I thought since it’s nearly Halloween and I had some free time; I might offer up a creepy and gooey MC2 Family Tree for your approval. This time we’ll be looking at very different kind of family, one that’s not even human! Today, we’ll look into The Venom Symbiote Family Tree!
*Before we dive right in, the usual rules: For the purposes of these
family trees, I accept that MC2 characters share their published history
(up to a point) with their 616/Main Marvel Universe counterparts. I make
exceptions for any retcons implemented after the point the MC2 diverges
from the 616 and in cases where it's explicitly or implicitly different
(Aunt May really died) or when a writer later introduces a previously
unheard of relative (the Pym family) who is never mentioned, seen or heard of in
the MC2. With the last exception, I would add them to the family tree in
later updates should they be mentioned in MC2 material at any point. Got
it? Excellent!*
The Alien Symbiote later known as one half of the
villain-turned-anti-hero Venom first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man
#252. This story was published before the events which preceded it in Marvel
Super Heroes Secret Wars #8 where we see Spider-Man pick up the
alien costume for the first time. I think we all know how things turn out. Peter
finds out the costume is an alien symbiote trying to bond with him permanently,
he rejects it before it comes back and he drives it off using a church bell. In
Amazing Spider-Man #299 and #300 we learn that it later bonded
with someone who hates Spider-Man and blames him for his problems: Eddie
Brock. The two became Venom and the rest is history. You can find
more about Venom in the MC2 here.
It turns out symbiotes produce asexually as we learn when the Venom
Symbiote breaks Eddie Brock free from prison, leaving behind its spawned offspring. This
offspring would join with Brock’s cellmate, serial killer Cletus
Kasady to become Carnage. The Carnage symbiote first appeared
in Amazing Spider-Man #345 before being led on a rampage of random
murders by its host. It’s worth noting that Eddie Brock was unaware of
this spawn until alerted to the threat by Spider-Man. It’s also probably
important to mention that upon consulting with his own symbiote, Brock
is told the symbiote’s race reproduce once per generation and have no
social structure or concept of family (Amazing Spider-Man #362). Keep
that in mind. For more on Carnage in the MC2, see here and look forward
to another post next year about Cletus Kasady.
Venom would get his own series in the form of continual mini-series
starting with Venom: Lethal Protector. It’s here that we learn the Life
Foundation has forcibly removed five ‘seeds’ from the Venom Symbiote
and accelerated their physical maturation. So, I guess Venom was
incorrect or lying when it said they only produce once per generation? It is
mentioned that the fifth ‘seed’ they take is the ‘final’ one, so maybe six
spawn is the limit instead of one? The five spawn are bonded with volunteer
security personnel from the Life Foundation to act as ‘Guardians’
of the organisations twisted plans (Venom: Lethal Protector #4-#5).
The first of these five ‘Guardians’ we see is a Yellow Symbiote
with prehensile hair tendrils when bonded to its host, but we soon meet a Grey
Symbiote, a Green Symbiote, a Lavender Symbiote and an Orange
Symbiote. All five symbiotes are seemingly destroyed using the same device
that accelerated their growth (Venom: Lethal Protector #5). A short time
later, in the Venom: Separation Anxiety mini series we learn that the
five symbiotes and their hosts survived and had rejected the Life Foundation
and its world views. Seeking out Eddie Brock to help them, the ‘Guardians’
liberated him in hopes he would teach them how to communicate and control their
symbiotes.
Things deteriorate when Leslie (host of the Lavender
Symbiote) is murdered and the group blames Brock. Ramon, Trevor
and Carl (hosts of the Green, Grey and Orange Symbiotes)
would also be slain before Donna (host of the Yellow Symbiote)
was revealed as the killer, driven by her schizophrenia to murder all who bond
with symbiotes (Venom: Lethal Protector #1-4).
A bit of a detour now, as I want to talk about common misconceptions
among fans regarding these five Life Foundation symbiotes. They are
never given codenames on-panel in any of their appearances. While all five Life
Foundation symbiotes appeared previously in the Venom/Spider-Man:
Separation Anxiety video game from 1995, all five go unnamed
throughout. However two of the five were
released as action figures for a line of toys called Venom: Planet of the
Symbiotes where they were dubbed as follows: ‘Scream’ for Donna’s
symbiote and ‘Lasher’ for Ramon’s symbiote. The names of two
other unrelated action figures were also erroneously applied to Trevor
and Carl’s symbiotes: ‘Riot’ and ‘Phage’ by some fans. Leslie’s
codename of ‘Agony’ appears to come from nowhere official. Apart from Scream,
these names would eventually be assigned to the various symbiote characters in 2011’s
Carnage, U.S.A. #2 years after their initial hosts death’s.
As for Donna aka Scream, not only had she been given
solo appearances in the Spider-Man titles seeking Venom’s aid prior to the
events of Separation Anxiety, she would go onto appear in two further mini-series,
Venom: The Hunted and Venom: Tooth and Claw as a more sympathetic
character who helps children but also fluctuates between helping fellow
symbiote-hosts and hunting them. While all five Life Foundation
symbiotes appeared previously in the Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety
video game from 1995, all five go unnamed. As mentioned above, her
codename Scream appears to originate from an action figure produced in 1996,
despite which she is simply called ‘Female Symbiote’ only in other
merchandise such as collectable trading cards.
Even more trivia: Scream appears in the Theme Park ride The
Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man opened in 1999 as a member of the Sinister
Syndicate led by Doctor Octopus. It’s a lesser known fact that this
ride has a tie-in comic which identifies the character as Scream, making
it the earliest on-panel reference to the name, albeit likely not one from the Main
Marvel Universe (Marvel Super Hero Island Adventure #1). The Civil War: Battle Damage Report handbook would
finally identify her as Scream in 2007. What was the point of noting all
of these naming-facts? To make it clear why I used quotation marks for all five
symbiotes in in my Venom Symbiote Family Tree above. None of the Life
Foundation Symbiote characters began using the codenames fans attributed to
them until well after the MC2 diverged.
The four host-less Life Foundation Symbiotes found themselves
tortured in through experiments during the events of Planet of the Symbiotes.
When the entire invasion force of symbiotes were destroyed by a psychic shriek,
the four symbiotes joined together into a hybrid to survive. Escaping with the
aid of Guardsman Scott Washington, the composite symbiote would
soon seek out and bond with the man becoming the heroic vigilante known as Hybrid
(Venom: Along Came a Spider #1-#4, Venom: The Hunted #1-#3).
That’s it for the 616 aka Main Marvel Universe before it
diverges into the MC2 Universe, so let us now talk about Mayhem. After
arranging the apparent death of Peter and Mary Jane Parker’s
newborn daughter May Parker, Norman Osborn cloned her and
genetically tinkered with both infants. Sending one baby away, Norman
continued to enhance the other, going so far as hiring Eddie Brock and
using cell samples from the symbiote to transform the baby into a unique
hybrid. This hybrid child would lay forgotten in a secret lab for many years
following Norman Osborn’s sudden death. Finally rediscovered and awakened,
this ‘May’ would encounter her counterpart, briefly attempting to replace
her before bonding with both her and Peter Parker (at the time controlled
by the brainwaves of Norman Osborn) to become a monstrous ‘Goblin God’
as part of Osborn’s revenge (Amazing Spider-Girl #20-#30).
Freed with the aid of Spider-Girl, the symbiotic-clone hybrid
would move in with the Parker family and assume the name April Parker.
Unfortunately, this wouldn’t last. As a result of a rising gang war and an
encounter with Fury the Goblin Queen, April set about ending the
violence by killing anyone involved. When Spider-Girl confronted her,
she soundly beat the hero but found herself unable to kill her ‘sister’. When
the gang war escalated, Mayhem wound up killing the Hobgoblin, definitively
ending it (Amazing Spider-Man Family #5-#8, Web of Spider-Man (vol.
2) #1-#4, Spectacular Spider-Girl #1-#4).
May and April had a climactic battle in a warehouse
which would lead to an explosive fire in which May died. The resulting fallout
would send April into a spiral of destruction and trigger the creation
of Bio-Preds (mercenaries bonded to pieces of the Carnage Symbiote)
to stop her. However, these Bio-Preds turned on humanity instead,
driving it to the brink of destruction. As humanity’s only hope, an elderly April
would make a desperate trip into the past to change history. Unfortunately, the
older April found herself materialized within the warehouse wall dying.
Sending out her symbiote tendrils to her younger self, she relayed her story which
convinced April to save May. This final act of heroism apparently
cost April her own life as she was consumed by the fiery explosion (Spider-Girl:
The End).
I had a great time deep-diving into this gooey pool of symbiote lore and
I hope it shows. I’ve always had a great fondness for April Parker aka
Mayhem but researching the other symbiotes has left me with a great appreciation
for the blobby little aliens. For example, I think the original Scream
and Hybrid were woefully underutilized. I huge thanks to arias-98105 for their help once again.
Until I spawn a whole batch of gooey symbiotes with a craving for
brains, I remain
frogoat