Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader Marc H. wrote in, presumably inspired by my recent list about Spider-Man action figures from the 1990s, to ask if Venom ever actually ate brains?

This is, of course, a reference to the very popular talking Venom toy from the early 1990s that said that very phrase...

They actually did go into the comics for that phrase, as Venom DID say it to Spider-Man in "Amazing Spider-Man" #333 (by David Michelinie, Erik Larsen and Mike Machlan)...

But did he ever ACTUALLY do it?

Surprisingly enough, yes.

In "Venom: The Hunger" #1 (by Len Kaminski, Ted Halsted and Scott Koblish), the entire series basically revolved around the fact that Venom would always say that thing about wanting to eat people's brains, which he does early in the issue....

But then later on, HE ACTUALLY DOES IT!!!

The explanation is that the symbiote needs to feast on a certain chemical found in brains. It apparently ALWAYS wants to eat brains, but Eddie Brock won't let it. But it influenced him enough so that he keeps saying the thing about wanting to eat brains. They split from each other in this series and when Eddie comes back, he manages to keep Venom from doing it anymore through the use of chocolate (which apparently contained the same chemical). And then later writers just dropped the whole "needing to eat brains" thing.

When Mac Gargan was Venom, though, he ate people all the time, so maybe the desire to eat brains remained, in a way.

Thanks for the question, Marc!

If anyone else has a question they'd like to learn the answer to, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!