Most people are aware that Venom began as a Spider-Man villain who transitioned into more of an anti-hero with his own adventures, and while only dedicated fans or 90s kids tend to remember those adventures where he faced various different foes and threats, none of them really stuck...
What kind of enemies do you think would make good villains for Venom? Any existing ones? Alternatively, any old ones you think should be brought back? Also, thoughts on Venom as a protagonist in general?
I loved venom as a kid. I still have the TPBs of his shit in Amazing spider-man, but honestly the writing was pretty terrible and the only thing memorable about him is the cool design and just being generally badass looking. I do however think you could do a new venom/carnage storyline with some solid science fiction writing focusing on all the alien symbiote shit. That'd be pretty interesting.
the first Venom comic i got as a kid was Venom:The Hunted i think. he ate the brains of a hot blond with big boobs.
so i guess the question becomes "which Venom?"
either way, here's my list of antagonists:
Captain Marvel
Stardust (but Stardust might be too powerful)
Dark Beast
Punisher
Mojo
Carnage
Kingpin
The Hand
Norman Osborn
allies (recurring or one-time team-up):
Deathlok
Moon Knight
Daredevil
Morbius
Rocket and Groot
Dr. Strange
is Spiral still working for Mojo?
Obviously, Carnage. Shriek might be a good fit because of their history and his vulnerability to sonics. A fire based villain would probably need to be shoved in there.
human torch might as well be a villain. he was with the inhumans and openly dislikes mutants
another ally could be S.H.O.C.
don't know whatever happened to him. like he got brought up or created in peter parker spider man in the late 90s and then was dropped
He had a heat based villain back in the day
oh shit bring that one back!! he didn't actually die at the end
I kind of like the idea of Kraven going after him in the recent comic
That seems to be a common opinion, but I don't really get it. I thought the Venom stuff with Spider-Man was pretty entertaining, and thought Brock was a pretty unique and original characterization once he became more fleshed out
He already has the basis of an interesting rogues gallery, they just need to be fleshed out more.
>Carnage
>Shriek
>Doppleganger
>The Five Symbiotes
>Life Foundation
Eddie's rogues were almost all one-off lame-asses, the only real exceptions being the Jury and the Life Foundation.
Almost any of them could be easily be brought back, but they remain in limbo because no one cares about them (though Doctor Yes from License to Kill made a completely random reappearance in an issue of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl).
>>The Five Symbiotes
Didn't he kill all of them?
Yeah, I was actually just going through those TPBs and god some of the art is really good, but I felt trying to read the dialogue was worse than even the most hackneyed silver age shit.
1.The thing with Eddie is that writers are afraid to take him out of his comfort zone of "We are Venom we hate the Spider" except in short spurts like with Anti-Venom. He's got the potential to work on his own but he keeps getting pushed as Spidey's Bane.
2. There's a dozen other symbiotes that could create an interesting cast of characters but they keep killing them all.
3. We have a viable cast of characters-Eddie, Mania, Flash, Cletus. Just BS up a suit for Flash to use. Speaking of which, bring the other symbiotes back from the dead and give them to interesting characters that you won't kill off.
4. Some ideas-introduce stable symbiote suits that actually don't fuck over their wearer. Have wearers use them with their own personality quirks. One character never turns off the invisibility part of the suit because he's cautious and it makes him deadly as fuck because the suit also muffles his steps. A creative character likes making little pets from his costume, sort of like the darklings from the Darkness. An aggressive individual uses his suit like armor. He goes as HULK HUGE as he can in a fight and his suit doesn't look as liquidy as the others, it looks more like he's covered in chainlink scales than ink.
Ultron
Super Skrull, Skrull
Skree Empire
I'd imagine since the symbiote is from outer space. A good starting point for villians would be the cosmic ones.
Maybe they want Eddies symbiote or something.
Or maybe they need to destroy all the symbiotes.
I think the only one that stuck was Scream. The other four are in the possession of the military.
>1.The thing with Eddie is that writers are afraid to take him out of his comfort zone of "We are Venom we hate the Spider" except in short spurts like with Anti-Venom.
I don't think Eddie has been characterized like that in a long time desu, like even before Anti-Venom and never again after
Does Kravin remember fighting Flash in the Savage Land or was he too high on his ritualistic heroin binge?
I like the idea of Venom as a...tolerated villain, he does just enough good to sort of balance his brutality, and his similarity to Spider-Man and official villain status makes him an acceptable target to throw new experimental super soldiers at. Imagine if they threw MVP's Iron Spider clones at Venom as their beta test. If they can fight Venom and win, they're considered ready for SHIELD deployment.
>Dr. Strange
I suddenly really want Venom as Strange's doorman. People come prepared for magic, not expecting this alien monster to get in their way.
Have flash as space knight for cosmic
Have eddie as stranges hench for magic
Have carnageman/andi as vigilante for street level
>The Five Symbiotes
I thought they got merged into a single-entity called Hybrid?
Why does Kraven always go toe to toe with people above his paygrade class? Spidey Peter for starters? I get he's a great martial artist, great tactician, was part of KGB Supersoviet agent program, has enhancing drugs that put him at just below metahuman and he did have a magical Voodoo gf but so what? So does everyone else in Marvel Uni have that and more. Why does Sergei get written for the last 40 years as this super patrician Ruskie Chadmeister who can kick the shit out of heroes and villains he has no business not getting killed by? It's like Marvel editors have a massive hardon for Kraven. Dude can't even stay dead and he fucking killed himself WTF? If Marvel loves him so much put him in a goddamn movie then.
>he ate the brains of a hot blond with big boobs
Probably wasn't much of a meal.
>Why does Kraven always go toe to toe with people above his paygrade class?
Because his whole gimmick is being a hunter who hunts super heroes
RACIST
>Comics
>Permanent death
Probably, but he's never met Eddie before.
>Why does Sergei get written for the last 40 years as this super patrician Ruskie Chadmeister who can kick the shit out of heroes and villains he has no business not getting killed by?
I thought Kraven had actually been dead for most of that time?
The impression I had of Kraven was that he was a villain that hadn't aged very well, but the story that killed him off, Kraven's Last Hunt sort of elevated him into being thought of as one of the greats, so he tends to get treated as a bigger deal.
I suspect if it wasn't for Kraven's Last Hunt, he would've degenerated into a joke villain or something
>It's like Marvel editors have a massive hardon for Kraven.
There's your answer; he's one of the sexist villains around.
This is true. By the 1980s, the idea of the "big game hunter" type of person that had inspired Kraven was a very outdated concept, and he narrowly escapes getting killed by The Scourge at one point.
They were allowed to kill him off because he was seen as a lame villain who hadn't aged well, but Kraven's Last Hunt gave him a great send-off, and became known as one of the all-time classic Spider-Man stories.
At first, this resulted in a lot of Kraven legacy characters trying to avenge him: Calypso, Grim Hunter, Alyosha, Ana & Sasha Kravinoff, plus Chameleon being retconned into being Kraven's half-brother. For a while, they just started drawing Alyosha exactly like Kraven.
By the time they actually brought Kraven back, he'd been built up into a bigger deal than he'd usually been before he died.
Also said villain had an even worse reason to off Brock than the latter had with Spider-Man.