File Photo

Replace File Photo

Attributes

Height: 6' 3"

Weight: 260 lbs

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Reddish Blond

Features: As Venom, Brock has an elongated jaw, teeth, and tongue which are really part of the alien costume

Summary

Created By: David Michelinie, Todd McFarlane, Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Brett Breeding

Real Name: Edward "Eddie" Brock

Current Aliases: None

Former Aliases: None

Dual Identity: Known to local authorites

Current Occupation: Mad killer bent on revenge

Former Occupation: Journalist for the Daily Globe, short stint as a Vigilante between murdering sprees

Citizenship: United States of America

Legal Status: Criminal record in U.S.

Place of Birth: San-Francisco, California

Marital Status: Divorced

Known Relatives: Carol Brock (father), Anne Weying (ex-wife, deceased in Amazing v.2 #19), Mary Brock (younger sister, mentioned in Nova v.3 #6-7)

Known Confidants: "Beck"

Known Allies: Spider-Man, Morbius, Vengeance

Major Enemies: Spider-Man, Carnage, Life Foundation, Juggernaut, Scarlet-Spider, Jury

Usual Bases: New York City (again)

Former Bases: New York City, San-Francisco, California

Current Groups: None

Former Groups: None

Education: BA in Journalism

Powers & Paraphenalia

Strength Level: 11 tons under optimal conditions

Powers: Brock's powers stem from his symbiotic relationship with the alien that serves as his costume. The symbiote can mimic any type of clothing whatsoever, as well as blending Venom in his surroundings, rendering him invisible. The symbiote has augmented all of Brock's physical abilities to superhuman levels equal to, and in some cases greater than, Spider-Man's.

Abilities: Venom also possesses the ability to adhere to most surfaces. Venom can animate any part of his costume and can fire a web-like substance from his hands. Because the symbiote was previously attached to Peter, it knows how to shield itself from Spider-Man's spider- sense.

Equipment: None

Weapons: None

Limitations: The symbiote is extremely sensitive to sonic and thermal attacks.

Background

This all came to an end when Spider-Man discovered his nifty new threads were actually an alien symbiote trying to bond to him permanently. Mr. Fantastic separated the two with his "sonic blaster" and captured the symbiote for study. It should be noted that during the period that Spider-Man wore the alien costume, there was evidence that the symbiote somehow fed on his adrenaline. The costume escaped and rejoined Spider-Man briefly, but the hero tried to kill the symbiote using the noise from a church's bell tower. The plan worked too well, and the symbiote saved Spidey's life before hiding itself in the church.

The other half of this future combo, Eddie Brock, was the star investigative reporter for the Daily Globe. Eddie was a particularly driven man driven to seek the approval of his stone-hearted father. It stands to reason that when his biggest score--a man confessing to be the then-active Sin-Eater--was exposed as a fraud when the real Sin-Eater was captured by Spider-Man, Brock went a little over the edge. The paper fired him, his father disowned him, and his marriage ended. Brock's mind locked onto Spider-Man as the source of all his woes and thus began Brock's burning hatred of the Wall-Crawler. But life continued to deal harshly with Brock, and soon he decided to commit suicide. Stopping by a church to pray before he did the fateful deed, Brock's intense hatred of Spider-Man was noticed by the symbiote who had been hidden there since its last confrontation with Spider-Man. The two bonded and became Venom.

Venom has battled Spider-Man, and anyone else who gets in his way, numerous times since then. Brock sees himself as a hero, protecting innocents from the "evil" Spider-Man. Venom desperately hates his "son", Carnage, who he sees as a perversion of all that he is. In truth Venom has acted as a hero on several occasions, but he believes anyone he sees as "evil" should die, and this puts him in the same dubious category as the Punisher. He still hates Spider- Man, but for a while regarded him as a necessary evil since the Wall-Crawler also protects the "innocent". He came to this conclusion after "saving" Peter's robotic "parents" (a scheme put together by Harry Osborn) from Peter's supposed corrupting influence. Spider-Man consulted Brock's ex-wife, Anne Weying, on how to approach him during his "parents" kidnapping and she helped Eddie realize that Spider-Man should be left alone.

Venom served a homeless community of people living in the buried ruins of old in San Francisco. He acted as their protector for a while but make no mistake: that Venom was insane. Brock was soon captured by the Jury, a high tech band of mercenaries hired by the father of a guard that Brock had killed while escaping from prison. He was also targeted by the Life Foundation, who wanted to harvest his remaining symbiotic offspring. This resulted in the creation of five new symbiotes: Scream, Lasher, Agony, Phage and Riot. (Four of these symbiotes later bonded to Scott Washington, who became Hybrid.) Shortly after that, Venom had an epic struggle with the returned Ben Reilly, who managed to separate Brock and the symbiote.

After being rejoined, Venom's killer instincts surfaced once again, and little by little he became a threat to innocent people as well. He acquired selective amnesia (Brock no longer remembers Peter is Spider-Man, and the symbiote doesn't seem to make any effort to remind him of that). Brock absorbed Cletus Kassady's symbiote (who then found another one) and joined the Sinister Six shortly after the reboot. But he soon regretted it and then tried to kill his former teammates. He left Sandman near death, after biting a great chunk out of him, and attacked Electro, leaving him also for dead. He made some sort of peace with Spidey (again), only to foolishly blame him for something as far fetched as his wife's suicide. When the powerful human/alien hybrid known as Senator Ward, Venom lost his chance for revenge, since Ward split Brock and the symbiote apart (again).

A secret agency created their own symbiote using a piece of Venom's tongue that bonded with a woman named Robertson in an Alaskan lab. Eventually, Venom would absorb this symbiote into himself. Unfortunately, he wasn't unable to remove that entire 18 issues run from existence, since it was a story that never quite found its way.

Venom returned later on to reveal that Eddie Brock had cancer, and he could not survive without a permanent merge with the symbiote. In the end, Spider-Man forces the symbiote to go through with this "permanent merge." Eddie and the symbiote have one last row with Carnage, when they find out the red maniac is about to spawn. Kassady wants to kill the young symbiote, while Venom wants to protect it. The new creature bonds to Pat Mulligan and becomes Toxin. He quickly beats "dad" and "grandpa."

Meanwhile, Eddie's cancer has continued to spread and in one last attempt at redemption he sells the symbiote to an auction. He goes through an awakening and auctions off the symbiote to Don Fortunato who gives it to his son, Angelo Fortunato. The money will go to charity, but even Mysterio (Daniel Berkhart, present at the auction) says that selling a killer monster doesn't seem very Christ-like.

The last we see of Venom, Eddie had slit his wrists in an alley and the symbiote is running free looking for a host. I'm not sure how this permanent merge was undone, or why the cancer that had just about killed Eddie before didn't kill him the minute he gave away the symbiote. However, I have a funny feeling that the symbiote will find Eddie Brock and reemerge before he dies of his self inflicted wounds.

Brock did indeed survive his latest suicide attempt, but was waiting for the end in the terminal ward of a hospital. He stayed there for months, quietly waiting for death, going about his daily exercises without much enthusiasm. He was a broken man without much reason to live, until he realized that Peter's comatose Aunt May was in the same hospital after being shot by the Kingpin's sniper. Eddie was unsure what to do, but his psychosis, taking the form of a mocking symbiote, goaded him into a murder attempt on the catatonic old woman. He wore a black Spider-Man costume that he had bought online and murdered his nurse, to see if he still had it in him to be a killer.

The nurse was no problem (she kept missing his veins when she took blood samples, so he rationalized that she deserved to die) so he made his way to May Parker's room. Peter, Mary Jane, Madame Web and Felicia Hardy were busy taking part in a seance to contact Aunt May psychically, so May was alone and helpless. Alone with Peter's aunt, Eddie couldn't bring himself to kill. He still saw May as an innocent, no matter what his hallucination told him. Sensing that May was in danger, Peter rushed to her room, just in time to see a deranged Eddie Brock standing in the hospital window, his wrists bleeding from multiple cuts. Telling Pete that he finally managed to cut the symbiote out of himself, Eddie jumped. Naturally, Peter saved him.

Eddie healed in the months after he attacked May. Ironically, he became her co-worker at the F.E.A.S.T. Foundation, a charitable organization. (Mephisto had caused everyone who knew Spider-Man's ID to forget, which explained why Eddie didnt want to kill May.) He had gone to pray for forgiveness at the same church where he met the symbiote, where he met Mr Li. He decided to spend his remaining days helping the even less fortunate. The F.E.A.S.T. Foundation had been the scene of several "miracles." Mr Li (aka Mr Negative) seemed to be behind these miracles, and unbeknown to Brock, cured him of his late stage cancer when he touched him.

However, traces of the Venom symbiote remained in Brock's blood. When the energy that cured his cancer met the symbiote traces, a mutation occurred. When Venom III arrived in New York with Norman Osborn and the Thunderbolts to capture Spider-Man, Gargan found Brock instead of Parker. (He was using an ability to track former hosts, but didnt realize he was being led to the wrong one.) When the Venom symbiote tried to return to Brock, it was burned once it touched him. It also brought out the new mutation him: the creature called Anti-Venom, who hates the symbiote and all the pain it brought.

Please refer to that profile for the rest of Eddie's story.

Quizzes: Quiz on Venom, Another Quiz on Venom, Symbiote Quiz.

Thanks To:

The assistance of the Marvel Chronology Project is gratefully acknowledged.

Character Appearances

Image Gallery

Edit

Edit

Edit

Upload a New Image

These images are the copyright property of Marvel Comic Group. They are used here without permission. My sole intent in providing these images is to interest people in the works of Marvel Comics. If you like these characters then why not go out and buy the comic books, read the stories, and enjoy the real thing!