The Birth of Venom

A little over a year has passed since I last wrote in my blog, but since things have finally calm down the writer's block has passed. Usually I will review a film or a tv show, but today I have decided to focus on comics.
May 1993 my sister was getting ready to graduate from high school and I was just finishing the 7th Grade. My cousins were on there where from Cleveland to attend the graduation. When they arrived I noticed one of them had an issue of SpiderMan that was apart of the 14 part epic Maximum Carnage, while the other had an issue of Superman that was apart of the Reign of Supermen saga. Since by that time in my life I found Superman to be a dumb character I ended up asking my cousin what his Spiderman issue was about. He said he wasn't really sure himself, but he liked Venom so much that he picked up the issue himself. I like Spiderman enough that when I went to the comic book shop with my cousins I picked up the first seven parts of Maximum Carnage.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to introduce myself to an antihero called Venom. Maximum Carnage covered the history between SpiderMan and Venom nicely. The artwork and story was like nothing I had ever seen before in comics it was just on another level. I know the big deal that summer was the Death of Superman/Reign of Supermen, but as far as I was concerned Maximum Carnage was where it was at and my favorite comic book character was now Venom.

Like anybody who discovers there love for a now superhero I wanted more of Venom. In fact I wanted so much more of Venom that I wanted to read every issue he was ever in. What sounded like an easy task at the time turned into headache trying to find out the truth.
When you don't know something ask somebody. So I asked the local comic book shop owner what was Venom's first issue he replied Amazing Spider-Man 300, but the two guys to the side of him said something different. One of them said Web of Spider-Man 18 and the other said Secret Wars #8. All of three of them started to get in debate over this situation so I just left the shop confused.

How can one character have three different first issues? I didn't let that incident deter me from finding an answer, but it would be awhile before I would get a more satisfying answer. That answer came from one of my sister's friends who offered me the majority of his collection because he was getting ready to attend college. The one issue he had in his collection he wouldn't let me have was an Amazing Spider-Man 300. When I saw that issue I lost my poker face and had to ask him is that Venom's first appearance. Nope Amazing Spider-Man 252 was Venom's first appearance.

How can Venom have 4 different first issues was my next question. His answer was the one I was looking for Venom is not Eddie Brock, but the symbiote itself. Spider-Man first appeared wearing the black suit/symbiote in Amazing Spider-Man 252 to where all we knew was that the suit had mysterious powers. The answer satisfied me completely until I picked up a trade paperback entitled the Birth of Venom. Which collected ASM 252-259,298-300, 315-317, and Annual 25, Secret Wars #8, Web of Spider-Man 1, and the Fantastic Four 274. Uncredited Web of Spider-Man 18 and Spetacular Spider-Man 100.

Here is a book that put Venom's history in nice order. While not completely in order by publication date only by Secret Wars 8 being put in front of ASM 252-259. Secret Wars 8 did not come until Dec 84. The order was right chronoligically. The symbiote did first appear in ASM 252, but where the symbiote came from was explained in Secret Wars 8. In Secret Wars 8, Spidey's regular suit was destroyed so he was told by Thor and Hulk to go to a machine where Thor got a new helmet and Hulk got a new pants to get a new suit. Now there is an idea for another story What If Thor's helmet and Hulk's pants were symbiotes.

We didn't even learn the suit was a symbiote until issue 258 of ASM when Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four analyzed the suit for Spidey and ended up blasting it with a sonic gun to get it to seperate and contain it. The symbiote eventually escaped in Fantastic Four 274. In which we next saw the symbiote in SS 100 in which the symbiote attached itself to an innocent bystander to lead up to the events in Web of Spider-Man 1.

Over a year would pass before anything noticeable would happen to Peter Parker a hand shoves him to the subway tracks, but his Spidey sense didn't go off in Web 18. Then Eddie Brock wearing the symbiote appears in ASM 298 and 299 with his first full panel in 299, before making his first full issue debut in ASM 300. So who is right here in the end?

According to the CGC Web 18 is Venom's first cameo appearance and ASM 300 marks his first full appearance. The CGC also recognizes the symbiotes first appearance in ASM 252 and origin in Secret Wars 8. Other people have worn the suit since Brock and have been called Venom so technically my sister's friend is right in the end, but in my view Eddie Brock is Venom so ASM 300 is fine with me.

A 1st appearance for a character should never of been this hard to find out, but the sad thing is the number of writers saying they created Venom as a result of this confusion. Jim Shooter, David Micheline, Roger Stern, and Tom Defalco all said they created Venom, but when you ask fans they say Todd McFarlane the man who drew him big, bulky, razor sharp teeth, and toungue as we know him today. Maybe that is why Todd McFarlane has his own toyline and they don't.

Up next Jam and Jersulem because I didn't listen to friends advice.