Quick Review: Birth Of Venom

Bit about Venom, Spider-Man, but evil and a massive alien Joker-like grin. 

Who’d have thought he’d be as successful as he was.

Well, considering he first appeared in 1988 just as the Dark Age of Comic Books was kicking off and edgy anti-heroes were really taking off, I’d say a lot of people.

Eh, regardless, Venom remains one of my favourite Marvel characters not only due to his design but also his backstory in being the sort-of dark counterpart to Spider-Man.

Writer David Michelinie had an idea to have a villain that was immune to Spider-Man’s spider-sense, adding a new level of menace to Venom when he finally appeared in 1988. 

Birth of Venom: Roughly cover ‘The Alien Costume’ saga, and the first two appearances of Venom.

Originally published between 1984 and 1989.

So the broad timeline of events in ‘Birth Of Venom’ go as such:

• 1984: During the ’Secret Wars’ crossover event, Spider-Man obtains a new black costume. 
• 1984-5: Spider-Man becomes suspicious of his new costume and its abilities, (infinite webbing, can change its appearance by reading his mind). He visits the Fantastic Four, who reveal it to be an alien symbiote trying to permanently bond to him. The symbiote is removed and kept in storage. 
• Concurrently, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s relationship matures, featuring Watson’s backstory and the revelation that she’s known Parker’s been Spider-Man for years.
• 1985: The symbiote escapes confinement and attempts to forcibly bond with Spider-Man, who manages to use extreme sound (in this case church bells) to repel the alien costume.
• 1986: A hand pushes Peter Parker in front of a subway train without triggering his spider-sense. 
• 1987: A hand grabs and pushes Peter Parker out of a window, again without triggering his spider-sense.
• 1988: Venom’s first full appearance. Ends with Venom incarcerated.
• 1989: Venom’s second appearance. 

A key part of Peter Parker’s characterisation, even if you’re not an avid comic reader, is the phrase ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. The words of his late Uncle Ben are integral to Peter Parker and Spider-Man’s characterisation and approach to crime-fighting.

So the idea that some thing could challenge this unshakeable ethos and perhaps push Spider-Man to go even further with greater power than he could potentially handle, to perhaps seek to even kill off his villains in cold blood, the ends justifying the means and so on? Yeah, with this image in mind thanks to adaptations like the 1994 and 2008 cartoons and the 2007 film, I was pretty stoked to have a read.

But the first appearances of the alien costume have neither of these effects. Indeed, for most of the black costume run, the symbiote behaves as any other costume would.

The reasoning for this was Spider-Man’s new costume was poorly received by readers and was later retconned to be an alien and was presumably killed soon after.

Venom’s first full appearance could have included a doppelgänger type scenario to maintain the tension for a little while longer. Furthermore, Venom’s reveal as Eddie Brock lacks some impact when the next few pages contain retcons for Brock’s involvement that go back to 1985, almost three years ago.

Venom’s return in 1989 already displays the beginnings of being an anti-hero, rescuing a family from militant thugs and killing the latter. These proved to be early indicators that there was more to Venom than just being the ‘dark reflection’ villain to Spider-Man.

Later adaptations such as the 1994 fox cartoon and the 2007 film would introduce the retcon that the symbiote boosted Spider-Man’s abilities and aggression, the former giving him a reason to keep it on and the latter leading him to get it off. 

This also had the bonus outcome of putting Spider-Man in a better light by turning the removal of the symbiote into a return to heroism.

As it stands, Spider-Man’s motivation for removing the symbiote is understandable (being forced to do things in your sleep is a horrifying concept), but later adaptations would do a much better job of tailoring the alien costume plot device into Spider-Man’s characterisation.

‘Birth Of Venom’ is a pretty good example of the kind of continuity lockout that would go on to plague Marvel throughout the 1990s, becoming a contributing factor to their eventual bankruptcy at the end of 1996. 

Marvel lives on with the fallout from this event to this day, having sold off the film rights to many of their major characters to stay afloat.

A couple of pages are plagued with asterisks linking to other titles running concurrently to explain background events and character recaps and these can get a little intrusive at times.

All things considered, ‘Birth Of Venom’ can’t be faulted for the problems of the source material and does a fair job of cherry-picking the most relevant parts of the arc to produce a relatively coherent narrative. 

I only wish there were a few more recap panels and highlights showing off more of Eddie Brock’s backstory before becoming Venom. As it stands, he still bursts into the narrative with relatively little fanfare.

Considering how popular the character is, I’m still quite surprised that there hasn’t been a definitive update of Venom’s origin story even for the sake of being concise.

The Fox cartoon arguably provides a more definitive version of Venom’s origin story, certainly a more succinct one. Except it gives Venom these weird snake-like pupils.

In hindsight, they weren’t a good idea for the same reason that Spider-Man doesn’t have pupils on his costume. It looks like he’s perpetually struggling to make eye contact with any other character he talks to.

Aside from that, the 1994 cartoon sands off all the edges present here. For that reason I’d still recommend it over this collection as it requires much less background knowledge of Spider-Man and it avoids the continuity headaches present in the original source material.

Still, the collection is an interesting piece of Spider-Man’s history and gave later adaptations all the ingredients they needed to refine the origins of one of Spider-Man’s most notable villains.