Since his introduction in 1987, Eddie Brock, also known as the mainstay human part of the symbiote superhero Venom, has remained one of the most dynamic, and also most unpredictable characters in the Marvel Universe. Originally a supervillain whose acquisition of Spider-Man’s former alien costume allowed him immunity from his spider-sense, and thus freedom to toy with the wall-crawler, Venom has grown steadily in popularity, particularly in recent years as a doomed antihero. Often portrayed as a psychologically tortured figure who strives to atone for the selfishness of his past, once upon a time Venom was among the worst of Marvel’s villains. Here’s how Venom changed over the years.
When first seen in full, gracing the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #299 in the process of terrorizing Spider-Man’s wife Mary Jane, Venom is a terrifyingly nightmarish creature, driven by Spider-Man’s inadvertent destruction of his career when the hero apprehended the murderer known as the Sin-Eater, whom the then-journalist Brock had written a sham article upon. Discovering Spider-Man’s identity as Peter Parker when he bonded with the symbiote costume, Venom incited a chillingly personal campaign of intimidation against Parker by targeting his loved ones, leading to their first battle. Soon after his initial apprehension, Venom would claim his first murder in killing a guard while escaping and continued this murderous quest to exact revenge on Parker, a quest that endured through several successful prison escapes until they eventually teamed up to stop the even more psychotic murderer, Cletus Kasady (also known as Carnage) after he also obtained a symbiote.
This pattern would continue for many years, as the relationship between Brock and the symbiote would be further explored in such a way as to gradually paint Brock as a tragic victim of circumstance, suffering from the schizophrenic effects of sharing his mind and body with an alien psychic entity. As often as he would appear as a villain, Venom’s growing popularity (despite his proclivity towards eating human brains) would see him just as often take on the role of a hero, first in order to protect his ex-fiance Anne Weying in the streets of San Francisco, then increasingly as a federally-sanctioned antihero, at least in part motivated by a desire for penitence for his past crimes. Though given to bouts of rage and violence, as well as numerous abandonments of Brock for other hosts, the Venom symbiote would eventually grow more manageable, leading to a more balanced relationship between the two.
Villains Never Prosper
Finally, writer Donny Cates arrived on the title in 2018, and re-imagined the character as more of a hapless antihero embroiled as a pawn in a millennia-long cosmic conspiracy at the behest of an evil dark god. Pushed to the forefront of the Marvel Universe as an unlikely savior during the King in Black saga (along with his son Dylan), Venom’s character in some ways became crystallized as a forever-atoning figure whose heroism mostly arises out of problems he himself causes. Empowered with godlike strength over a race of alien symbiotes having defeated Knull, Brock’s newest adventures under Al Ewing have only expanded upon Cates’s approach. The disembodied Venom’s symbiote-strengthened consciousness now flits across time and space while Dylan and the Venom symbiote are on the run from shadowy paramilitary forces in a fractured, psychedelic plotting-style similar that mimic the madness within Venom’s own psychology.
The result is that Venom is both no longer the hackneyed anti-Spider-man villain he was conceived as, having clearly risen to become his own character with his own mythology and narrative… while at the same time showing by his limitations that he will always be a dark reflection of Spidey. While Spider-Man's tragedy-laden life may serve as fitting commentary on the pitfalls of his heroic quest, what Venom’s represents, far from the selfless questing of his former nemesis, is a series of grotesque, self-inflicted wounds which he rarely if ever sees the consequences of. Venom may have changed, but he’ll always be his own worst enemy.