Editor: James Paraha. Thursday 26th May 2005.
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Things'
Editor: James Paraha. Thursday 26th May 2005.
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 “Choose Your Poison”
In 'On the Face of Things' we take a look at who those people in the little
pictures actually are, their histories, powers and how these qualities are
represented on their VS. cards. Previously we have looked at a couple of characters with publishing histories
longer than most of us have been born, today we switch to someone who is a more
recent creation. Does this mean our first Marvel character and villain has less
of a convoluted back story? We'll find out as we check in with one of
Spider-Man's favourite villains, Venom. History: During the early 1980's the two top U.S. comic book publishers Marvel and DC
came up with a new marketing scheme to get fans to buy even more comics, the
company wide crossover*. One of the earliest of these was Marvel's Secret War
(1984-1985). In the Secret War all of Marvel's top hero's and villains were
transported to a planet called Battleworld and forced to do combat by the
mysterious cosmic entity the Beyonder.
Despite early reservations Spider-Man eventually accepts the costume due to
added bonuses such as the ability to make its own webbing** and to mimic his
everyday clothes. Spidey utilised the suit for a number of months before
becoming aware of a number of irregularities, such as episodes of sleepwalking
crime fighting. Spidey approached Reed Richards*** who deduced that the suit was
actually a sentient alien symbiote. Reed designed a sonic disruptor to separate
the symbiote and trapped it for further study (Amazing Spider-Man #258, Nov
1984). Of course the symbiote gets loose and after trying out a few other hosts
decides that Spidey is the one for it. It hides in his closet disguised as
Spidey's regular red and blue costume and surprises the hell outta Spidey when
he puts it on. With no time to get the sonic disruptor from Reed before it bonds
to him, Spidey heads to a church bell tower where the ringing of the bells
causes him to black out. The symbiote separates from Spidey in order to
save his life and wounded, slinks off to hide in the church. Thinking that it is
dead Spidey swings off home. While the damaged symbiote hid and healed, star newspaper reporter Eddie
Brock was going through a hard patch. Brock, a hardnosed investigative reporter
for the Daily Globe, was running a series of interviews with the villainous
Sin-Eater. The articles were selling massive amounts of papers for the Globe.
However, when Spider-Man captures the Sin-Eater, revealing Brock's source to be
a fake, he is fired from the Globe and disowned by the journalist community.
Eddie soon loses the support of his father and divorces from his wife. As his
life crumbles Eddie focuses more and more on his perceived source of his
problems - Spider-Man. Unable to rebuild his life due to his Spider-Man
fixation, Brock decides to commit suicide but stops in at a church to pray and
absolve his sins before ending it all.
At first Eddie basically becomes a superpowered stalker, the symbiote's
memories provide him with all the info on Spidey's secret identity so he accosts
Spidey's wife Mary-Jane and follows Peter around in disguise. Another advantage
granted by the symbiote is the ability to block Spider-Man's 'spider sense'
warning system. Eddie uses this ability to follow Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man)
around and while on a crowded subway platform, push him in front of an oncoming
train. Peter is able to get out of the way just in time but is left wondering
why his spider sense didn't warn him of the danger. Finally Venom reveals himself to Spider-Man and they fight. Despite the
advantages of being stronger and not triggering his spider sense, Spidey defeats
Venom and he is hauled off for a long stint in prison. Of course he doesn't stay there for long, breaking out and engaging
Spider-Man numerous times during the early 90's, rising to be Spidey's
pre-eminent villain of the time. During one of his prison stays Eddie (having
been separated from the Venom symbiote) shared a cell with the sadistic serial
killer Cletus Cassidy. When the symbiote came to break Eddie out of jail it also
left behind an offspring. The offspring symbiote bonded to Cletus as a cellular
level creating Carnage****. Despite the obvious biological bond Venom and
Carnage have never been allies, just as often battling each other as they do
Spider-Man.
She-venom (offspring of venom) - black Using their brilliant 20/20 hindsight Marvel realised that all they had done
was dilute a fairly original concept and most of these symbiotes have since
been killed off or absorbed by Venom. Things had started to slow for Venom by 2000 and in 2002 with the release of
the big screen Spider-Man movie, Venom was supplanted as the number one
Spider-Man bad guy by the classic spider-villain Dr. Octopus. Since then Venom has been treated to a number of bad editorial choices to try
and regain his popularity. Firstly the Venom symbiote starred in a
mini-series without Eddie, where it harasses an Alaskan town (Seemingly drawing
from the much better 30 Days of Night comic or the cult John Carpenter movie The
Thing). It briefly possesses Wolverine before being ejected. Venom's back-story
was then retconned**^ to say that the reason Eddie had decided to commit suicide
was he had contracted cancer and only had three months to live. The cancer's
progress had been slowed by the symbiote but it had finally abandoned him to
find a healthy host***^ and the progress of the cancer now left Eddie at death's
door. Spidey ended up finding the symbiote and forcing to
bond permanently to
Eddie****^ which would arrest the cancer forever. Earlier this year the permanent bond was nullified (supposedly by Venom
absorbing his latest offspring) and Eddie chose to sell the symbiote to the
highest bidder. The bidder turned out to be mob boss Don Fortunato, who was
buying it to empower his son Angelo in the crime biz. Angelo set out to make a
rep for himself by defeating the original Venom's number one opponent -
Spider-Man. With a slightly updated appearance and a new skill*^^, Angelo went
into battle. Spider-Man easily took care of this new Venom and while beating a
hasty retreat across the rooftops the Venom symbiote abandoned Angelo due to his
lack of spirit, letting him fall to his death.
Splat. Recently another Spider-Man villain the Scorpion (aka Mac Gargan) lost his
mechanical armour and tail **^^ and much like with Eddie Brock his less than
charitable feelings towards Spidey saw the symbiote offering to join with him.
After seeing what it did to Angelo I'd be watching myself if I was Gargan. And that's where Venom stands at the moment, personally I'm sure that it
won't be too long before we see Eddie Brock pop up again, magically cured and
ready to hook up with his black alien goo friend once again. Powers: The Venom symbiote has many abilities - it is able to mimic any
kind of
clothing, change it colouring much like a chameleon and to a lesser extent shape
itself into additional forms such as claws or fangs. It can stick to most
surfaces and extend thin strands of itself as 'webbing'. Due to intimate
knowledge of Spider-Man, it is able block his 'spider sense'. The symbiote also
augments the physical abilities of its host giving them increased strength and
durability. The Venom symbiote is able to reproduce asexually. None of the symbiote's hosts as Venom have had any special abilities: The cards: I'm surprised that with the release of Web of Spider-Man we didn't see more
versions of Venom, as it is we have two cards to look at today. As always we
will be reviewing the card in terms of how they represent their comic book
counterpart, not their value in play.
Card Text: Well this is the first VS card I've reviewed that really feels
sub par. Nothing of the character really seems to shine through for me. Six cost
for 12/12, ho hum. KO or pay, blah, blah. Where's Eddie?!? Nothing at all seems
to indicate why this card should be Venom. This could just as easily be Marvel
villains Whirlwind or Mr. Hyde. I even have issues with his team 'Sinister
Syndicate', Venom had very noteworthy appearance as part of the Sinister Six
*^^^ but as far as I know he was never part of the Sinister Syndicate. Very
disappointing. Only good things I can say about this card is that uncommon feels
right (he is a major villain but with all the other symbiotes running around
he's not necessarily unique) and that I like the Ariel Olivetti picture, Venom
should always be pretty bulky to my mind.
Team: Sinister Syndicate Now this card is a little better. The symbiote by itself is not as powerful
as the dual natured Venom hence the lower 4 cost 7/7. The special ability also
lends itself to the nature of the symbiote as well joining with another person
to become bigger than it is. And yet you get to the flavour text and they just
kind of loose the plot. Isn't this supposed to be the Symbiote by itself? So at
this point its not really bonded to anyone Fractured? Yes. Two minds? No. Also
with the way the symbiote pops out kiddie symbiotes I'd hardly say it was rare.
It's a better effort that Venom > Eddie Brock but not by much. So we can see that it doesn't take very much time at all before a comic
character gets a fairly convoluted back-story. For me Venom is the epitome of
early 90's comic book characters - influenced by the trendy grim'n'gritty
character treatment with the flashy over the top visual style that characterised
the flamboyant artists of the time (just look at that tongue at the top of the
page!). Now if only he'd been given a crappy compound name like Darkdeath or
Bloodstrike and he would be perfect. Next, because everyone demanded, Batman, Spiderman, the X-Men and G'nort. Ok
not really, you'll just have to tune in in two weeks to see who gets the 'On the
face of things' treatment next. Cheers, James Paraha (Torquemada on the forums).
* [rant] In order to follow these gigantic storylines not only
did you have to buy the titles you liked but pretty much every book they
produced. Sometimes it meant you discovered a good new comic to collect, usually
you ended up spending money on trite crap while the publishers raked in the
bucks. These events only got worse with time - crossover issues were often drawn
by sub-par fill-in art teams and stories degenerated as it became harder to top
the last galaxy level threat to all that was. Marvel and DC still remember the
glory days when crossover = free cash. This year alone you have DC pushing its
'Infinite Crisis event' while Marvel thinks you should rush out and by every one
of the million interrelated chapters of 'House of M'. [/rant] ** Spider-Man used wrist mounted web-shooters up to this point,
unlike his recent movie counterpart. *** aka Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four
**** Carnage retained much more of Cletus' base personality that Venom did
of Eddie's, perhaps this is because he was stark raving mad to begin with. Due
to the differing bonding process Carnage is not a 'man in a suit' like Venom,
Cletus and the symbiote are physically intermingled, hence he can form his body
parts into various bladed weapons and such (much like the T1000 in Terminator 2)
*^ Don't ask, please just don't.
**^ Retcon = Retroactive continuity, rewriting historical facts to suit current
conditions.
***^ In Alaska? Seem pretty far to go when previously Venom had been in either
New York or Los Angeles. ****^ The symbiote didn't want to as this would leave it unable to reproduce. It managed to pop another offspring out before the bonding took place. *^^ Invisibility. Angelo figured that since the symbiote could change colour then it could mimic background colours to appear invisible (kinda like the Predator) **^^ Why? Because Marvel wants more young female hero's to attract a female audience to their books. So instead of inventing someone new they are making a female Scorpion. *^^^ The other villains pissed him off so he ended up turning on them and munched on a few of them. Seriously like, yum, yum ,munch, chew.
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In issue #8 (December 1984) Spider-Man's costume is trashed during a
protracted fight. Need to make urgent repairs Spidey is informed of a machine
that creates costumes, unfortunately for Spidey they didn't tell him exactly
where it is. Spidey comes across what he thinks is the machine and activates it.
The machine produces a black ball that the confused Spidey picks up. Suddenly
the 'ball' starts to melt and ooze's up Spidey's arm, encasing him in a new
black Spider-Man costume. 
Luckily
(for Eddie) he just happens to choose the church that the symbiote is
recuperating in. Talk about your 'amazing coincidences'. Attracted to Brock due
to their mutual hatred of Spidey, the symbiote merges with Eddie and Venom is
born (Amazing Spider-Man #298, March 1988). Due to their emotional instability,
Venom's psyche is permanently damaged, displaying as various psychotic
responses. Appearing as a hulking version of the black clad Spider-Man Venom
with a huge fanged mouth, Venom had most of Spidey's abilities plus the
symbiote's basic features. One basic desire now drove the combined villain -
revenge on Spider-Man.
The mid-nineties were pretty horrible for Spider-Man fans with way too many
Spidey books on the shelves and the *shudder* Spider Clone saga*^. Venom and
Carnage got a number of mini-series during this time. Each mini seemed to sell
fairly well so Marvel decided that if a little is good then a lot will be even
better. Soon there were (seemingly) dozens of Spider/Alien/symbiote's running
around, including:
Name:
Venom
Name:
Venom
