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This article, Edward Brock, Jr. (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
Symbiote' Relatives: Venom (current symbiote), Toxin ("grandson", former symbiote), Anti-Venom ("brother", former symbiote), Carnage ("son")
Spider-Man
Vol 1 10
History
We are Venom... We know the evil that men do...
- — Venom
- — Venom
Early Years
As a child, Edward Charles Allan "Eddie" Brock, Jr. (born late 1977) was raised as a Roman Catholic in suburban San Francisco. His father was cold and unloving towards him because he blamed Eddie for his wife's death during childbirth, although Eddie's older sister, Mary, tried her best to be there for him in the place of both their late mother. Eddie would constantly attempt to obtain his father's approval, who was always busy with his own classified bio-engineering experiments at the Life Foundation, though even after excelling in school, he only received half-hearted encouragements.
Eddie often stole from other children, just so he could "find" these items to gain their friendship. He also suffered from extreme bullying as a child, but his sister would cheer him and take him to places in the city for bonding and amusement when their father couldn't, slaving himself to work.
In his teenage years he got qualified to enter E.S.U.'s journalism program by fabricating an internship with the help of his resourceful sister. At E.S.U., Eddie had romanced the law student Anne Weying, with whom he would later officially date, albeit on-again and off-again. Though exceptional in athletics, Brock switched his major in college to journalism after reading articles on the Watergate Scandal, Abscam, and OKSCAM. Upon graduating, he moved to New York City, and as a member of the Associated Press, he obtained a job as a journalist for the Daily Globe. He proved to be highly talented, though even this did not get his father's approval and his importance as a son was slowly forgotten and unappreciated.
Frustrated and disappointed by how his father behaved to him for the rest of his life ever since he was still a child, Eddie decided to finally leave his arrogant and despicable father in San Francisco, having also felt like he was a burden to his older sister when she married off to a family of her own, and moved on to his own so-called "better life," now living his fairly-expensive studio apartment in Manhattan.
Covering Spider-Man
After months of fulfilling his lifetime career as a rising journalist, Brock finally wanted to break a big story in 2010, and thought he had found this story when he was contacted by Emil Gregg, an exploitative conspiracy theorist who claimed to be close to knowing several vigilantes' and criminals' secret identities throughout New York City in the aftermath of the recent Battle of New York. Gregg claimed that during the events of the alien invasion that saw the return of the street-level Defenders and birthed the public superhero team Avengers, he supposedly discovered the real identity of Spider-Man, a city-renowned superhero that Eddie and the Daily Globe had always been looking forward to write an article about in a while. Having this rare opportunity in his hands at the last second, Eddie agreed to secretly meet with Emil and help him learn the true secret identity of the Spider at the cost of the man's request, which was $1,500.
To avoid this great opportunity of his from passing, Eddie risked the financial status of the Daily Globe by paying Gregg the amount of $1,500 without his superiors knowing about his agenda. After paying Gregg the $1,500, the two finally began their deep investigation on the web-slinger's secret identity. On their first step, Eddie was given the order by Gregg to take several photos of the Spider on several different cases and situations, to which Eddie did, not only to help the lunatic succeed in his secret plan to expose all secret identities, but also to help himself and the Daily Globe to get back on its competition with the Daily Bugle, now that he'll be able to offer a great article coming up.
However, his mischievous deviousness to try and get a fast boost to get a viral story took a heavy toll when Gregg was revealed to be a criminal junkie who simply manipulated him to buy more illegal drugs, driving Brock into a life of shame and unemployment due to his humiliating act of fraudulence which in turn, had further fractured the reputation of the already unethically crooked Daily Globe that eventually led to its downfall.
The Birth of Venom
Some time after Eddie's life took these drastic changes, and overwhelmed by his shame and the knowledge of his impending downfall as a once-successful journalist, he began contemplating suicide, having sought no other way to continue living his life. He decided to visit Our Lady of Saints Church to beg forgiveness from God for this mortal sin before he decided on doing it. Once inside the church, he was caught by surprise when a symbiotic alien, which had earlier been discarded by Spider-Man as his former black suit in the church's bell tower, attacked and bonded with him, drawn by his despair, adrenaline, and fierce hate, on which it fed. The symbiote bonded mentally and physically to Brock, whose rage and hatred toward Spider-Man further corrupted it, causing it to become increasingly vicious and bloodthirsty for more brain and flesh to consume in keeping itself stable.
Hunting the Spider
Eddie Brock in his casual civilian appearance
Sensing his emotional pain for the past few weeks, it felt a similar pain and hatred for Spider-Man emanating from Brock. Although his body had been honed to near-perfection, Brock’s mind was reduced to an all-consuming vessel of hatred and recklessness. It was this fierce emotion that attracted the emphatic parasite. In order to survive, the alien costume had to feed off the nearest and greatest source of emotion, and also flesh of it's prey as another source of energy. The symbiote joined mentally and physically with Brock, whose emotions overwhelmed the already confused alien symbiote. The dominant thought on both their minds was that of Spider-Man. But Brock’s sheer hatred for the crime fighter twisted the symbiote's feelings to a similar extent.
In effect, Brock’s emotions drove the symbiote insane, just as their bonding may have driven Brock over the edge. Brock soon discovered that the costume gave him all the powers of Spider-Man, and more. It also added bulk to his already large frame and increased his strength to superhuman levels. Calling himself Venom, Brock directed the costume to sprout a hideous grin and plotted his revenge. Through the costume, Venom learned a great deal about Spider-Man, including his secret identity as the young adult Peter Parker, his former adversary due to the latter's affiliation with the Daily Bugle which happened to be the Daily Globe's undying rival.
Due to his series of actions on trying to desperately hunt the web-slinger down on countless different occasions, the ravenous and bloodthirsty Venom would become one most formidable and ferocious foes that Spider-Man have encountered throughout the years of his entire crime-fighting career. Thanks to the two's unending exchanges of feud and alliances, both Eddie and the Venom symbiote was able to develop from a villainous force of nature, to a more anti-heroic journey after a tired Eddie himself contemplated and realized that he was no cold-blooded killer and looking back from his true journalistic reputation and genuine personality, he eventually got himself back onto his fatigue feet as he and Venom embraced each other's redeeming change of heart with Eddie returning as a freelance journalist, and with it, becoming a lethal (sometimes fatal) protector with Venom once during his times living and reporting in San Francisco, California which incidentally got him rekindled with his old flame Anne Weying, someone whom he has never moved on from.
Preventing Carnage
Embarking on a citywide killing spree, the malevolent symbiotic villain Carnage was confronted by Spider-Man. However, the wall-crawler's amazing arachnid-like abilities were insufficient to subdue the thrice-strong serial killer. Spider-Man was forced to enlist the aid of the heroic Fantastic Four in order to defeat the villain and try to separate Cletus from the organic suit. But despite being defeated, Cletus never wanted to separate himself from the host and neither did the symbiote, as the two had an mutual, inseparable bond.
As a result, the battle eventually ended with Carnage escaping his foes due to defeat, finding its way down the sewers of New York. Following Carnage's escape, Spider-Man vows to immediately confront Carnage once they met again, and with the help of the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic, they decided to study a fragment of the symbiote left on the scene of the battle, so they would also use it as a tool to eventually track the symbiote itself, while Cletus was still at large as for the time being.
He also sought the assistance of another, far more dangerous ally, in the form of Venom himself, the father of the Carnage symbiote, which would also eventually become one of his most-despised foes later on. According to Brock himself, he only came to agree to help the web-slinger and the heroes since the Venom symbiote was also "having a bad feeling" after witnessing the presence of Carnage in the news, aware that it had given birth to a far more dangerous monster than it already was.
But even though Venom despised its offspring even more in the beginning, it eventually came terms on to helping him as a price of killing the Spider by themselves. Later, Cletus was betrayed by Venom (Cletus was pretty much unaware that it was all part of Brock's plan all along), who unwillingly sought out on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and his fellow villain and former cellmate, Ulysses Klaue for their help in order to take down an unstoppable Carnage from mutating into something much, much worse.
New Symbiotes
In his days during the global conflict of superhumans known as the Ultimate War, Eddie was observably not present at the entire week of clashing between heroes and villains, deciding not to participate with the rest of the Spider-Man's rogues gallery who had willingly joined the great terror that is the Movement Alliance in their open opportunity against the friendly neighborhood web-slinger. However, when Spider-Man and his allies were seen escaping the New York sewers, Eddie and the Venom symbiote was hiding as he watched the redeemed Blackie Drago brutally die at the hands of the mutated Green Goblin, accompanied by the Sinister Six. Between the events of Carnage's birth and this time, Venom was continuing his investigation on how his late father had first found out about the symbiote for a very long time, discovering his secret notes and archives in their old residence in Los Angeles on the day he got reunited with his older sister.
Believing for that the man truly redeemed himself in his last of moments, Eddie found respect in Drago for doing what he thought was the right thing by sacrificing himself and fighting against Osborn and his sinister allies, even if that have gotten him killed in the very end. After seeing the villains leave Drago's lifeless body, Eddie tried to approach in an attempt of paying respects to the fallen anti-hero, only to find himself getting attacked by a mysterious yellow and reddish-colored alien organism similar to his own symbiote. Eddie defended himself and through Venom (who apparently knew the other symbiote), had considered slaughtering the symbiote, right until Eddie senses that the symbiote was also being mutually controlled by a host, just like him. Eddie did his best to talk some sense in the host, but both Venom and the other symbiote was just too aggressive against each other, leaving him with no other choice but to beat it into submission. The two then clashed, only for the opponent to have the upper advantage against Eddie in combat due to apparent superior fighting experience than him.
However, at that moment, Venom suddenly went into a fit of berserk, momentarily defeating his newfound enemy, someone who was traced to his father's mysterious work. Finding his opponent weakened, Venom was tempted to kill the villain by absorbing the symbiote into his own, simply claiming that he had been waiting for a very long time to do it. Unfortunate for Venom, the anti-hero was finally knocked down by someone else, revealing to be another symbiotic-wearing individual wielding a miniaturized flamethrower. Now unconscious, Venom was carried by two of his mysterious opponents to an unspecified location, with Eddie only hearing one of the captors saying "laboratory" and the "Foundation."
The Anti-Venom
As Venom was being held captive by the mysterious symbiotes he had suddenly encountered, he was subsequently taken inside an undisclosed facility which reveals to be the Life Foundation (former subsidiary of Advanced Idea Mechanics), led by the symbiote-obsessed Dr. Carlton Drake, who revealed his motives on reproducing and bio-engineering the symbiotes to progress the evolution of human life through symbiosis with the Klyntar and introduced himself as the ambitious mentee of Eddie's late father, Dr. Edward Brock. The Life Foundation had experimented on the Venom symbiote after barely separating it from Eddie for almost a month to the point that their separation had declared Eddie dead since the series of tormenting experiments were too much for him to endure.
Upon successfully cloning a duplicate of the symbiote in the form of symbiote remnants retaining inside him, Eddie was resuscitated and developed new powers with this newly-born white symbiote, not knowing that his true symbiote had escape following its weeks of experimentation before making its way to find a newer compatible host having convinced that Eddie was dead. Realizing what the Foundation had done to him and Venom, Eddie battled his way out against Drake and the Life Foundation's artificially-mutated symbiotes, leading to the other symbiotic users to call the symbiote the Anti-Venom due to its contrasting appearance along with the latter's fatal whenever it comes contact with other symbiotes.
As the Anti-Venom, Eddie became more vengeful for a short time as he continued his personal mission to expose and take down the Life Foundation, which he did with the help of Anne Weying and other defected symbiotes who wanted to live freely without being weaponized by the Foundation. While Drake himself survived the final ordeal and the eventually fall of his conglomerate, the would later meet his poetically-justified end after getting slain by the ravenous and malevolent Carnage, who also sought a path of vengeance to kill every last member of the Life Foundation to avenge every symbiote they have abused and killed.
War of the Symbiotes
As Venom's native species, the Klyntar, were able to survive its slow yet progressing extinction by making its way on Earth in the form of the Venom itself, Eddie and the symbiote itself after reuniting would find themselves in real trouble discovering that Venom itself has ended up repopulating a plethora of Klyntar symbiotes onto the blue-green planet for the past few years, and it all was made possible thanks to Carlton Drake's scientific work on the symbiotes that even in his death at the hands of Carnage, the lives of these newly-emerging offsprings would now last for generations to come, in which they aimed to rule the Earth as its dominant species, believing in desperation that it was the best way to escape their race's extinction. Because of this, Venom and Eddie must join forces with other new symbiotic users such as Toxin, Agent Venom along with his heroic rival Spider-Man, and was crucially assisted by Cloak & Dagger as well as Clea and Brother Voodoo of the Masters of the Mystic Arts, forming the Symbiote Task Force to fight the symbiote collective's hellish and malevolent leadership of Carnage, and suggest to each and their own kind a better solution to survive, instead of letting the symbiotes take over the planet.
By the end of the great skirmish of the symbiotes on the fate of their survival on Earth, Carnage was defeated by the alliance Eddie and Venom was responsible for forming, with the outcome of their battle ending with the mutual decision to have most of the symbiotes to ride a rocket, courtesy of the Baxter Building, to leave Earth and find a new home and establish a new colony on a planet in the Negative Zone under the guidance and leadership of the passionate and overprotective symbiote Scream. In the process, Eddie and Venom had finally reunited and rebind in symbiosis when the latter decided to stay on Earth having found his purpose there as a lethal protector, humorously referring itself as the ambassador of Earth for the new symbiote colony. Meanwhile, the Anti-Venom found his new host through the conveniently more compatible Flash Thompson, the former Agent Venom.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Venom Symbiote: The alien costume, which had grafted itself to the nervous system of Eddie Brock, somehow absorbed the powers of Spider-Man during its brief symbiotic relationship with him. These powers had been transferred to Brock, so long as he wore the costume, and combined with Eddie's natural bulk made Venom physically stronger than Spider-Man. Ultimately the costume's influence hurt more than helped Brock's psyche, and when he finally realized this himself he decided to auction it. Several years later, Eddie reclaimed it, becoming Venom once more. The symbiote grants Eddie the following powers:
- Superhuman Strength
- Superhuman Durability
- Superhuman Stamina
- Superhuman Speed
- Superhuman Agility
- Superhuman Reflexes
- Regenerative Healing Factor
- Webbing Generation
- Wall-Crawling
- Offspring Detection
- Genetic Memory
- ESP (Spider Sense)
- Spider Sense Immunity
- Constituent-Matter Generation
- Invisibility
- Shapeshifting
- Night Vision
- Genetic Memory
- Spider-Man Detection
- Poisonous Fangs
Former Powers |
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Eddie Brock bounded with three symbiotes over the years, currently returning with Venom. The other two were Toxin, the offspring of Carnage, and Anti-Venom, an non sentient symbiote composed of the remnants of the Venom symbiote in Brock's blood stream that fused themselves to his white blood cells. Anti-Venom
Excluding these new powers granted by the white symbiote, Anti-Venom still retained almost every power Eddie had while bonded with the Venom symbiote, including:
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| Power Grid [1] | |||||
| Intelligence |
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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| Durability* |
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| Energy Projection |
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| Fighting Skills* |
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Abilities
- Expert Reporter
- Expert Marksman
- Skilled Hand-to-Hand Combatant
- Skilled Symbiote Hunter
Strength level
Class 55+
Weaknesses
- Mental Instability
- Sonic and Heat
- Anti-Venom (formerly; as Venom)
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Venom Symbiote
- Anti-Venom Symbiote (formerly)
- Toxin Symbiote (formerly)
Transportation:
- Web-Slinging
Weapons:
- Fangs and Claws (from the symbiote)
Notes
- No special notes.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Spider-Man Vol 1 14
Trivia
- Out of the symbiotes which Eddie had bonded, he found bonding with the Anti-Venom to be the most irritating due to how witty and comical yet stupidly courageous it was (contrasting Venom's dark and bloodthirsty yet negotiable and cautious personality), thinking he was perfect for either Spider-Man or Flash Thompson, who both previously bonded with the Venom symbiote.
See Also
- Appearances of Edward Brock, Jr. (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Edward Brock, Jr. (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Edward Brock, Jr. (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Venom · Edward Charles Allan Brock, Jr. · Edward Brock, Jr. (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.