectations onto the story/character but from a somewhat different angle.

With all that said, for the sake of context let’s give little bit of history on Venom leading into ASM #300 and his real life origins. These are utterly vital going forward to understanding people’s problems with the character as well as the counterpoints I will be presenting.

Conception

In the mid-1980s writer David Michelinie was given the chance to write the recently launched Web of Spider-Man ongoing series. It was during his tenure as the writer of that series that he originally conceived of a new villain for Spider-Man who was a prototype for Venom.

Michelinie’s original conception for this prototype Venom though was drastically different to what we wound up with on the page in 1988, lacking even the character’s iconic name. In a 2008 interview with the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast he explained in his own words the early thinking behind the character:

Initially she [Venom] was a woman…The whole idea is that whenever I write a character I try to utilize the unique aspects of that character. And one thing Peter Parker had that no one else had was his spider sense…Someone flings at him from behind its a reaction he doesn’t even think about it, he ducks. And this has saved his life so many times I started thinking ‘Well, what if there was a villain who didn’t trigger that spider sense? How would he react? How would he cope with that?’

And they had already established in Secret Wars that the black costume didn’t affect Peter’s spider sense. So I started working out a character who would join with the symbiote costume and actually be a villain…

…My original origin story had been a woman who was pregnant and…her husband was trying to flag a cab as she was going into labour, and a cabbie was driving along looking into the sky at the Living Monolith, tying it into that graphic novel [Revenge of the Living Monolith], where Spider-Man was fighting the Living Monolith…and he hits the husband and kills the husband…the shock of this sends to woman into premature labour and she loses her child, all because the cab driver was watching Spider-Man. So she became unhinged and when she got out she had this fanatical hatred of Spider-Man, blaming him for the loss of her husband and their unborn child. And that drew the symbiote to her and she became one with the symbiote and was going after Spider-Man…

When Michelinie came to write ASM something special was required for the milestone ASM #300. To this end he proposed they use his Venom character, but then Editor Jim Salicrup felt that the readers wouldn’t be able to accept a woman being a threat to Spider-Man. As such Michelinie revised his origin for Venom and we got the character as we saw him in 1988.

But there is a lot more to the story than that and to fully appreciate that we need to look at the build up to Venom’s big reveal, starting all the way back in 1984 and the crossover event that begat all others.

Backstory

In the Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars maxi-series Spider-Man (among other characters) finds himself transported to the patchwork planet Battleworld to fight a group of super villains. Over time his costume is damaged and, on advice from other heroes, he seeks out what he believes to be an alien clothing machine. However he gets far more than he bargained for. Instead of simply replacing his traditional red and blue outfit Spidey now sports a sleek new black and white costume seemingly made of an extraterrestrial material that flows like liquid and responds to his very thoughts.

 

After taking the costume back to Earth and going through various other twists and turns in his life, Peter takes the costume to be analyzed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four where he discovers the truth about it. That is it not in fact a piece of clothing but in symbiotic alien life form that does not wish to separate itself from Spider-Man.

 

The symbiote later escapes from the Fantastic Four and attempts to forcibly bond with Peter again in Web of Spider-Man #1. Knowing the symbiote’s vulnerability to loud noises Peter frees himself by going to a church bell tower, although this puts his own life at great risk too. Unexpectedly the symbiote actually saves his life despite Peter’s rejection of it. This is because through being bonded to Peter the symbiote has begun to experience human emotions.

Though no one knew it at the time (and it wasn’t strictly speaking confirmed in-story until Amazing Spider-Man #388, published over 8 years later), the character we now know as Eddie Brock/Venom was first hinted at in Web of Spider-Man #18. In a single page Peter Parker casually awaits a train when a pink sleeved hand pushes him from behind into the tracks. Though he saves himself what is most alarming about the incident is how Peter’s spider sense never reacted to warn him of the danger.

Personally I think the pink coloured sleeve is a hint that this mysterious assailant was intended to be a woman.

A similar incident to the above occurs in Web of Spider-Man #24. Peter (sans his costume) is using his powers to walk on the outside wall of a building when a mysterious figure abruptly grabs his leg and detaches him from the wall sending him falling. Peter is alright but again he is alarmed by the lack of warning from his spider sense and presumes that the culprit of this incident and the one at the train station are one and the same.

On a side note the fact that the assailant was physically strong enough to detach Peter from the wall could have been a hint that they possessed a degree of super strength.

Though no readers knew it at the time, we got our next look at this assailant in Amazing Spider-Man #298 where he observed news clippings about Spidey and spoke about how he ruined his life and how he will soon return the favour.

We got our first full look at the character in the very next issue when he confronts Peter’s wife Mary Jane in their apartment, giving birth to (for better or worse) a giant of the Spider-Man mythos.

In ASM #300 we finally got to see the face of our new villain and follow his activities leading into his climactic battle with Spidey.

And then of course, rather infamously, we got his origin story dropped on us.

He is Eddie Brock former reporter for the Daily Globe newspaper. During a killing spree perpetrated by the mysterious serial killer known only as the Sin Eater, Brock was contacted by a man named Emil Gregg, who confessed to being killer. Brock published his story and later after being pressured by the authorities revealed Gregg’s identity to the public at large. However, shortly thereafter Spider-Man captured police officer Stan Carter, revealing him as the real Sin Eater and Gregg as Carter’s mentally ill neighbour and a serial confessor.

Losing his job, status and reputation Brock hit very hard times and blamed Spider-Man for his misfortune, nursing a burning hatred for the wall-crawler as he eked out a dissatisfying living and relentlessly exercised in a futile attempt to manage his stress.

Trying and failing to end his own life, Brock found himself in the same church that Peter rid himself of the symbiote. Like Brock, the symbiote had grown to resent Spider-Man and sensing a mutual hatred in Brock bonded with him, granting him powers similar to the wall-crawler as well rendering themselves undetectable to his spider sense.

Armed with the knowledge of his secret identity they dubbed themselves Venom and embarked on their mission to murder Spider-Man as revenge for his ‘crimes’ against them.

Additional context

An important aspect of Brock’s backstory (examined in detail in future instalments) is that the account he gives of the Sin Eater case seemingly contradict the original depiction of the story that introduced the Sin Eater himself. In the original story arc (also known as ‘The Death of Jean DeWolff’) Emil Gregg dressed as the Sin Eater and invaded the Daily Bugle, where he was apprehended, Brock seemingly never playing a role in his capture.

I should further mention that there are numerous stories that to varying degrees retcon elements of the backstory above. I’ve generally opted to ignore those and focus upon the original story as written above though I will reference some later stories in future instalments to better illustrate some of my points and offer some food for thought.

The criticisms

Now we’ve laid out Venom/Brock’s origins we need to define what the main points of criticism are when it comes to Venom’s earliest beginnings. Chiefly these amount to the following:

• The extraterrestrial origins of the symbiote are ill fitting for Spider-Man’s more grounded world

 

• The symbiote’s hatred of Spider-Man is contradictory to how it had been previously portrayed

 

• The symbiote is alive despite us seeing it die in Web of Spider-Man #1

 

• Other versions of the character (such as Spider-Man the Animated Series, Spider-Man 3 and the Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Series) all make Brock to be a much better ‘dark reflection’ of Spider-Man than the original comic book version

 

• Brock was a previously unknown character who is unconnected to Peter Parker’s life in or out of his costume.

 

• Brock’s origin story involves rewriting events from the Sin Eater storyline to facilitate his fall from grace

 

• The reveal of Brock as Venom, especially in light of previous two points, is a bad resolution to the mystery story seeded in issues leading to ASM #300

 

• Eddie Brock’s motivations for hating Spider-Man are weak and make no sense. This is perhaps the single biggest point of contention surrounding the character

From here on in I am going to try my best to address each of these criticisms in the above and to an extent try to do so in the above order.

Whilst I will endeavour to bring these point back up when appropriate please try to bear them in mind as we proceed going forward.

So with all the groundwork done come back for part 2 where we crack on with our analysis, starting off with the symbiote itself.

P.S. The one and only thing I ask from any readers of this essay series is that you reserve judgement until you’ve read all  of it. It is after all rather unfair to judge an argument before it’s made all it’s points or dismiss the argument casually or on principle before it’s finished.