Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Venom #17 by Donny Cates, Iban Coello, Rain Beredo and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale Wednesday, August 28.
The stakes have continued to rise as Absolute Carnage spreads across the Marvel Universe and the homicidal Spider-Man villain's army of ravenous symbiotes swarm all over New York City. In Venom #17, the symbiotes target the sons of Eddie Brock and Harry Osborn, Dylan and Normie, respectively, who've been left in the care of the Maker, the evil incarnation of Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe. While Reed puts up a brutal defense for himself and the boys, the children are saved by a surprise benefactor by the end of the tie-in issue: Sleeper, the seventh and most recent spawn of the original Venom symbiote.
With every symbiote from the faraway world of Klyntar looking to make an appearance in Absolute Carnage as an dangerously empowered Cletus Kasady hunts for anyone who has ever been bonded to a symbiote, Sleeper's appearance was something of an inevitability but still a welcome surprise. However, despite being a relatively new character, Sleeper has laid relatively low. With the character returning to the spotlight, here's an overview of the heroic symbiote's background and the potential role he could play in the comic crossover event.
Created by Mike Costa and Mark Bagley in last year's Venom #165, the Sleeper symbiote spawned from Venom in the safety of the Alchemax Laboratory, eluding the Symbiote Task Force which intended to bond the newborn creature to Mac Gargan and make the longtime Spider-Man villain Venom once again.
Eddie leaves the symbiote in Alchemax's care with the understanding that any studies into it would be non-invasive but learns that Alchemax CEO Liz Allan planned to harvest the symbiotes' secretions for corporate profit. The resulting standoff between Venom and Alchemax was abruptly interrupted by the true original host of the Venom symbiote: Tel-Kar.
As expanded on in Costa and Bagley's Venom: First Host miniseries, the Kree warrior explained that he was the original Venom host before Peter Parker. He patrolled the cosmos with the Venom symbiote before the separated symbiote arrived on Battleworld during the first Secret Wars. To rescue its parent from Tel-Kar, the Sleeper symbiote temporarily bonded with Eddie to stop the Kree villain. Sleeper then bonds to Tel-Kar and lobotomizes him in revenge, despite Eddie's protests, before departing into deep space continuing to use Tel-Kar's brain-dead body as a host.
Like most of the symbiote characters throughout the Marvel Universe, Sleeper possesses incredible abilities including super strength, speed, endurance, a regenerative healing factor, the ability to shape its limbs into different objects including clothing to camouflage itself and the ability to stick to walls. As revealed by Alchemax, Sleeper produces potent secretions that give off a variety of effects including cloaking, temporary brainwashing of targets and a degree of telepathy. With Carnage hunting other symbiotes, these skills will likely prove invaluable in the fight to come.
Now that Sleeper back on Earth and evidently fighting against Carnage, the heroes of the Marvel Universe may have just gotten a powerful ally in the escalating battle. How Sleeper was drawn back to the planet has yet to be revealed. But with the newly empowered Carnage driving the other symbiotes on Earth into a frenzy, it likely sensed that something was going wrong that could put Eddie Brock directly in harm's way. And now, having rescued Eddie's young son Dylan, the spawn of Eddie and Venom are together for the first time as the world descends into symbiote-fueled chaos.