The Vindication of Venom Part 16: Why is Venom so inconsistent?

Today to mark 30 years since we truly met Venom I am going to try and No. Prize just why he’s been so inconsistent over the past 3 decades.

Yesterday I said we were done with the ‘Vindication of Venom’ essay series, and technically that is true. The essay series revolved around addressing criticisms related to Venom as he was first presented in ASM #300 as opposed to diving into any criticisms of the character arising as a result of later stories.

However parts of my arguments in this article hinge (to varying degrees) upon how I explained the concept(s) of Venom throughout the essay series, in particular when I discussed Brock’s psychology. As such it is spiritually  part connected to what I have been discussing since March.

And I thought that a nice way to actually mark 30 years since our formal introduction to Venom would be to take a broader look at where the character has been since then and try to make some sense out of it.

And to begin let’s actually taking a look at some of that history shall we?

Upon his debut Venom/Eddie Brock was a twisted psychotic killer bent on murdering Spider-Man in a gruesome manner.

But with each of his consequent appearances he became less and less overtly evil. Or at the very least more ‘redeemable’ qualities were introduced into the character.

In the original Venom story Eddie Brock gruesomely suffocated an innocent young police officer for ostensibly no reason and shrugged it off by saying innocent death was unpleasant.

In his next appearance in ASM #315 Brock similarly murdered someone guarding his prison cell but his reaction was noticeably more sorrowful than before.

In ASM #317 Brock threatened Aunt May and made an offhand comment about avoiding hurting innocent people ‘when possible’.

In the third overall Venom story things were taken several steps further. Brock outright claimed that he’d never  hurt Aunt May because she was ‘innocent’. He even abandoned his quest for vengeance upon Spidey to rescue an endangered baby.

This trend continued in his consequent appearances, perhaps most poignantly leading to his temporary alliance with Spider-Man to stop Carnage who callously murdered ‘innocents’.

Eventually it became difficult to recognize Venom as the same character from Amazing Spider-Man #300 as he was given his own spin-off series where he operated as an (alleged) anti-hero complete with the moniker of ‘the Lethal Protector’.

However he changed his tune somewhat in Spider-Man: the Venom Agenda one shot where he resumed his vendetta against Spider-Man, even claiming he intended to reveal his identity to the world. Although this contradicted his ‘development’ since his debut by taking him back to a more villainous portrayal it equally contradicted those earlier villainous portrayals as Venom distinctly wanted to keep Spidey’s identity to himself.

In the same one shot he developed amnesia forgetting Spider-Man’s identity as Peter Parker. However in a later story (Venom: the Finale) he seemed to have little knowledge of who Spider-Man was in general, seemingly contradicting the Venom Agenda one shot.

Venom eventually regained some of his memory but still did not remember Peter’s identity. He was also forcibly separated from the Venom symbiote and taken into police custody. To my knowledge his very next appearance was in the pages of Peter Parker: Spider-Man written by Howard Mackie during his abominable tenure on the series. In this next appearance two things were noteworthy. The first was that Brock was somehow not   in prison for reasons unknown and the second is that he seemed both afraid of and reluctant to join with the symbiote.

He abruptly changed his attitude though once they rebond.

Much later they separate once again leading into ‘The Hunger’ storyline by Paul Jenkins.  Infamously this storyline established that Brock had cancer before he ever bonded with the symbiote back in ASM #300 and displayed a never before seen mutual animosity between Brock and the symbiote. Brock felt abused by the symbiote and didn’t want to be a bad person anymore whilst the symbiote didn’t want a sickly and dying host like Brock, preferring its original ‘love’ Spider-Man. Part of this was motivated by it being ‘pregnant’, although older stories implied that it could never again produce offspring.

Brock then appeared again in Mark Millar’s Marvel Knights: Spider-Man run where he’d had a religious awakening (apparently because he saw Passion of the Christ) and sold off the symbiote at a criminal auction. This was in spite the symbiote’s claims in ‘The Hunger’ that the next time it bonds it will be absolutely permanent.

There is much more to dive into for Brock and the symbiote’s history but I think you get the idea.

The real life reason for these inconsistencies are a combination of bad writing, sloppy editing and lack of communication and research on the part of both parties.

However for this article I wish to offer a potential No Prize attempt to resolve Brock’s inconsistencies.

I’ve had this potential explanation in mind for a long time but before actually writing this article I wanted to double check it held water.

To that end I discussed it with the very same psychologist acquaintance I mentioned in Part 15 who corroborated that it made sense.

In our conversations we pinned down that the vacillations in Venom’s behaviour could be explained by virtue of Brock’s mental state.

That is to say Brock was someone profoundly stressed by the loss of his job and consequent isolation just prior to his meeting the symbiote. He developed a full blown obsessive hatred for Spider-Man alongside a delusional psychosis which led him to believe Spider-Man was at fault for the ruination of his life. His mental state deteriorated to the point where he was considering suicide. Then later the symbiote bonded with him.

Having another voice literally talking to you in your head would be grounds for mental instability for anybody, but for someone already unstable like Brock it would be particularly damaging. Furthermore the power it afforded him sent him on a very abrupt and unhealthy power trip (see Part 12).

Of course during his career as Venom Brock also committed several murders and experienced instances of severe physical and mental pain, such as when he was separated forcibly from the symbiote.