Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Reader Gavin Mo. wrote in to ask if I could cover Venom's history as a villain and anti-hero, so well, sure, I guess I could do that!

Venom, of course, debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #300 (by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane), where Eddie Brock (a disgraced journalist) and an alien symbiote (a disgraced former Spider-Man costume) teamed up to get revenge on Spider-Man, who the symbiote was mad at because Spider-Man rejected its attempt to bond with him and who Brock was mad at because Spider-Man discovered the identity of the Sin-Eater, which was bad news for Brock, who had recently done a big series of interviews with a guy who had confessed to being the Sin-Eater himself.

Venom was an outright villain. We know this because he killed an innocent cop in that first issue, who had discovered Eddie in his hideout in the church where he had first bonded with the symbiote...

So, Eddie and the symbiote fought Spider-Man a few more times over the next five years, with Venom constantly talking about protecting innocents, even while he kills a few different people over this period.

The big change in the game was when Carnage was introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #361 (by David Michelinie, Mark Bagley and Randy Emberlin). Carnage was formed when a symbiote was spawned by the Venom symbiote and bonded with a sociopath who Eddie Brock had been cellmates with, a serial killer named Cletus Kassady.

Spider-Man felt that he couldn't defeat Carnage alone, so he enlisted Venom's help, as Venom was delusional enough to think that he was trying to help "innocents" and Carnage was just killing EVERYone...

Spider-Man, of course, was lying to Venom and had no intention on letting him go free. After they defeated Carnage together, he had the Fantastic Four show up and capture Venom. Venom went back to prison.

He escaped 10 issues later. He then kidnapped Peter Parker's parents (Venom knew Spider-Man's secret identity via the symbiote). Of course, they were actually robots built by Chameleon to learn Spider-Man's secret identity through the connection Chameleon assumed Peter Parker had with Spider-Man, but, hey, podody's nerfect, right?

During this story, mercenaries were hunting Venom down. Spider-Man, meanwhile, turned to Eddie Brock's ex-wife, Anne Weying, to try to get her to help him reason with Eddie to release Peter's parents. They tracked Venom and the Parkers to an amusement park. The mercenaries, though, followed them there, as well, and attacked. During the battle, a ride was weakened and it collapsed and almost crushed Anne. Venom, weakened from the fighting, couldn't save her by himself...

This inspired Venom to offer Spider-Man a truce, which Spidey accepted.

This led directly into Venom's first miniseries, Lethal Protector, which was a huge hit (Marvel nicely had Michelinie and Bagley launch the series, with Ron Lim taking over on penciling duties mid-way through the series, so Bagley got all of that sweet, sweet #1 issue royalty money)....

This set up the precedence for the next three years or so. Spider-Man pretty much left Venom alone and Venom operated as a sort of anti-hero, protecting the innocents in San Francisco and occasionally coming to New York to team-up with Spider-Man to take down bigger threats, like Carnage or the time that the planet where the symbiotes came from tried to invade Earth.

The thing is that Bob Harras, Marvel's new Editor-in-Chief in 1994, haaaaaaaaated the idea of Venom as an anti-hero. He wanted Venom to be a villain. However, the Venom anti-hero titles sold so well that they "had" to keep doing them. I assume that's why the previous Editor-in-Chief, Tom DeFalco, also made sure Venom was just a series of miniseries rather than an ongoing series, as they could stop whenever they wanted, no muss, no fuss.

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Finally, in 1998, sales slipped enough that Marvel halted the Venom miniseries. They had one more one-shot in 1998, Spider-Man: The Venom Agenda, where Spider-Man and Venom's truce was completely finished and Spider-Man defeats Venom, even knocking Spider-Man's secret identity out of Brock's brain!

So Venom was now back to being a villain, even joining a new version of the Sinister Six!

Venom even gained a new reason to hate Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #19 (by Howard Mackie, Erik Larsen and John Beatty), when Eddie tried to woo Anne, who was seriously haunted by the time that the symbiote had bonded with her temporarily. She freaked out when she saw Spider-Man swing by wearing his black costume...

She then killed herself, which Eddie, of course, blamed on Spider-Man...

Venom made sporadic appearances over the next few years, before a clone of the symbiote led to a Venom ongoing series in 2003....

The real Venom reabsorbed the clone into himself by the end of that series.

Then Eddie turned out to be dying of cancer. This took place over a year, before he finally sold the Venom symbiote in Mark Millar's Marvel Knights: Spider-Man run in 2005. The symbiote rejected its first new host before bonding with Mac Gargan, the former Spider-Man villain known as the Scorpion...

This version of Venom was an outright villain. No redeemable qualities at all. When Norman Osborn took control of SHIELD (re-naming it HAMMER), he formed his own Avengers team with supervillains pretending to be Avengers. Venom became the Sinister-Spider-Man...

Eddie Brock, meanwhile, miraculously recovered from his cancer (by the villainous Mister Negative, who has healing powers in secret identity). He began to help out at the same shelter Aunt May volunteered at (he was cleared of any crimes he committed while as Venom, under the theory that the symbiote was responsible, not him). When he encountered the new Venom, the symbiote latched on to Eddie, but his blood cells, imbued by Mister Negative's healing powers, ended up reacting to the symbiote by turning Eddie into...Anti-Venom!

Anti-Venom was ostensibly a hero, but he was more like an anti-hero, as he was kind of crazy (since he detected remnants of the Venom symbiote on Spider-Man, he tried to "cure" Spider-Man by pretty much trying to kill him). He and Spider-Man eventually patched things up together and called another truce with each other (as they teamed up to take Mister Negative down).

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Okay, so eventually, Norman Osborn was taken down, along with the rest of his fake Avengers by the real Avengers. The Venom symbiote was torn from Mac Gargan. The United States military then decided to use it to bond to soliders for brief missions, so that the soldiers could avoid permanently bonding with the symbiote.

The went by the wayside when Flash Thompson was chosen to be one of the hosts. He and the symbiote bonded permanently. However, Flash used the suit for good as the colloquially referred to "Agent Venom"...

Flash remained the main Venom for a number of years. He even had his symbiote "fixed" when he joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. Early in Flash's time as Venom, Eddie Brock sacrificed his Anti-Venom self to save the day in a crossover event called "Spider-Island."

Eddie then went back to being regular nuts and he began killing anyone who had bonded with a symbiote, as the symbiotes were evil. Ironically, he was himself then forcibly bonded with the Toxin symbiote (the spawn of Carnage) and forced to fight Agent Venom...

Venom defeated him, but ultimately they fought again with Eddie and Flash coming to the same sort of truce that Venom and Spider-Man had in the past...

Eddie then joined a team that was hunting down Carnage. Once they defeated Carnage, Eddie gave up the Toxin symbiote. Around the same time, Flash was separated from the Venom symbiote. It bonded with an evil man named Lee Price and for the first time since Mac Gargan, Venom was an outright villain again...

Spider-Man tentatively teams up with Eddie Brock to take down Price, with Eddie becoming Venom again...

Spider-Man still didn't trust Eddie, but he seemed to be a bit less nuts this time around and when Spider-Man had to protect his loved ones from the Red Goblin (Norman Osborn with the Carnage symbiote), he assigned Venom to guard Mary Jane...

But things were clinched when Eddie suggested that he give up the symbiote to Spider-Man temporarily so that Spider-Man would be able to match up with the Red Goblin...

Such a selfless act, combined with Eddie pretty heroically defending Mary Jane, has led to an outright truce between the two, with Venom now being about as much of a hero as he has ever been in his comic book history...

The problem is that when Eddie has finally gotten the symbiote as much under control as he has ever had before, it begun to be controlled by an outside force, the symbiote "god" known as Knull. Eddie was able to defeat Knull, but in the process, his symbiote has become, in effect, brain dead. Eddie can still control it, but it no longer speaks to him. We will have to see what comes next for Venom. Maybe another turn for villainy?