The status quo for Venom had been changed, perhaps forever. The Venom symbiote had moved away from Eddie Brock, leaving a cancer-filled husk of a human being. While Mac Gargan found success as the new Venom, Eddie would be nearly forgotten about, suffering in a hospital bed. Eddie Brock himself was never a match for Spider-Man from the start. What hope would he have as an antagonist when he’s weakened by a disease?

Around that time, directly after Civil War, Marvel was making a big deal out of Spider-Man’s new look. Or old look. Whatever. The third Spider-Man movie – which featured the black costume – was on its way to theaters and Marvel chose to capitalize it in a way that really didn’t work. Spider-Man would start wearing a black costume again. The whole thing was a list of letdowns.

Was it the Venom symbiote? No. It was just a spandex costume he wore because he wanted to kill the Kingpin. Wearing black means he’s totally hardcore now.

So he’s going to kill the Kingpin? Ha! Come on, this is Spider-Man. The only people he’s killed are Gwen Stacy and Wolverine’s spy girlfriend, both unintentional. Spider-Man’s too much of a pussy to even kill Darkseid with a god-killing gun if he had the chance.

Okay, but the black costume will have some kind of storyline blow-off, right? No, not really. He wears it for an arc or so of his different comics, confusing people who will pick up and read World War Hulk for years to come. Then he simply stops wearing it. Like, at the beginning of One More Day, where it would make sense for him to still have it on, he’s back to his regular tights. Everyone was too distracted by the, “Jesus Christ! Really?!” aspect of that story to give a damn.

But what does that have to do with Eddie Brock outside of cosmetics? The reason Spider-Man was so cheesed off at the Kingpin in the first place was because a hitman accidentally shot Aunt May when going for Peter. Now she’s in the hospital in critical condition.

Aunt May in a hospital bed? Huh. I guess that’s one thing cancer-ridden Eddie Brock could take in a fight.

It’s a nice reference to the famous Kraven’s Last Hunt cover of black costume Spider-Man rising from beneath the earth in front of his own tombstone.

The Last Temptation of Eddie Brock takes place in Sensational Spider-Man #38-39. It’s written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and drawn by Lee Weeks.

Eddie Brock, bald and frail, walks around the hospital hallways, rolling his IV stand with him. On the way, he thinks back to how his life went wrong. The Sin-Eater scandal was Parker’s fault. The alien symbiote taking him over was also Parker’s fault. His constant defeats at the hands of heroes was mostly Parker’s fault. His cancer… somehow Parker’s fault, but he hasn’t figured that one out yet. All he knows is that his death is on the horizon and he’s died for nothing. Even when he auctioned off the symbiote and gave the money to charity, he realized that Mac Gargan’s viciousness as the new Venom cancels out that ends.

It isn’t just the cancer and ruined potential that’s making him suffer. The symbiote is still there. Physically? Not so much. Maybe some residue. But he still has it whispering in his ear, taunting him during his every waking moment. He’s able to ignore it at first, but as he wastes away more and more, he’s beginning to lose his patience.

Being a religious man, he wonders about his role in the universe. Perhaps there’s a reason why he hasn’t died yet. Some role he has yet to perform. That’s when he discovers a room where Mary Jane is standing vigil over the comatose body of Aunt May.

Eddie rushes to his room and begins praying for answers. He’s always wanted to use his Venom abilities to protect the innocent, so how could he possibly justify murdering May Parker? The Tyler Durden Venom appears before him, explaining that in the end, there is no innocent or guilty. May Parker isn’t innocent or else she wouldn’t have been offered to him so easily. It keeps whispering into Eddie’s ear, insisting that it isn’t up to him to decide who is innocent and guilty. It’s up to someone else, so let loose and kill.

It also brings up a box Eddie has kept in his room. Because of Spider-Man swinging around in a black costume, Eddie had ordered a costume shop to send him a black Spider-Man costume for reasons he wasn’t exactly sure about. He succumbs to his evil voice’s wishes and tries it on.

The inner-Venom has Eddie first murder his nurse with a scalpel. The figment suggests that she had it coming, due to her constant mistreatment of Eddie – going so far as to compare her to Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This is probably a lie, since nothing in the story has suggested anything corrupt about her.

Eddie still isn’t sure about killing May Parker, even if she did raise the man who he believes ruined his life. He ends up entering her room and nervously puts his black mask on, as his inner-Venom continues to goad him on.

But hey, this is a Spider-Man comic, is it not? So during these issues, Spider-Man’s been his usual whiny self. He gets together with Madam Webb, who is able to host a séance so that Peter can communicate with Aunt May’s soul. It becomes a trippy sequence with art by Clayton Crain (the Venom/Carnage guy) where Aunt May accepts her fate and repeatedly tells Peter to get over himself. While giving her peaceful goodbye, a large, gooey tongue wraps itself around her and pulls her into the light.

The inner-Venom is incensed that Eddie is hesitating. Eddie grabs his head and grumbles that he needs to concentrate.

Ooooooh. Now you’ve done it.

Peter snaps out of the dream and has a feeling that someone was in the room with Aunt May. He races to May’s room and finds the discarded black Spider-Man mask. A maskless Eddie Brock sits on the windowsill with his sleeves rolled up. He proudly talks about how the symbiote wanted him to kill May, but he could never snuff out anyone so innocent. Peter is completely confounded over what is going on, but Eddie continues by stating that their “friend” was inside all along, but he finally cut him out.

He stands up and holds his arms apart, showing that he’s sliced and diced up his inner forearms. Peter reels in horror while Eddie steps onto the windowsill.

Eddie freefalls and asks for forgiveness. He blacks out as Peter frantically fires down his webs.

Eddie wakes up in his hospital bed with his arms taped closed. He’s informed of how Peter saved his life. At first, Eddie is horrified to hear this from the imagined Venom sitting across from his bed.

“Oh, yeah. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere, Ed-die.”

“…Fine. Fine with me.” And the last panel shows Eddie giving him a defiant stare back. “Now that we know who’s in charge.”

…whoa. That was… good? That was actually good? After around ten years since his last respectable comic appearance, they really released a good Eddie Brock story?

I… I’m sorry. I need to take a second and bask in that. Wow.

Like I said earlier, the whole Back in Black era was there to tie into the movie. Luckily, Marvel had just started off their new series Spider-Man Family around that time. These thick issues would feature a couple short new stories that would take place at any point in the Spider-Man timeline, accompanied by some old issues. For a few months they even reprinted Venom: Lethal Protector!

Since they were able to tell some retcon stories, Sean McKeever wrote the initial story in the initial issue. It was called Homesick and Terrell Bobbett took care of the art. It takes place during the time when Spider-Man is rocking the black costume and hasn’t wised up to how it’s alive.

Already, McKeever shows that he has some grasp on the creature’s history.

Spider-Man beats on some thugs at the docks. Looking on are some dock workers, including Flint Marko, the Sandman. He’s trying to lay low and make some honest money, even if he’s being paid under the table. He decides to cut out so Spider-Man doesn’t recognize him.

One of the boats is holding a very special shipment that’s said to be extremely important. Whatever it is, Spider-Man successfully defends it. On his way home, the symbiote starts trying to drag him back to the dock. Spider-Man gets confused, but eventually powers his way home. He goes home and tries to get some sleep, but no go. He puts the costume back on and tries to get some more crimefighting in. While he’s on an adrenaline high, the costume punches Peter out so that it can take over his body without him knowing.

It goes back to the dock and unleashes Hell on the workers. Sandman comes to defend them because being that Spider-Man 3 is coming out, any excuse for Symbiote Spider-Man vs. Sandman is a good one. At first, Sandman is able to take care of the silent Spider-Man, to the point that he wonders if he’s killed him. Then the symbiote itself attacks Sandman. It’s a battle between two formless beings.

And there’s your winner. The symbiote looks over the highly important box that Spider-Man had protected hours earlier. It’s been broken open and its contents dumped on the ground. It’s nothing more than a meteorite from a destroyed planet, likely used for a museum exhibit. The symbiote looks over the rock and identifies it as, “Home.”

The next day, Peter wakes up aching and wishing the costume could tell him where he was all night. He shrugs it off, since at least he’s home. Yeah, way to rub it in.

Spider-Man Family #2 has a featured story by the team of writer Sean McKeever and artists Kano and David LaFuente called Undone. So far in this article, we’ve seen a good Eddie Brock story from after he was Venom and an okay story from before he became Venom. Could the comic gods allow such a thing as a good modern Eddie-Brock-as-Venom story?

Yes. Yes, they did.

We begin with bitchy businesswoman Ione Damasco. She gets into her limo and bosses around her driver until hearing a voice chastising her for being rude. In the dark interior, Venom surfaces and gets ready for the kill. He namedrops having met with Dahlberg and Bollinger prior and is now going to take care of her.

Spider-Man swings his feet through the window and sends Venom out the other side and into a brick wall.

Love that art.

Right when it looks like a fight is going to happen, Venom tells Spider-Man to mind his own business and swings away. Spider-Man doesn’t get why Venom’s more interested in anything but a routine vendetta fight and questions Damasco. She avoids the question until a police officer finally runs Spider-Man off.

The next day, Peter Parker goes to Ben Urich and asks about the names Dahlberg and Bollinger. Ben recognizes the name Dahlberg, thinking it belongs to a big shot CEO who was found suffocated in his own home recently. Peter does some research on the Bugle computer and finds that Dahlberg was on a board of directors for a pharmaceutical company along with Damasco and Bollinger. Finally, he’s getting somewhere. Now that he has a full name to go on, he looks up Bollinger to find that he had been mauled to death sometime earlier.

Urich asks him to stay away from the investigation and let the police and reporters handle it. Peter refuses and continues to search into the pharmaceutical company’s history to see what they could have done to piss off Eddie Brock so much. When Mary Jane shows concern over Venom being on the loose, Peter tries to coax her to relax while suggesting that if Eddie is driving this massacre, then there’s a chance Peter can still reason with him.

Ione Damasco has bodyguards all over her penthouse apartment to protect her from Venom. She hides out in her own room and begins sobbing. The man with her in there offers her a tissue.

Peter’s finding nothing of note in his investigation. He falls asleep in his apartment and wakes up later to find a folder left by Venom. Reading it, he finds out the truth.

Spider-Man goes after Fischer, the last board member of the company that Venom has yet to kill. Spider-Man gets in his face, throws him onto the wall and webs him there. From what he’s discovered, the pharmaceutical company had taken in a bunch of homeless people and forced them to be experimented on for a possible hair growth drug. Many died. Spider-Man wonders aloud how they got Eddie Brock to shut up. Did they bribe him?

Venom walks into the room.

“That’s the first thing they try. ‘Course, if you’re a journalist of any integrity, you don’t budge. Then they make the threats. You’ll be washed up, crippled, dead. And when that doesn’t work… that’s when they tell you they’ve hired a hit man to kill your wife. Understand now, Spider-Man? Gonna stop poking around in our business and let us get on with it?”

Spider-Man tries to talk down Eddie and turn him against the costume, but to no avail.

They fight through the apartment. Spider-Man gets the advantage, but an electrical fire starts up. He lets Venom go so he can rescue Fischer. Venom freaks out at all the fire and escapes.

At the end, Fischer is brought to the hospital and then sent up the river. Ben Urich writes the front-page expose on what he did, with Eddie Brock getting full credit on his findings. In the middle of the night, Venom hangs outside the window of the sleeping Parkers, reading the newspaper upside down. He discards it and warns the sleeping Peter that despite all of this, they aren’t through.

You know, maybe the aforementioned comic gods should keep McKeever away from writing Teen Titans so he can go back to writing more stories like this. Bring that Kano guy too. I like the cut of his jib.

Those three above stories were showcased because of Spider-Man 3. They were all, in my opinion, for the better. But what about a story that’s affected by the movie for the worse? I’m afraid it happened. It was Venom: Dark Origin.

Yes, yes. If you’ve been coming to this site for more than a year, you might remember that I did a review of this series as of the second issue. If you weren’t around to read it, don’t bother, since I’m sure I’m going to touch on the same issues.

The series is written by Zeb Wells and the art is done by Angel Medina. Hoo boy. Not a fan of Angel Medina in this comic. Zeb Wells, who is usually quite good, isn’t all that great either. His plotting seemed just about counter-productive.

Look at the various villains who have gotten their own miniseries. They act like jerks, but because they are the protagonists, they have moments that let us root for them. Books of Doom shows pieces of Dr. Doom’s nobility while also showing us that he is capable of feeling love. Lex Luthor: Man of Steel shows the Superman vs. Luthor rivalry from Luthor’s point of view while allowing us to see his moments of human positivity. Miniseries featuring the likes of Sabretooth and Bullseye at least have them go up against less likeable villains. Even Sinister Spider-Man, which shows Mac Gargan Venom as a serial killer who devours strippers at least has moments that lets us root for him. He dismembers villains, talks back to Osborn and messes with Jameson in ways some of us have secretly wanted Parker to do.

Eddie Brock is a guy who took the superhero role for five years. He always talked about protecting the innocent. He had a wife who still loved him to an extent after their divorce. The guy was loony tunes, but he still has his qualities.

Not here. I tie this into the movie because Spider-Man 3 showed Eddie Brock as douchebag supreme. In a movie filled with unlikeable, childish characters, Eddie was the only one with no redeeming qualities. Considering the comic world likes to adapt what movies and cartoons give us (see also: Bullseye’s forehead tattoo and John Stewart as a marine), I suppose the idea was to retell the origins of Venom with Eddie being a complete and utter tool.

It begins with a young Eddie Brock getting wind that a girl in his neighborhood has lost her cat. Eddie goes into his house, gets the cat out of a drawer, goes outside and tells the girl that he found it in a tree. Everyone congratulates him on being awesome and asks how he found the cat.

GAH! Great Zampano, I hate that creepy-ass Angel Medina Eddie Brock smile. That does not need to take up an entire page!

We get a look at Eddie’s home life. Wells takes pieces of Eddie’s backstory from here and there, glues them together and then rewrites them in a way that it feels like he only got the gist of the character’s life from reading Wikipedia. His sister, who had only been mentioned in an issue of Nova that only five people had read, is there, albeit she is now his older sister for the sake of making sense. After all, Eddie’s mother died during his birth. His father Carl, for the most part, is on point. Although he is no longer written as a millionaire businessman, he still acts coldly towards Eddie and blames him for his wife’s death.

Medina seemingly made up character designs on the fly across this miniseries. Carl Brock is our first example.

Eddie’s actions, like the thing with stealing and finding the cat, are his futile attempt to get attention from his dad. For a moment, he finds that his father respects honest news people and is impressed with Eddie’s ability to tell when people are lying, and although it doesn’t go further between the two than small talk, it inspires Eddie towards being a reporter.

Oh, and we see stuff about his upbringing like how high school girls find him creepy and jocks beat him up. Just stuff to make us feel sorry for him, I guess, even if he’s still doing scummy things to deserve it. He gets into college by scamming and then meets Ann Weying, who he proceeds to lie to pathetically and pathologically. His lies lead them to an alley, where they’re attacked by thugs. Eddie is knocked over and Ann hits her head on a fire hydrant.

Eddie pleads with them to take her and leave him, but Spider-Man swings by and saves the day. Eddie continues to be scared, but once Spider-Man is gone, Ann wakes up to find Eddie standing over the beaten thugs. Eddie takes full responsibility for what just happened.

OH, COME ON! Of all the things to call back on…

I’m also not big on the Spider-Man appearance. Eddie’s always been portrayed as being quite a few years older than Spider-Man, but I guess they’re trying to make him more Topher Grace, so there you go.

By the next issue, we see that Eddie and Ann are married. Eddie acts like he’s a big shot writer for the Daily Globe when he’s talking to her, but he’s nothing more than an intern. As an intern, he is given a bunch of letters to read through and use for a letter column. One of them is a note from a guy claiming to be the Sin-Eater, saying that he killed Spider-Man mainstay Jean DeWolff the night before and will kill again.

Eddie uses the killer’s contact information to speak with him over a payphone. Eddie responds to the guy’s crazed threats with a huge smile, which stays on him as he tells the chief at the Globe (who he had never met before) that he has the scoop. The whole situation escalates to Eddie getting a front page article where he talks about the Sin-Eater’s plight. He eventually meets the Sin-Eater in a church – where Eddie keeps seeing visions of the alien costume – and is given his name. Eddie chooses to sit on that information and keep the fame rolling in.

His career is doing great, but the authorities arrest him for not giving up his source when he obviously knows who the Sin-Eater is. Thanks to his hotshot lawyer, he’s able to coast the charges, but then his father visits him and tells him he knows that he’s lying. Eddie tries to defend his actions by comparing himself to Woodward and Bernstein, but Carl Brock corrects him. Eddie isn’t protecting an informant, but a murderer who will continue his reign of dead innocents unless Eddie does something about it. Carl sadly tells Eddie that he’s ashamed of him and goes on his way.

We know how the rest goes. Eddie gives up the Sin-Eater’s identity and it gets the front page. Then it’s proven to be false thanks to Spider-Man getting his hands on the real one. Eddie is fired.

Time passes and he prepares to kill himself. Ann calls, saying that she’s bringing a lawyer with her to make sure Eddie signs their divorce papers. Oh, I forgot to talk about Ann!

So you know how they got Carl Brock’s appearance wrong? That’s forgivable, considering he’s only appeared in one comic. Ann Weying, who has appeared in well over a dozen issues and even has her own Wikipedia profile, is not only drawn incorrectly, but is the wrong race too!

Damn, man! Show some effort!

Actually, it’s pretty funny. It’s a comic about Eddie Brock going through the Sin-Eater scandal and the comic itself is done by a couple guys failing to check their references. Marvel noticed they messed up and tried to make up for it with the trade. Behold!

Would it hurt you to draw some glasses on her?

Enough splitting hairs. Back to the story. Eddie goes to the church to pray for forgiveness over the suicide he’s planning. The symbiote jumps out and latches onto him, giving us a sweet two-page splash of the Secret Wars to give the comic some variety. A couple cops and a very frightened priest show up just as Eddie becomes Venom. Really, most of the issue is a bunch of neat splash pages of Venom with no mouth and a bunch of symbiote spider legs sticking out his back. Hey, if it prevents Medina from drawing faces, it’s playing to his strengths.

He leaves, turns his costume into a 3-piece suit and meets up with Ann and her lawyer. He signs the papers and gets in a heated argument with Ann over whether or not Spider-Man ruined his life. He then realizes that he knows who Spider-Man is and races away from the scene. He looks into the mirror and talks to his new alien friend. As Venom, he smiles at the revelation behind his mask until twisted teeth and a full mouth appear over it.

In his apartment, Eddie can feel the symbiote trying to burrow further into his psyche. It replays events from his past and shows that it can see all his secrets. It shows him its memories of being on another planet and how it protected creatures through symbiosis. Eddie accepts the alien as part of him.

Like in the original comics, Eddie sneaks up on Peter Parker in a subway and shoves him in front of a train. Peter gets out alive, but doesn’t get how his Spider Sense hasn’t gone off. Venom then goes to Peter’s apartment to spook Mary Jane. AKA Venom’s very first true appearance.

We’re given more time with it here. Mary Jane is completely freaked out by Venom talking to her that she can’t even piece it together that it’s someone else in the costume. She really thinks that Peter’s black threads alone are talking to her. In her crazed state, a crying Mary Jane responds to Venom’s tough guy talk with talk about how she always knew the Spider-Man tights would bring Peter death and that if Peter had to choose between the costume and her, he would choose the costume. Venom tosses her aside and promises that he’ll be killing Spider-Man soon enough.

The fifth and final issue is pretty pointless, overall. You know that first Spider-Man vs. Venom fight where Venom webbed Spider-Man up in the church bells and all that? It’s that, only with different dialogue and art. They even dropped the part where Venom explains WHY he calls himself Venom: he was forced to work for tabloids and write “venom” in his articles. That whole part of his origin is glossed over in one panel and doesn’t make too much sense. Originally, Eddie Brock was pissed off about being reduced to that because he had journalistic integrity. With the Wells version of Eddie Brock, I’m not sure what the big deal is. He’s such a dipshit in this that writing for the tabloids should be his dream job.

I just noticed that writing Eddie as a scheming intern who got lucky for two weeks and then got fired totally negates that awesome Spider-Man Family story I just talked about.

Back to the comic. There’s some moral stuff tossed in the dialogue between Venom and Spider-Man. Eddie is the big villain for taking the easy way out throughout his entire life, including blaming his troubles on Spider-Man because, “It was easy!” I guess I could get behind that. Spider-Man knocks Venom off the roof and cuts up his attempts to save himself with webbing. Venom’s webbing is depleted and Spider-Man saves him at the last second by webbing his arm.

The final pages show Venom locked up in a cell in the Baxter Building. Eddie thinks about how the symbiote seems to have longed to be back with Spider-Man. The symbiote insists that it only wants to be with Eddie. Eddie knows when people are lying, but chooses to ignore it because it’s easier that way.

I know what I sound like during this review. I am, no matter how you look at it, a butt-hurt fanboy who speaks as a minority. Only a handful of people give a damn that Venom: Dark Origin is a piece of character assassination. That said, if this comic came out anywhere between 3 to 10 years ago, I would understand. I’d be greatly annoyed, but I’d understand.

What makes this streamlined origin mini extra dumb is the timing. While this was coming out, Amazing Spider-Man featured a story that brought Eddie Brock back into the limelight… as a GOOD GUY. You have one comic painting him as King Cuntscrub while the other is pushing him as a good man with problems. I have to wonder if this comic was supposed to come out right before the movie, only it got delayed for whatever reason. I don’t know.

This week, Anti-Venom’s 3-issue miniseries starts up. That’s good! Zeb Wells is writing it. That’s… bad? It’s hard to say. Wells is a good writer, despite the story I just went over. I’m optimistic, but cautiously. Come on, man. Give this nostalgic blogger something to be proud of.

Hm. The next step in We Care a Lot would be to review all the Anti-Venom stuff, but I kind of want to wait for the mini to end. Even then, I love this series too much to end it with merely one more. I’m going to have to reach around for something to write about. I’ll have to reach into another dimension, perhaps. Or maybe a couple dozen…

Similar Posts:

• We Care About Journalism
• The Spider-Man 3 Novelization: A Long-Tongued Taste of What’s to Come
• We Care a Lot Part 14: Eddie, Are You Okay? Will You Tell Us, That You’re Okay?
• 4thletter’s Guide to Carnage USA #1’s Cliffhanger
• We Care a Lot Part 12: A Factory of Loose Ends

Posted in comic books, reviews, We Care a Lot by Gavok |