Appearing in 1st story
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Other Characters:
- Mr. Gardner (Vision or hallucination)
- Mr. Belvedere (Mentioned) (Vision or hallucination)
- Heidi Gardner (Mentioned) (Vision or hallucination)
Races and Species:
- Humans (Main story and flashback)
- Symbiotes (Main story and flashback)
- Rodentoid Aliens (First appearance) (Only in flashback)
Locations:
- Earth
- United States of America
- New York
- New York City
- New York
- United States of America
- Unnamed planet (First appearance) (Only in flashback)
Items:
- Venom Symbiote (Main story and flashback)
Synopsis for 1st story
One of Eddie Brock's neignbors angrily pounds on the door of his apartment as black ooze flows down from the top of the door, saying he needs permission to paint the room black. As the man's hand brushes against the symbiote biomass, it latches onto his hand - causing him to recoil in terror and flee. Inside his apartment, Eddie Brock - transformed by the symbiote that had once been Spider-Man's black suit into a hulking monster - sits in a black web, contemplating his new state of existence as it intrudes into his mind and memories. Flashing back to his childhood, Eddie is thanked by Mr. Gardner for saving Heidi's cat, only for the symbiote to lunge from the shadows and impale him. As Eddie flees in terror, protesting that this isn't how it happened and that the symbiote doesn't belong, it engulfs him and shows him some of its own early memories.
On a hellish planet a galaxy away, a female rodentoid alien scrambles to the top of a hill, watched by a blob of living darkness. The rodentoid alien succumbs to the toxic atmosphere, tumbling down the hill and giving birth to several tiny eggs before she perishes. As the eggs hatch, the infants choking on their first breaths, the symbiote englufs them and bonds to them - transforming them from nearly-stillborn prey into apex predators. As their mother's corpse is swarmed by insectoid scavengers, the symbiote-augmented infants attack and devour one of them.
Pulling out of the symbiote's memory and finding himself face-to-face with it, Eddie asks if what it wanted to show him is that it helps those too weak to survive by making them strong enough to survive in a cruel and violent world. Eddie accepts the symbiote's offer of power in exchange for mutual revenge on Spider-Man, allowing it to enter into his body and entwine its dark essence into his very chromosomes.
Some time later, as Peter Parker gleefully gushes over his photos of Spider-Man having made the front page, Eddie trails after him - the symbiote shape-shifted into a trench coat and fedora. While Peter is distracted by his success, Eddie shoves him into the path of an oncoming subway train. As Peter is horrified by his Spider-Sense not having warned him, Eddie changes his disguise and leaves; annoyed that Peter survived but noting that his over-reliance on his Spider-Sense is an exploitable weakness.
Later, Mary Jane Parker comes home and is startled to find Spider-Man's black suit hanging over the closet door. As she calms herself, the costume manifests a fanged maw and speaks in a distorted voice, saying that it finds being called "just a costume" very offensive. As MJ recoils, Eddie emerges from the closet in his monstrous form and asks the symbiote if it knows who she is. The symbiote replies that Peter chose her over it; and as MJ succumbs to shock and terror, Eddie tells her that he's going to kill Peter. Mary Jane - thinking she's hallucinating that Spider-Man's costume is speaking to her - says she's always known that being Spider-Man would kill Peter, but that she'd never ask him to choose between her and being a superhero because she knows he'd pick being Spider-Man. Laughing, Eddie grabs her with tendrils and complains about how unfair it was that Anne left him but that Peter - who he dismisses as an even bigger liar than himself - got to get the girl. Throwing MJ into a wall, Eddie snarls at her to tell Peter than he is going to kill him and that this time he's not lying.
Solicit Synopsis
Trivia
- The planet shown in the Venom symbiote's flashback is revealed to be the homeworld of Gorr the God-Butcher in Venom (Vol. 4) #4.