Line #20 Trivia/Venom


1	* AscendedFanon:
2	** The fan-made names for the Life Foundation symbiotes - Agony, Lasher, Phage, and Riot - were canonized in the ''Carnage USA'' arc.
3	** The name "[[OneManArmy Agent]] Venom" was used by fans to refer to Flash Thompson's black-ops Venom form, and was quickly canonized once Flash joined the Secret Avengers.
4	* CreatorBacklash:
5	** In a 2018 interview, David Michelinie explains that during his tenure as writer he fought to keep Venom a ''Spider-Man''-exclusive villain and had the editor at the time veto other writers' requests to use him (blaming the subsequent editor for things going off the rails due to his laissez-faire attitude towards the character and approval of other writers using Venom for their own projects), and that after he created Carnage he was concerned that Marvel would go overboard with symbiote characters--which is why he made sure to definitively kill off the Life Foundation symbiotes at the end of ''ComicBook/VenomLethalProtector''. Having witnessed all of his fears come to fruition in the years since, Michelinie is ''not'' a fan of the direction Marvel's taken Venom and scorns Marvel calling anyone other than Eddie Brock and the symbiote "Venom", though he's come back a few times to write a number of Eddie-as-Venom stories set during the Lethal Protector era.
6	** Invoked by Cullen Bunn, who very much dislikes how Andi Benton has been handled after his run ended, and has (jokingly) commented that he's considered just killing her off to prevent anyone else from screwing her up and creating a CaptainErsatz of her in his own personal works that he has full creative control over.
7	* CreatorsFavorite: Cullen Bunn mentioned that he ''constantly'' tries to include Mania in every story he's hired to write but kept getting turned down for various reasons. As such, he was just as shocked and upset as her fans were when Dan Slott and Mike Costa stripped her of her symbiote in ''Venom Inc.'', though he rolled with it and started coming up for new adventures for her sans-symbiote. Following the conclusion ''Absolute Carnage: Scream'', he lamented on Twitter that he wasn't likely to be given an opportunity to write her or any symbiotes again.
8	* CreatorsPest: Venom gained his iconic MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily + OverlyLongTongue appearance when Erik Larsen had to draw him. Because Larsen disliked the character, the only way he could get through the experience of drawing him was by making him look as goofy as possible, which resulted in the numerous long teeth and the long tongue. Somehow, [[SpringtimeForHitler people liked it]].
9	* DevelopmentGag:
10	** David Michelinie had intended right from the start to kill Eddie Brock off once Venom had become popular, and have the symbiote jump from host to host. Marvel kiboshed that in light of the character's popularity as an antihero, so he came up with ComicBook/{{Carnage}} as a replacement. In 2004, Mark Miller penned a story where Eddie and the symbiote went their separate ways -- with Eddie then attempting to kill himself, and while he is currently Venom, it's had four main hosts and counting.
11	** Cullen Bunn had intended to resurrect Anti-Venom for the third volume of the ''Venom'' series, but those plans were kiboshed by Marvel cancelling it after Volume 2 was finished. In ''AXIS: Hobgoblin'', a new Anti-Venom cameos as one of Hobgoblin's enfranchised superheroes, though it's not explained who's wearing it or how Kingsley got his hands on a specimen of the supposedly-deceased symbiote. In ''Venom Inc.'' Flash Thompson is exposed to an astrobiological serum derived from the original Anti-Venom while fighting with Eddie Brock over the symbiote, and is transformed into Agent Anti-Venom as a result.
12	** An early idea for Venom was to have the symbiote bond to a woman who lost her child due to a car accident caused by a motorist being distracted by a fight involving Spider-Man. This discarded concept was seemingly recycled into the minor villain Coldheart, whose son was implied to have been a casualty of a battle possibly involving Spider-Man.
13	** One of Mark Bagley's early "[[WorkingTitle Chaos]]" (Carnage) [[http://art.cafimg.com/images/Category_13461/subcat_171727/12Bxsu5C_0902161742341.jpg designs]] was more or less reused for Scream.
14	* ExecutiveMeddling:
15	** The sheer number of ''Venom'' miniseries in the 1990s was the result of Marvel's editorial refusing to give the character an ongoing, with his status as an antihero being predicated on the continues success of the series. The moment sales dropped, Marvel mandated Eddie return to being a supervillain in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and even greenlit a story intended to kill him off per David Michelinie's second plan for the character.
16	** For years, Marvel's editorial department was strongly opposed to the proliferation of symbiote characters, with Dan Slott saying he was all-but told to fridge Andi Benton in ''Venom Inc.'', Cullen Bunn worrying he'd be told to kill Andi off if he gave her a symbiote again in ''ComicBook/{{Venomized}}'', and Seanan [=McGuire=]'s request to make Earth-65's Mary Jane the Carnage to [[ComicBook/GhostSpider2019 Ghost-Spider]]'s Venom initially being rejected. It wasn't until the success of ''ComicBook/AbsoluteCarnage'' that Marvel somewhat began to change its tune, greenlighting the publication of ''ComicBook/ScreamCurseOfCarnage'' and "[=MJarnage=]".
17	** It's very obvious that Mike Costa's run was cut short to make way for Donny Cates' run; the result was Costa's run not having a proper ending by the time Cates' run started. Costa was later given the ''Venom: First Host'' miniseries to wrap up his story.
18	* ExecutiveVeto:
19	** David Michelinie's original plan for bringing back the symbiote as a supervillain was to have it bond to a female host, a young woman whose husband had been run over in front of her by a cabbie distracted by Spider-Man fighting a supervillain, causing her to miscarry her baby. Editor-in-chief Jim Salicrup vetoed this, reportedly scoffing at the notion that a woman could make for a threatening opponent for Spider-Man, but this is why the hand that shoves Peter Parker in front of a train and grabs his ankle when he's climbing a building appears feminine.
20	** After his original idea was vetoed, Michelinie went back to the drawing board and came up with Eddie Brock (a bodybuilder-buff man with a fairly shallow reason for hating Spider-Man) as the polar opposite of his original pitch (a young woman who blamed Spider-Man for the death of her husband and the miscarriage of her baby) and got it approved, intending to kill Eddie off after only 100 issues and have the symbiote jump from host to host. Venom's runaway popularity led to Marvel vetoing this -- at least until the early 2000s -- and Michelinie's dissatisfaction with Venom becoming an antihero led him to create ComicBook/{{Carnage}}.
21	** In a 2018 interview with Comic Crusaders, Michelinie revealed that after Venom debuted other writers wanted to use him in their stories, but Jim Salicrup vetoed this--which Michelinie approved of, citing that sparingly using Venom exclusively as Spider-Man's enemy and having him be the sole symbiote character was part of what made him a huge success, and that the symbiotes have become oversaturated and diluted in the decades since as a result of Marvel deviating from this.
22	* GodDoesNotOwnThisWorld:
23	** In [[https://comiccrusaders.com/comics-icon-david-michelinie-talks-about-the-early-development-of-one-of-spider-mans-greatest-villains/ a 2018 interview]], ''Venom'' co-creator David Michelinie declared that--as far as he is concerned--only the combination of Eddie Brock and the symbiote that was formerly Spider-Man's black suit should be called Venom, and that the symbiote bonded to other hosts (for example, Angelo Fortunato, Mac Gargan, Flash Thompson, and Lee Price) shouldn't be called Venom. The other writers and editors at Marvel clearly disagree, as almost everyone that has bonded to the symbiote following Eddie Brock--and even the symbiote itself without a host--has gone by Venom. Additionally, while disparaging Danny Fingeroth's tenure as writer and editor, Michelinie mentioned that he made sure to kill off Scream, Agony, Phage, Riot, and Lasher at the end of ''ComicBook/VenomLethalProtector'' in order to forestall the creation of any more symbiote characters by showing they couldn't reproduce properly on Earth... which he laments didn't stick.
24	** Cullen Bunn has been fairly open about how much he dislikes how Venom and especially Mania have been handled in the years since [[ComicBook/VenomRemenderAndBunn his run]] ended, but is powerless to do anything about it since even when he's permitted to write for those characters ExecutiveMeddling and ExecutiveVeto are in full effect; admitting he's gone out of his way to ''avoid'' reading comics featuring characters he's written for in the past. As an example, Bunn was surprised to learn that ''Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars'' and ''ComicBook/DeadpoolBackInBlack'' had been declared non-canon during ''ComicBook/AbsoluteCarnage'' and got into an argument with Creator/DonnyCates on Twitter over it.
25	* TheMerch: The Xenophage got an action figure, though the packaging referred to him as "[[https://www.figurerealm.com/actionfigure?action=actionfigure&id=14441 Phage]]".
26	* OfficialFanSubmittedContent: The design for Spider-Man's black suit was created by a fan named Randy Schueller, who submitted it to a contest. Mike Zeke altered it slightly by changing the chest and hand emblems from red to white, and the symbiote was born.
27	* SavedByTheFans: David Michelinie's original intent was to kill Eddie off and have the symbiote jump from host to host, but Marvel vetoed the plan due to the character's runaway popularity.
28	* ScrewedByTheNetwork: Someone at Marvel's editorial department seems to have a grudge against Cullen Bunn, seeing how almost all of his requests to include Andi Benton in stories despite her being a fan favorite (aside from ''ComicBook/{{Venomverse}}'') were vetoed, he was left in the dark about Dan Slott and Mike Costa being given the go-ahead to depower her in ''Venom Inc.'', and when asked why he didn't re-empower her in ''ComicBook/{{Venomized}}'' he replied that he'd been worried he'd be told to kill her off. Bunn ultimately severed his working relationship with Marvel in 2019, following his writership of ''ComicBook/AbsoluteCarnage: Scream'', and later revealed that having his pitch for ''ComicBook/ScreamCurseOfCarnage'' unceremoniously taken and given to Clay [=McLeod=] Chapman was the straw that broke the camel's back. In 2020, Bunn and then-''Venom'' writer Donny Cates got into an argument on Twitter over the latter declaring ''Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars'' and ''ComicBook/DeadpoolBackInBlack'' to be non-canon despite Bunn having worked references to it into ''Poison X'' and ''Deadpool: Assassin''. However, Bunn returned to Marvel in 2023 to write ''ComicBook/DeathOfTheVenomverse''... only to have most of his suggestions vetoed and effectively be told what he could and couldn't do.
29	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
30	** David Michelinie's original concept for Venom was a young woman who went insane after she miscarried due to witnessing her husband get run over by a taxi driver accidentally distracted by Spider-Man -- which is why the hand that shoves Spider-Man in front of a train is that of a woman. However, the editor-in-chief at the time -- Jim Salicrup -- rejected the idea due to thinking a woman wouldn't be threatening enough to make for a serious supervillain. After this pitch was rejected, Eddie Brock was subsequently created and the Sin-Eater storyline was used for his origin.
31	** David Michelinie stated in an interview that he'd planned for Eddie Brock to be killed off early on and the symbiote to jump from host to host. Marvel refused to let him kill the character in light of his popularity as an antihero, and Carnage was created instead. [[{{Pun}} Flash]] forward ten-odd years and, while Eddie isn't dead,[[note]]Though he ''had'' almost been killed off after Angelo Fortunato's death.[[/note]] [[HilariousInHindsight the Venom symbiote's had several subsequent hosts]].
32	** When Cullen Bunn was devising his half of ''Venom'' Vol. 2, he had an idea for the Venom symbiote to spawn a demonic version of itself possessing the Hell Mark, which would bond to Eddie Brock. However, he decided that Eddie and Toxin needed more time together, and developed his Devil Venom idea into Mania.
33	** Rick Remender and Cullen Bunn had a number of story arcs planned out for the third volume of the ''Venom'' series, including tying up the Descent subplot; the return of Anti-Venom for a "War of the Symbiotes" arc also featuring Mania and Toxin;[[note]]In April 2020 Remender released an overview of the event, which would have involved the symbiote homeworld being destroyed by Symbiote Hunters, the Toxin symbiote going into heat and releasing countless spores that would result in a worldwide symbiote plague, Spider-Man learning Flash Thompson was Agent Venom, Carnage taking over the symbiote-infected New York City, and Eddie Brock sacrificing himself to stop Toxin.[[/note]] Crime Master coming back from the dead. Marvel's cancellation of the series flushed those plans down the dumper. Also, Eddie Brock was supposed to become Demon Venom[=/=]Mania, but wound up becoming Toxin while new character Andrea Benton became Mania. That said, a [[DevelopmentGag new Anti-Venom]] cameos as one of Hobgoblin's underlings in ''AXIS: Hobgoblin'', Flash Thompson becomes Agent Anti-Venom in ''Venom Inc.'', and ''Venom: Space Knight'' touches on the Descent subplot with Mania.
34	** The ''Venom: Carnage'' film that was to be a spinoff from the Film/TheAmazingSpiderManSeries was cancelled in 2015, following a deal between Marvel and Sony.
35	** Carnage was originally going to be called Ravage, until it was found out that DC Comics had recently come out with a character of that name.
36	** Concept art for [[http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/TastyBurgerReviews/news/?a=73588 the cancelled sequel]] to ''VideoGame/SpiderManWebOfShadows'' shows Carnage would have been a villain.
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Context Trivia / Venom