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 David B. wrote in with a Venom question and honestly, in answering his initial question, I realized that it tied into a whole separate question that was even bigger than David's original question!

When the symbiote that would become Venom first debuted, it covered Spider-Man entirely, so it was roughly his size and shape...

Later, though, it merged with Eddie Brock and became Venom. At this point, Venom was now much larger than Spider-Man...

Over the years, that has been consistent, that Venom has been a lot larger than Spider-Man in general...

Of course, Venom is also well known for his long, slimy and prehensile tongue that can wrap around a person's entire head (few artists quite capture how creepy this looks than Gabriele Dell'Otto)...

During Venom's first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #300 (by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane), Venom replicated Spider-Man's webbing, but he would do so by using pieces of his own body that he would then regenerate....

When Spider-Man pushed him to use up too much webbing too soon, Venom found himself unable to produce enough webbing to keep himself together and so he collapsed to the ground.

If he couldn't produce that much webbing, then how in the world has he been able to produce all of that extra mass that he produces all of the time?

There's a joke among fans of Marvel Comics who were reading the books when the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe debuted that everything can be explained through dimensions. No matter what the problem, the answer is "other dimensions." This is because when Marvel's editorial staff sat down and tried to come up with explanations for the powers of their various heroes, they noticed that soooo many of them involved the heroes requiring the ability to produce mass and/or energy out of nowhere. Like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk or Cyclops shooting an impact beam from his eyes.

So Marvel began to use "it came from another dimension" as the explanation for everything. The Hulk drew his mass from another dimension, Cyclops' beams came from another dimension and so on and so forth.

Interestingly, when Venom got a write-up in the 1989 Update of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, they specifically did not cite that as part of his powers...

This is fascinating, because unlike those other heroes, Venom has been explicitly shown TO be able to access another dimension in his stories! Well, at least that is the implication from a number of scenes when Spider-Man first gained the symbiote.

Check out this scene from Amazing Spider-Man #252 (by Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz and Brett Breeding)...

See how Spider-Man just put his wallet and phone into, well, nothingness? This is clear that the symbiote has access to a pocket dimension, similar to Doctor Who's tesseract (you know, much bigger on the inside than outside).

Later, the symbiote even retrieves Spider-Man's camera from the pocket dimension!

Years later, when Flash Thompson was wearing the Venom symbiote, the suit showed those same properties. Here, it just takes a hand grenade and effectively absorbs it into itself...

only to release it later...

Therefore, since we have established that Venom HAS access to a pocket dimension, it only makes sense that the classic Official Handbook "it is because of dimensions!" explanation actually does apply here, as well.

Thanks for the question, David (he just wanted to know if Venom still had access to pocket dimensions, but when I went to write that up, I realized that it really did also explain Venom's body mass stuff)!

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