With Venom ready for his big screen close up soon, interest for the character has been at an all-time high. The movie, starring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, looks to shine a new spotlight on Marvel's most notorious antihero. So while many fans of the character are excited to see Venom in a starring role, audiences are still concerned as to where he lies as a character in the film. Considering that he will be the film's main protagonist, audiences are wondering whether Venom will be good, bad or both.
Yes, Venom made his debut in the comic books as an archrival of Spider-Man, but as his time within the confides of comic book panels progressed and the more that the character evolved, he was made out into something more of an anti-hero. Venom does not necessarily try to do things that are wholeheartedly good or outright evil, Venom just does what Venom wants when Venom wants it. Sometimes, that kind of thinking and point of view has positioned Venom as a hero in storylines, and other times, it has positioned him as a villain. Below, readers can find a few examples of times he was a hero, and times he was a villain.
20 HERO: WHEN HE SAVED PETER PARKER'S PARENTS
It's been very clear that Venom doesn't necessarily aim to be a good or bad guy, but he shoots for doing whatever he deems to be the right thing for him to do in the moment. It is a complex mindset that turns complicated in Amazing Spider-Man #375. In this issue, Venom kidnaps the long lost parents of Peter Parker, but doesn't do so to be intentionally malicious or to lure in his old rival, but because he wants to protect them from Spider-Man himself. Venom is certain that Spider-Man is a menace and feels that the only way to protect his parents from their son's chaos is to kidnap them and store them away at an amusement park.
The whole time, Venom tries to assure them that he doesn't want to hurt them, but that's hard to believe when he keeps snarling down their necks with that tongue of his. Venom's plan goes awry when he gets ambushed by supervillains Silver Sable and her Wild Pack. Her Pack set the park on fire, but Venom miraculously manages to save them in the knick of time. Later, with help from Spidey, Venom saves his ex-wife, Anne, from getting crushed by a giant ferris wheel.
19 VILLAIN: SUCKED THE LIFE OUT OF PETER PARKER...TWICE
As many fans should know by now, our first instance in comic book history where we caught a glimpse of the Venom symbiote costume was when it was attached to Spider-Man, and that the symbiote has the tendency to take on an entire new life of its own. In an alternate universe where Peter Parker waits way too long before he meets with the Fantastic Four to get the symbiote removed from his body, it turns out that the symbiote is permanently bonded to his body and that it will take nothing less than the jaws of life (or Venom) to get the thing off of him.
When the symbiote finally does manage to remove itself from Peter Parker's body, there is not much left of Peter Parker's broken body. The longer that the symbiote spent on Peter, the longer it spent sucking the life out of himr, reducing the webcrawler to an old, dried up, shriveled up prune of a man. Peter died as the symbiote tried (and failed) to bind itself to The Hulk. Much like Venom himself, the symbiote is a complicated being. Moments after killing Peter, it tried to heal Bruce Banner's injuries, and is later killed by a vengeful Black Cat.
18 HERO: LETHAL PROTECTOR
During Sony's presentation at Comic Con Experience 2017, Tom Hardy confirmed that the Venom movie would be based on material from the Venom: Lethal Protector series. This makes sense, considering that the Lethal Protector comic book series marked the first time in comic book history that Venom would officially make the transition from a villain to an antihero. In the six-part 1993 comic book series, enemies Spider-Man and Venom made an agreement that they would stay out of each other's way. This agreement came with only one big condition: Venom was not allowed to commit any crimes.
Begrudgingly agreeing to this wager, Eddie Brock moved from New York to San Francisco and after deciding to retire his career as a villain, he took up the task of trying to be a hero. Venom found himself stopping an assortment of petty crimes in the San Francisco neighborhood and duking it out with the bad guys that he would have aligned himself with not too long ago. After all his heroic deeds in San Francisco, Venom and Spidey would end up working side by side to take out Venom's twisted symbiote offspring, further cementing himself as a true antihero in the Marvel Universe.
17 VILLAIN: TAKES OUT HARRY OSBORN
Ok, so we know that most of the Spider-Man fandom would like to forget that Spider-Man 3 was ever made, but we would be amiss if we didn't mention this moment because its an important one for two reasons.One being that, if we are being perfectly honest, Venom was kind of awesome (clearly, one of the film's few highlights) for the mere ten minutes he was on-screen, and the other reason being that Harry Osborn had been a character who had been by Spider-Man's side from the very beginning of the Spider-Man franchise, as both a friend and as a foe.
Now, at the end of Spider-Man 3, Harry gets killed by Venom and Venom chooses to kill him by impaling the son of the Green Goblin in front of his best friend. Even for a throwaway villain like Venom (at least that is how he is treated in the movie), that is a downright evil thing to do to someone. A truly heinous and menacing villains is what the franchise was sorely lacking, and an act like this leaves us to wonder what Spider-Man 3 would have looked like if Venom was the main antagonist to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man throughout the entirety of the movie.
16 HERO: TEAMS UP WITH SPIDEY
Despite being mortal enemies and sharing a putrid hatred for one another, Spider-Man and Venom often find themselves reluctantly teaming up on several occasions. One time when Venom and Spider-Man fought side-by-side was in Spidey's self-titled video game from 2000, even though the game started off with the two on opposing sides (as they normally do). The plot of the game centers around the wall-crawler being framed by an imposter Spider-Man for stealing an experiment made by a reformed Dr. Otto Octavius as it was presented live in front of hundreds of people.
Mistaking the imposter for the real deal, Venom tried to play hero by bringing Spider-Man to justice -- and by hero, we mean try to lure Spider-Man to him by kidnapping Mary Jane and nearly drowning her in water. Eddie Brock also wanted some revenge after the imposter destroyed his camera, putting his new job with the Daily Bugle in jeopardy. After the two fight, Spidey finally convinces Venom the two were being played against each other. To make up for hassling Spidey all over town, Venom spends the rest of the game helping Spidey find the true imposter (later revealed to be Mysterio), stop his grand plan, and save the day.
15 VILLAIN: TAKES OUT UNCLE BEN
Often, when a superhero has such a well known lore that everybody knows about and getS sick of reading rehashes of the same backstory over and over, writers tend to shake things up a bit by putting a new twist on old tales. For example, when Marvel crafted their very own Manga universe, the ramifications put a whole new spin on Peter Parker's upbringing. For example, rather than getting gunned down by a random thief, Spidey's Uncle Ben gets killed by none other than Venom.
In this universe, Venom is not so much an alien symbiote as he is a ninja who fights on behalf of the Spider Clan with Spider-Man. One day, Venom turns over to the dark side -- or the Shadow Clan -- and as an act of defiance, he kills Spidey's Uncle Ben. No worries, true believers -- this arc has a redemption rebuttal. This set the stage for the two Spider Clan students to compete in a fight to the death. Spider-Man won, but chose to spare Venom's life. Feeling the need to return the favor, Venom steps into action when Spidey gets possessed by an evil amulet (this universe's equivalent to the symbiote), sacrificing his own life to save Spidey, while he is reduced to bones by the amulet.
14 HERO: WHEN EDDIE BROCK BECAME ANTI-VENOM
Eddie Brock is often linked with Venom, but he is not the only one with comic book lore to get overly attached to the symbiote costume, nor has he been the only person to fight under the Venom moniker. One day, he was finally able to de-bond from Venom, but Eddie was diagnosed with cancer once he was separated from the alien suit. Finding a new leaf to help people, he started volunteering at a food shelter where he crossed paths with Mr. Negative. Mr. Negative used his powers to cure Brock of his cancer without knowing that there were still traces of the symbiote in Brock's DNA.
As a result, his powers fused Brock's symbiote cells with his white blood cells, transforming Brock into a hybrid symbiote creature called Anti-Venom. Despite the similar build and monstrous features, Brock in his Anti-Venom suit isn't nearly as villainous as he was in his Venom suit. In fact, as Anti-Venom, Brock retains his urge to help those in need. He does just that by using his healing abilities to cure those afflicted by any disease. Also, unlike the Venom symbiote, Brock is in full control of Anti-Venom's actions and is more inclined to be a good guy.
13 VILLAIN: TAKES DOWN SPIDER-MAN
It seems as though when Mac Gargan traded in his Scorpion outfit for a Venom one, he became far more vicious than he ever was. As Venom, Mac Gargan did the one thing that not even Eddie Brock could ever do under his much prolific tenure as the symbiote: kill Spider-Man. The scene of the crime occurred in the Beyond! mini-series, where The Beyonder gathered a bunch of superheroes and a bunch of supervillains, and forced them all to fight each other to the death. While the large majority of the participants were too confused to even try to make a move, Mac Gargan jumped at the chance to fight and immediately made a B-line for the webslinger.
Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man tried his best to guard against Gargan's onslaught, but it proved too much for the webcrawler, and Gargan stuck a scorpion-like tail through the chest of Spider-Man. And just like that, Spider-Man was dead, and Gargan was elated by his own accomplishment of finally squishing the spider that had been a thorn in his side for so long. The celebration for Gargan turned out to be brief, as this Spider-Man was an imposter known as the shapeshifting Space Phantom.
12 HERO: AGENT VENOM
In 2011, Marvel decided to revamp Venom for the modern crowd. Their intention was to not only update him, but to finally allow Venom to make the long awaited jump from being an antihero to becoming full-on superhero. They did so by inserting former high school bully, Flash Thompson, in the role and giving him a military-esque suit. After losing his legs while serving in the Iraq War, Thompson becomes a willing participant in a government experiment that calls for him to bond to the Venom symbiote. The project was so successful that Thompson ended up using the suit full time as a crimefighter. The only catch is that he cannot stay bonded to the symbiote for more than 48 hours or else he'll become as savage as Eddie Brock's Venom incarnation.
Ever since he was first introduced into Marvel canon, Agent Venom has found himself as a member of several superhero teams, including The Thunderbolts, Secret Avengers, and most notably, the Guardians of the Galaxy. As a character in such high demand from such high profile hero teams, it's safe to say that Agent Venom is one of the most efficient superheroes in the Marvel Universe. Maybe we'll see him on the big screen if all goes well.
11 VILLAIN: V. SUPERMAN
Marvel and DC Comics characters rarely cross paths with each other, but when it happens, two things are usually certain: their encounter will always be treated as a huge event and the characters from different comic companies will be on opposing sides of a huge fight. Both of these things proved to be the case when it came to the comic book series All-Access. Access was a superhero who's job was to keep the worlds of DC and Marvel separate from each other, and prevent them from ever bleeding into each other, but has a major casualty on his hands in the first issue when Venom winds up in Metropolis.
Within seconds of landing on DC soil, Venom runs on a rampage of destroying things, terrifying the locals, and just wrecking havoc and mayhem all around. This persists until Superman swoops down to throw the symbiotic demon around like a ragdoll. Then, Venom turns the tables and before he knows it, Superman is the one getting ragdolled. Access sends Spider-Man to DC to help Supes, but it's no use. Venom wrecks the heroes and piles them onto each other. Venom is only stopped when Access blasts Venom with a STAR Labs approved sonic cannon.
10 HERO: VENOMPOOL
With all of the ludicrous antics that Deadpool tends to get himself wrapped into, it seemed like it would be only a matter of time before he found himself donning a symbiote suit. It makes sense, considering both he and Venom have a reputation for being antiheroes and, in fact, he actually wore the symbiote suit twice. The first came in Marvel's What If? series in the reality of Earth-90211. While on a hit job against The Beyonder, Deadpool found himself in The Beyonder's flying limo. Suddenly, a black suited Spider-Man burst inside the limo demanding that Beyonder remove the symbiote from him. When Beyonder's limo driver shoots Spidey out the limo, the symbiote detached from the web-slinger and on to Deadpool, turning him into Venompool.
The second and most recent instance came with 2015's Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars, which tells another "what if?" tale that suggests Spider-Man wasn't the first person to bond with the alien symbiote. Instead, it was Deadpool and his overall craziness rubbed up off on the symbiote long enough that it spawned Venom's sadistic traits. In both scenarios, Deadpool's status as a good guy is debatable due to not being the conventional hero, but he manages to retain his antihero status even with the symbiote attached to him.
9 VILLAIN: DROPPED HIS HOST
We have seen several vastly different people take the Venom symbiote on as a host over the years. Eddie Brock, Flash Thompson, and Mac Gargan are some notable names, but one of the more forgotten names to ever dress up as Venom was Angelo Fortunato. Angelo came across the suit after Eddie Brock was diagnosed with cancer. The symbiote managed to stabilize Eddie's condition and keep him alive, but one day, Eddie decided that he would rather die than let the symbiote consume his body and mind. So, anxious to get rid of the darn thing, Eddie sold the symbiote substance on the black market where it was acquired by mob boss Don Fortunato.
Hoping to make a man out of his wimpy son, Don forces his son Angelo to wear the symbiote and become the new Venom. In the middle of a murderous rampage, Angelo gets in a fight with Spider-Man, but feeling overwhelmed, Angelo tries to run away from the webslinging hero. The symbiote was not a big fan of Angelo running away from a fight, so as he was jumping from building to building, the symbiote ditched Angelo's frail body, ultimately making him fall to his death.
8 HERO: BECAME A GOVERNMENT AGENT
Of all of the strange things that Venom did in the name of being a hero, becoming a super secret agent for the government has to rank high on that list. Yes, Venom was actually hired by the government work for them as an agent in the three-issue mini series License to Kill. Of course he wouldn't do so for free, so he helped the government in exchange for allowing his entire criminal record being wiped off and destroyed. Of course, this is Venom we are talking about, meaning that even as a superhero, he was always going to be a casualty, and in this case, a casualty of war.
So, to make some much needed precautions, the government put a bomb inside of Venom's chest and told him if he ever stepped out of line or attacked innocent civilians, they would not hesitate to flip the trigger. Needless to say, Venom applied accordingly to the demands of the government. In Venom's Bond-esque mission, he was sent after Dr. Yes who, with the help of his son Red Flag, was holding the world hostage with a dangerous biological weapon. Venom had one master plan to stop Dr. Yes, and by "master plan", we mean that he wrecklessly tore apart Dr. Yes and his huge army of robots.
7 VILLAIN: BRAINS!
Ever since he was first introduced into comic book Marvel canon, Venom has always had a hankering for eating people, but that hunger is explored and expanded on in the storyline and series for The Hunger. Venom's Hunger focused on Eddie Brock struggling to contain his symbiote's hunger for eating people, and more importantly, it's desire to eat brains. All of this could n0t have come at a worse time, as it occured when Eddie Brock was trying his hardest to be a good guy and fight crime as Venom.
Unfortunately for Eddie, the symbiote has other plans and tends to cross the line without a care for what Brock thinks or wants. Disobeying Eddie's orders one day, the symbiote ate some bad guys and ate their brains as Venom. When he learned this, Eddie was horrified. In a fight with the symbiote, the symbiote left Eddie and shortly after, he found himself in a mental institution. When he got out, he eventually got a hold of his old symbiote again. This time, he promised to keep the symbiote salted with chocolate as long as it stops eating brains. The symbiote complied, but when it moved onto other hosts, Venom was right back to eating people.
6 HERO: MANIA
When Flash Thompson started fighting under the pseudonym of Agent Venom, he did not fight alone. He starts off that way, but at some point along his journey as a hero, Andi Benton stepped into his life as his trusty sidekick. Andi Benton is a teenage girl who lived in an apartment where her neighbor, Flash Thompson, worked as a gym coach at her high school. After noticing some strange things, Benton came to the conclusion that her coach secretly moonlighted as Agent Venom -- call it a lucky hunch on her behalf, or at the very least, she's a smart girl.
When mob boss Lord Ogre put a hit out on the life of Agent Venom, supervillain Jack O'Lantern released a poisonous gas against him and Andi when he noticed their connection. Thompson released a portion of his symbiote to protect Andi, but the symbiote ended up attaching to her and turning her into Mania. Mania adopted the essential anti-heroic attitude that usually was accustomed with hosts of the Venom symbiote. While Mania has a hellish mean streak to her personality, Agent Venom works hard as her mentor to make sure that she does not take her abilities far enough to kill or go on a rampage.
5 VILLAIN: T-REX VENOM
"Old Man Logan" provided us with a glimpse of Wolverine as a grizzled, tired, and broken shell of a mutant living in a post-apocalyptic world. The Oscar nominated movie Logan did a pretty swell job at adapting the story into the context of the modern day X-Men movie franchise, but one thing from the comic book series that fans had sorely missed in the movie adaptation was the Venom T-Rex. Acting as a navigator for Hawkeye -- who in this future is blind -- and driving around in the Spider-Mobile, one of the many villains that the pair come across during their journey is the Venom T-Rex, which is an actual Tyrannosaurus Rex that the elusive symbiote managed to bond itself to.
The hybrid beast gangs up on the pair as they struggle to outrun the monster, until they are finally saved at the last minute by Black Bolt, who vanquishes the beast with a powerful blast that kills the T-Rex and forces the symbiote to scurry away. Visually on the page, the scene looked like a clip straight out of one of the Jurassic Park movies, and would have been glorious to witness on the big screen during Logan.
4 HERO: DUSK
No, not that other alter ego that Peter Parker once adopted. In this case, Dusk serves as the best friend to Spider-Girl, and the grandson of Spider-Man's worst enemy. Because, in one of the stranger ironies of the Marvel Universe, the respective daughter and grandson of archenemies Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Norman Osborn (Green Goblin) happened to grow up to be best friends in the reality of Earth-982. Mayday Parker and Normie Osborn III also grew up to fight side by side as crimefighters known as Spider-Girl and Venom -- though he takes exception to being called Venom (to him, the name has been long stained by the crimes of Eddie Brock years prior).
Unlike his father Harry and his grandfather before him, Normie never had a mean streak to him. Apart from being overly sensitive, he was always a nice guy with no signs of future villainy. The Venom symbiote attempted to re-bond to its former host, Peter, but failed and was instead forcibly bonded to Normie. With help from Spider-Girl, Normie was able to gain control of the symbiote and suppress the symbiote's aggressive nature. Instead of destroying the symbiote, Normie used his newfound control over it to kickstart his own superhero career as Dusk.
3 VILLAIN: TRIES TO EAT THE THING'S TONGUE
Out of all of the foes who Venom squares up against, one of his more frequent encounters have come against The Thing. One of their encounters happened in Venom #11 from 2004. In a scene where Spider-Man is taking on Venom, the webcrawler quickly learns that the symbiotic goliath is too much to handle. Lucky for him, the Fantastic Four swoop down to help him out, but unlucky for him, the Fantastic Four aren't much help. Venom fights them off with ease, but The Thing is the one guy who is able to put up a fight against Venom.
He even starts winning the fight for quite some time, that is until Venom manages to get the ultimate upper hand with the ultimate counter: he shoves his tongue down The Thing's throat, essentially, trying to french kiss him to death. Venom has a knack for doing really gross things in the comic books, but this single moment has to top the list, surely. The Human Torch burns the tongue off to save The Thing, but in the long run, this proves to cause more harm than good. A random guy comes by, picks up the tongue, and tries to sell it on eBay.
2 HERO: SIGN OF THE BOSS
Venom: Sign of the Boss sees the titular anti-hero continue his gig as a secret agent for the government. This time, the government task him with the mission to stop a bunch of terrorists who infiltrate the Bronx with the objective of holding the President of South America in a church. Surprisingly enough, Venom does not just storm into the church with guns a blazing. No, he aims for a much more methodical and tactical method of infiltrating the infiltrators: he dressed up as a nun. Yeah, that's definitely something we are probably never going to see Venom do on the big screen any time soon, or ever, quite frankly.
Eddie has always had a subtle connection with religion -- including a moment in Spider-Man 3 where he personally stood in a church and kindly asked God to kill Peter Parker -- but dressing up as a nun in a church with intent to kill some people might be a little too sacrilegious, even for the famous antihero. Although Venom did get the job done swiftly, promptly killing a horde of terrorists in front of a bunch of kids, he probably scarred those poor kids for the rest of their natural lives.
1 VILLAIN: "IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN!"
In Venom #12, the Venom symbiote falls into the clutches of a secret organization that hopes to get the symbiote to bond with a new host after Eddie Brock ditches it. The problem with this plan is that the symbiote would wind up killing whatever potential host that the organization sent into the symbiote's cell. At one point, in a last ditch effort to satisfy the symbiote, the organization sends in two more potential hosts. This time, the symbiote gets sent a mental patient and a serial killer.
This causes the symbiote to grab the two potential hosts and taking a gander at memories from both men. From this, the symbiote learned that the serial killer had killed four men who had assaulted him while in prison. So, in the spirit of being a jerk, the symbiote bonded itself to the mental patient and immediately pounced on the serial killer, whispering in his ear that "It's going to happen again!" We do not see exactly what Venom did to this prisoner, but it is strongly implies that the symbiote did some terrible things to him before killing him. Even for a guy like Venom, that is just cold, cruel, and sickening.