The Vindication of Venom Part 14/Appendix C: Origins

In this instalment we’ll discuss the original intention for Venom and what it says about the character we know and love.

Original Origin

As I touched upon back in Part 1 David Michelinie’s original origin for Venom was very different from what we wound up with. Let’s revisit what he said in his own words.

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, [Michelinie wrote the Graphic Novel in question] 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…

Michelinie’s plans changed though when he was apparently told readers wouldn’t accept a woman fighting Spider-Man.

Many people use this original story as ammunition against Venom’s origin from ASM #300. Their points generally focus upon how the alleged problems with Venom stems from Michelinie having to come up with something different for his character at the eleventh hour.

However that really doesn’t quite add up when you really think about it. I discussed some reasons for this back in Part 5 when laying out Michelinie likes to plan things well in advance and had the time to do this with the lead up to ASM #300. But there is more to consider than that.

Surely if Michelinie et al really were conceiving their new male Venom at the last minute it’d make sense to simply use the same story but simply switch the roles and genders. That is to say that in the revised origin it was Eddie Brock who witnessed his (possibly pregnant) wife run over by a taxi driver who was too distracted by Spider-Man, consequently blaming the wall-crawler for his misfortune?

But what we got in ASM #300, whilst retaining a few very broad concepts from the intended origin (a stranger to Spidey blames him for ruining their life, bonds with the symbiote to kill him, etc.) is essentially a page 1 rewrite of the Venom character.

Brock’s origin and desire for revenge come from a radically different place to his female prototype. In fact they are actually much more  complicated.

I do not mean more complex, I mean that the A>B>C chain of events forming his origin has more elements to it and is far less direct than Michelinie’s original version of Venom.

Let’s compare and contrast the two origins, starting with the female prototype.

• In a non-Spider-Man graphic novel that was sold outside all regular monthly Marvel titles (that readers are still expected to remember) a cab driver is distracted by Spider-Man swinging by.>
• They run over a pregnant woman’s husband.>
• The shock of seeing this causes pregnant woman to lose baby.>
• The woman blames Spider-Man.>
• The woman becomes mentally unhinged.>
• The woman bonds with symbiote and becomes Venom.

Now compare that to Eddie Brock’s origin from ASM #300.

• Someone confesses to Eddie Brock that he’s a serial killer from a recent and acclaimed Spider-Man story told within the regular monthly Spider-Man titles that virtually everyone would remember.>
• Brock publishes the story but protects the killer’s identity.>
• Brock is pressured to reveal the killer’s identity and does so in a sensational article.>
• Spider-Man catches real killer revealing Brock’s story to be false.>
• Brock is fired in disgrace.>
• Brock is unable to get work other than sleazy tabloids.>
• Brock blames Spider-Man for his misfortunes.>
• Brock goes to a church and contemplates suicide but doesn’t go through with it due to his religious beliefs.>
• The symbiote finds and bonds with him and they become Venom

One is clearly a lot simpler and more direct than the other.

In other words it is unlikely that Michelinie just threw something together at the eleventh hour.

More than this though, many of the ideas underlying Venom’s motivations are still present in the original female (let’s call her Edwina Brock) conception of the character.

• Both Eddie and Edwina’s origins tie into a previous storyline; the Death of Jean DeWolff and Revenge of the Living Monolith respectively.
• Both endure misfortune that Spider-Man is tangentially involved with but cannot reasonably be blamed for.
• Despite this both latch onto Spider-Man for ruining their lives.
• Both stories involve a third party more directly at fault for their misfortunes. For Edwina it’d be more logical to blame the cab driver and for Brock it’d be more logical to blame Emil Gregg or even Stan Carter. In fact Spider-Man was arguably even less at fault for Edwina’s misfortune than Eddie’s. In the latter case it was his direct involvement that indirectly contributed to Brock’s problems. In the former case though his mere existence as an eye catching figure inadvertently devastated Edwina’s life.

Note what Michelinie also said in his rundown of Edwina’s backstory (emphasis mine).

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…

‘Unhinged’ and ‘fanatical hatred’ a descriptors entirely applicable to Eddie Brock as well as Edwina. As I went to great pains to illustrate in prior instalments, Eddie Brock is a man not in his right mind. He is not someone who is operating along sane, rational or logical lines of reasoning; at least not the kinds most people live their lives by. Understanding this is key to grasping Brock’s intentions as a villain and his motives for despising Spider-Man.

Michelinie’s recounting of Edwina’s backstory also arguably supports another facet of Venom’s origin: the idea of him being an everyday person and a stranger to Spider-Man. Like Brock Edwina was someone Peter Parker didn’t know. She was a civilian affected tangentially by his actions as Spider-Man and who then irrationally blamed him for a wholly imagined slight. This touches on both the fear factor of Venom being someone who could exist in reality, the philosophy of Spider-Man as an everyman and arguably the idea of Venom as a super villain celebrity stalker character.

Uncanny Origins #7

As I mentioned in the main body of the essay series, Uncanny Origins #7 is a retelling of Brock’s origin and other events in his life.

It is however more than likely non-canonical due to the various contradictions to older stories it presents. Nevertheless it does illustrate (perhaps more clearly than Amazing Spider-Man #300) a lot of what I’ve discussed about Brock from Part 7 onwards.

In the retelling you see

• Brock’s ambitiousness
• His narcissism
• His being called out for shoddy journalism (and thus by extension his lying about his skills in ASM #300)
• The erosion of his self-esteem
• His growing obsessive hatred of Spider-Man
• How this was informed by Spider-Man’s costume
• The religious context he views his transformation in
• And of course Brock’s warped perception of reality and delusions. This is even called out by Venom himself when the story retells his transformation into an anti-hero

Note however that the retelling goes beyond the events of ASM #300.

Whilst its quality as a story unto itself is debatable it is worth a look if you want to revisit the character’s origins from a different angle or read a story that showcases a lot of what I’ve discussed throughout this essay series.

In the next and final(?) instalment we wrap up with looking at a few more bits of circumstantial evidence along with the conclusion to this essay series.