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resolved Unsure of edit to Symbiotes page Print Comic
An editor made an addition to the Characters/MarvelComicsSymbiotes page that's got me scratching my head—stating that when the symbiotes were first introduced "it was said only very specific people can ever bond with [them], much less form an actual partnership with them".
I consider myself a big Venom fan, but the only time I remember that being a thing is in the Venom movies.
The closest I can remember to seeing something along the lines of that statement in the comics is a narration/thought box in 1996's Venom: The Hunger where Eddie Brock muses that symbiotes didn't evolve to be bonded to humans, and that whatever host they did evolve to naturally bond to would have supplied them with the phenethylamine levels they need to survive... but that was retconned a long time ago—even before Donny Cates introduced Knull.
I was equally curious and confused, so I did some digging to see if I could find anything, but all I've come up with are several instances where that's is shown not to be the case—even early on:
- In 1984's Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #99, the symbiote that became Venom bonded to a man named Leonard Elkhart to get back to Peter Parker.
- In 1991's Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #359-360, Dreadface bonds to a random gorilla before taking over the Thing and jumping to the Human Torch, and was where symbiotes were first established as being part of a marauding interstellar empire and prefering strong hosts suitable for facilitating planetary conquests.
- In 1993's Fantastic Four Annual #26, Dreadface takes over a woman named Carrie Burke and consumes her from the inside-out—marking the first time symbiotes are shown doing so to their hosts.
- In 1994's Venom: Seperation Anxiety (Vol. 1) the Venom symbiote bonds to Doctor Zwerling and an unnamed trucker to get back to Eddie Brock.
- In 1995's Venom: Sinner Takes All the Venom symbiote bonds to Anne Weying to save her life, later rebonding to her to save Eddie.
- In the 1995 Planet of the Symbiotes event, it's established that symbiotes are capable of bonding to any host they please, but have a modus operandi of draining their vitality / adrenaline / phenylethanolamine until they die and/or just straight-up consuming them from the inside-out before jumping to a new one—something later seen with the Venom symbiote in 2003's The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 2) and the Mania symbiote in 2003's Venom (Vol. 1).
- In 1996's Venom: The Hunted, two symbiotes that survived the aftermath of the invasion were shown having bonded to otherwise ordinary civilians named George Strickland and Zeena Hodges.
- In 1996's The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #410, the Carnage symbiote leaves Cletus Kasady to take over John Jameson without issue before jumping to Ben Reilly.
Am I missing something? I will admit it's possible—I haven't read every single Venom-related comic (yet) and it's been a long time since I've read some of them. But if this ever was said to be a thing in the comics, it both contradicts the earlier lore (what little there was, at least) and is completely ignored by the later lore—which wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened at Marvel.
Edited by Arawn999

I was looking at the CreatorsPet.Marvel Universe page, and I noticed a lengthy entry regarding multiple characters from Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover — namely the Braddock Academy kids (mostly Apex and Anachronism), Cammi, and Arcade. Judging by a previous example removal on the page, I'm not sure if the examples qualify for the trope, and indeed at least some of it seems like complaining; on the other hand, bias on my part (let's just say I loathed Arena and Undercover in part because of some of the reasons listed in the example) is making me second-guess removing it. So I figured it'd probably better if I got a more neutral party to clarify whether or not it qualifies as misuse/complaining, because I don't think I can trust myself to make that decision.