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 Larry G. wrote in to ask why Venom is called, well, you know, Venom. He figured it has something to do with spider venom, but he wasn't sure how Venom worked up to that.

When we first see Venom, he's terrorizing Mary Jane at the end of Amazing Spider-Man #299 (by David Michelinie, Todd McFarlane and Bob McLeod)...

What's interesting is that he doesn't actually give his name to Mary Jane. That's interesting, if only because for a good chunk of the following issue (where McFarlane inked himself), we don't actually get to know what the name of the character is. Venom even KILLS a dude and we don't know his actual name.

Finally, about midway through the issue, Venom attacks Spider-Man...

I'm going to go out of order here, because it's important to place these things into context before we learn his name, which is at the start of this speech.

Eddie Brock's whole deal is that Spider-Man proving that the guy that Eddie Brock had identified as the Sin-Eater was not the real Sin-Eater ruined his career. He then was forced to go work for worse and worse newspapers.

I mean, I know that this was his career and he essentially lost his livelihood because of this, but isn't it interesting how much of Venom's background really boils down to "I couldn't get a job at a good enough newspaper." Dude was actually STILL working in journalism after his big fall from grace, only he was sick of the quality of the places that he was working. Man, get over yourself, buddy.

Anyhow, that is the reasoning behind his name, as he now "spews out venom" in these awful newspapers, so he is called Venom...

That's really quite the stretch there, isn't it?

Thanks for the question, Larry!

If anyone else has a question about comic books, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!