Symbiote (comics)

Symbiote
A Symbiote bonding with another life form
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Amazing Spider-Man #252 (May 1984)
Characteristics
Notable members	Venom Carnage Toxin Scream Hybrid Venom 2099 Anti-Venom
Inherent abilities	Symbiosis with a host provides increased strength, speed, and durability, gains characteristics of host, increases original powers of hosts

A symbiote is a fictional extraterrestrial organism in Marvel Comics. Sometimes referred to as a "living costumes" because of the way the amorphous creatures depicted as enveloping their hosts.

The first appearance of a symbiote occurs in Amazing Spider-Man #252 in which Spider-Man brings one home to Earth after the Secret Wars (Secret Wars #8, which was released months later, details his first encounter with it). The concept was created by a Marvel Comics reader, with the publisher purchasing the idea for $220.00. The original design was then modified by Mike Zeck, becoming the Venom symbiote.. The concept would be explored and used through out multiple storylines, spin-off comics, and derivative projects.

Fictional biography

See also: Venom (comics) and Carnage (comics)

The back-story to the concept of the symbiotes has never been clearly established. However some stories have shown that their species existed for millions of years prior to the arrival of the Venom symbiote on Earth. It is implied that Galactus, devourer of worlds, consumed a world which they had taken over and where they had thrived, based on Carnage's reaction to the Silver Surfer, former herald of Galactus. It was mistakenly believed that this was their homeworld. It is shown through the Carnage symbiote that this was a world whose dominant life forms had been overrun by the marauding symbiotes.

In Venom: Seed of Darkness #1, it is stated that when Krobaa was brought to Earth it bonded with the professor that had found him to acquire (through the symbiosis) knowledge of humanity to bring the information to a high galactic order that valued "diversity of mind above all else", but Krobaa was infected with the madness of the human mind. Attacking all living things claiming to feed on their fear (much like Dreadface) and only after Eddie Brock's camera flash had weakened him, Krobaa regained control of himself and committed suicide to save other planets from the "plague of madness."

The cover of Secret Wars #8, which details Spider-Man's first encounter with the black costume. Pencil art by Mike Zeck.

The mini-series Planet of the Symbiotes presents a different story (widely accepted as the canon story). Symbiotes were originally an unfeeling, conquering race, taking over any species they came in contact with to feed off their emotions; this mainly involved adrenaline rushes from death-defying feats and, as a consequence, the hosts tend to be short-lived. This was also evidenced in the Fantastic Four series, when a black cube (imprisoned by Devos the Devastator as a trophy of the most dangerous species he has ever faced) escapes and is revealed to be a sentient extraterrestrial symbiote (called Dreadface in the issue's title) that fuels (and then feeds off) the animosity between the Human Torch and the Thing before apparently being incinerated.

Angel Medina claims he was reluctant to start work on Mighty Avengers because he was working on a Venom project, only to be told he would be drawing a story with "the Avengers vs. an alien invasion - by the Venoms."

This Arc was later confirmed to be drawn by Mark Bagley, as Medina would be unavailable. Solicitations state that the New Avengers will also be part of this Arc, themselves becoming infested by Symbiotes. New Avengers #34 revealed that Doctor Doom is responsible for dropping a "Venom Bomb" on New York that unleashes the Symbiotes. The story was completed in Mighty Avengers #8.

Further backstory is given on this in Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #2 where it is revealed that Doom has collected a tiny sample of the symbiote's cells from the drone he had sent in earlier. In Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #4 it is actually revealed to be Kristoff Vernard who orchestrated this so the Doom would be arrested for the event above.

Powers and abilities

Symbiotes empower the natural abilities of a host to the point where they far exceed that of normal members of the hosts' species. These abilities include the following:

• Superhuman strength.
• Superior speed and agility, enhances other physical attributes as well.
• Enhanced durability and resistance to damage.
• Genetic memory, recalling information from previous hosts.
• Enhanced healing ability.
• Can expand to any size as long as they have something to grow on such as a host or an object. Symbiotes can get inside of small areas such as electric wires and the insides of cars and completely disable them.
• The symbiote also reacts to the thoughts and will of the host. When Spider-Man was originally selected, he had been thinking about Spider-Woman's costume in the Secret Wars. The symbiote acted on this and formed a similar costume, the one seen on him and Venom.

The following are functions that have been demonstrated from various hosts' wills (but are not limited to):

• The ability to form fangs or simple bladed weapons out of their limbs.
• The ability to form tendrils from their body
• The ability to shape-shift, from mimicking clothing up to and including complete change of appearance and stature.
• The ability to stick to walls (adapted from Spider-Man).
• The ability to produce webbing from its own mass (adapted from Spider-Man).
• The Venom symbiote also has empathic abilities, and is able to project desires and needs into the thoughts of its host or potential hosts.

This ability can also aid Venom in detecting the truth from those he interrogates.

• Can sense the presence of other beings within a certain distance.
• Symbiote bonding protects the host from Ghost Rider's penance stare.
• Venom and its descendants all possess the ability to bypass the Spider-Sense (because the original symbiote was attached to Peter first, it took his genetic information and spider-powers. This means that the symbiote attacking Peter would essentially be Peter attacking himself, which wouldn't set off his Spider-Sense; during the Clone Saga, this became complicated, as Venom did set off Ben Reilly's Spider-Sense, but Carnage apparently did not).
• The ability to create storage portals inside of them (this created easy access to Peter's camera).
• Each symbiote has their own unique ability, such as Carnage being able to see from every direction of his body (this is similar to Spider-Man's spider sense).
• In some realities, Venom's symbiote has been shown to be able to replicate.

Weaknesses

Symbiotes were naturally weakened by intense sounds and intense heat - especially large fires. Additionally, in some stories and games, (mostly mentioned in the 2000 Spider-Man game), they are also weakened by magnesium but that is probably because magnesium added to Spider-Man's webbing made it burn. However as each new symbiote has spawned a child, a natural evolution seems to not only increase their strengths, but also reduce their weaknesses. Even already existing symbiotes can mutate and develop these resistances. Still, there has not been an invulnerable symbiote in mainstream continuity, because the newest breeds can be harmed by incredible amounts of sonic waves and heat. Also in the mainstream Marvel Universe, symbiotes are vulnerable to the heat produced by high voltage electricity.

There are other weaknesses as well. Iron Man managed to create an antidote formula that could destroy a 'symbiote' (it should be noted that these were actually just a virus-like biological organisms created by Doctor Doom originally based on the 'Venom' symbiote and were specially made as a Bio-weapon). With Venom and Carnage, authorities have been able to keep the symbiotes in check with a chemical inhibitor. The criminal Styx nearly killed the Venom symbiote with his lethal touch. Whether a symbiote can mutate and reduce the effect of these weaknesses is unknown, although Carnage claimed to have developed invulnerability to sonics. Also, when a symbiote bonded with Wolverine, it was pushed out by his advanced healing factor, although Wolverine's healing factor had no use when he was bonded to a clone of the Venom symbiote.

In some incarnations, the symbiote is depicted as requiring a certain chemical (most likely phenethylamine) to stay sane and healthy, which has been said to be found abundantly in two sources: chocolate and human brain tissue. Thus, the host is forced to steal/buy large amounts of chocolate or become an unwilling cannibal who devours the brains of those he kills. This peculiar trait has only been witnessed in the Venom symbiote. However, both Carnage and Toxin have threatened their enemies with aspirations to "eating their brains", as well as various other body parts.

On at least one occasion, Spider-Man was able to exhaust the symbiote by taking advantage of the fact that it made its webbing out of itself; after the symbiote had already used a great deal of webbing to bind him to a bell, Spider-Man forced the symbiote to use further webbing so that it would exhaust itself like blood dripping from a wound (Although the sheer amount of webbing that the symbiote would need to use for this weakness to be exploited makes its use in a fight limited).

List of Symbiotes

• Venom - Initially introduced in Marvel Superheroes Secret War #8, merged with Spider-Man, and notably Eddie Brock.
• Carnage - Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #360 as the spawn of Venom bonded with serial-killer, Kletus Cassidy.
• Toxin - The character was introduced in Venom/Carnage #2; as the spawn of Carnage.
• The Life Foundation symbiotes- Phage/Rampage (Carl Mach), Riot (Trevor Cole), Lasher (Ramon Hernandez), Agony (Leslie Gesneria) and Scream (Donna Diego) - These characters were introduced in Venom: Lethal Protector #4.
• Hybrid - The character was introduced at a Hybrid version of the 'Life Foundation symbiotes' in Venom: Along Came A Spider #1.
• Payback - Bonded to a more evolved cousin of normal race of symbiotes. Is currently a vigilante and head of the True Believers.
• The clone of Spider-Girl in the MC2 universe named April Parker is a hybrid symbiote/human. When in her symbiote form, she calls herself Mayhem.

Other versions

Ultimate symbiotes

File:Ultimate venom.jpg

Venom, as depicted in Ultimate Spider-Man #38 (May, 2003). Art by Mark Bagley.

In the Ultimate Spider-Man universe, the symbiote has vastly changed. The fathers of Peter Parker and Eddie Brock Jr. had created the suit as a protoplasmic cure for cancer. The first stage would be to cover the host's body and eliminate a disease in the patient's body. Stage Two would involve the suit enhancing the wearer's strength and natural abilities. The suit was unfinished as Bolivar Trask stole the project from the scientists, but Eddie Brock Sr. saved a small sample for his son to find. Peter Parker first tries the suit on and ends up with the well-known black suit, which vastly increases his strength and agility, allowed him to heal from gunshot wounds, and use part of the protoplasm to make "webs". Though Peter could easily create 'webs' from both his hands and fingers, Eddie has only been shown to shoot webs in the comics, while in the games, Venom was shown to be restricted to creating protoplasmic tentacles. It seems as if the only weakness of the suit is extreme voltage of electricity, as it absorbed the Shocker's vibrations with no trouble; in fact, Peter found them relaxing. When the suit began to influence him mentally, making him hallucinate, Peter used electricity to get the suit off him before it merged with him permanently. It almost killed him, which goes to show the strength and attachment between the two. When "worn" by a being other than Peter Parker, such as Eddie Brock, the host is compelled to seek out and devour other human beings or else be consumed by the suit itself, presumably due to the suit breaking down on the genetic level due to incompatible DNA patterns between itself and the host. After the suit absorbed the revived "Carnage" symbiote, presumably a trace-element of itself left behind after Peter Parker escaped it, this need to feed apparently vanished.

In the Ultimate Universe, there have been only two symbiotes: Venom, and the Carnage that Peter becomes in the Ultimate Spider-Man Game. The Carnage which appears in the Ultimate Comics is an artificially created organism partly based on the Venom Project.

In other media

Television

File:Carnage.jpg

Carnage in Spider-Man: The Animated Series.

• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the symbiote is brought to earth by John Jameson. In this continuity, bonding with the symbiote makes Spider-Man more powerful and aggressive than usual (an effect that is later displayed in the third film and the Spectacular Spider-Man series). Just like in the comics after Spider-Man rejects the symbiote it bonds with Eddie Brock and becomes Venom. Venom is introduced in the series in the season one episodes series "The Alien Costume". Venom is brought back along with his offspring, Carnage in the two part episodes "Venom Returns" and "Carnage". In these episodes it shows Eddie Brock's more heroic side. Due to being a Saturday morning cartoon, Carnage instead of killing people, he absorbs the life force out of people. In the show finale episode of "Spider Wars", Spider-Man faces an parallel version of himself donning the Carnage symbiote called Spider-Carnage and tries to stop him from destroying all dimensions.
• In Spider-Man Unlimited, Venom and Carnage journey to Counter Earth, making contact with "The Synoptic", a group of symbiotes who had bonded with the dinosaurs of Counter Earth prior to their extinction, and were forced underground until the present day. The Synoptic symbiotes are depicted as small yellow creatures that attach themselves to their victims upper body, not covering them completely, as Venom and Carnage's do.

• File:Venom in Spectacular Spider-Man.jpg

  Venom in The Spectacular Spider-Man.

  The symbiote appears in the final arc of season one of The Spectacular Spider-Man, resembling the movie version in its initial appearance, but changing to resemble the comic-book version. The symbiote enhances Spider-Man's original abilities and produces organic webbing, but also influences his decision-making processes, making him more aggressive to the point where he almost kills Doctor Octopus and takes up a job offer from Tombstone, and even taking control of his body and fighting the Sinister Six while he was asleep. In the episode "Intervention'", Peter realizes that the symbiote is affecting his personality, signified by Peter wearing a black T-shirt formed from the symbiote and referring to himself as "we" instead of "I", and attempts to divulge it from his body using a church bell. The symbiote is detached from Peter when he drew strength from his memories of Uncle Ben, and Peter placed the symbiote back in its holding cell and tried to kill it by freezing it, although it survived with the help of Eddie Brock it then bonded after sharing the same hatred over Spider-Man because Eddie blames Peter for losing his job and become Venom. As Venom, they would appear in the season finale, "Nature vs. Nurture." In season 2, the symbiote appears in the episode "First Steps", tries to frame Spider-Man in the episode "Growing Pains," and then tries to reveal Spider-Man's identity as Peter Parker to the whole world in "Identity Crisis."

Film

The Symbiote appears as the main antagonist in Spider-Man 3. As in the comics, the symbiote attaches itself to Spider-Man first, but instead of giving him his classic black costume (like in the comics), it gives his red & blue costume a new, black color, with his usual webbing pattern on it and a slightly different spider symbol. After Spider-Man discovers the symbiote's true nature and realizes that it seeks to bond with him completely and take over his life, he separates himself from the symbiote by tearing off his black costume in an active church bell-tower. The symbiote then moves to Eddie Brock, Jr., and the merger becomes Venom. The symbiote is revealed to have crashed down to Earth via a meteorite and clung onto the back of Peter's moped at the very start of the film, before their bonding.

Venom appears similar to the comic book version, but with a disorganized web-pattern on his costume. He is also not as muscular as his comic counterpart. Instead, Venom is slightly above medium build as compared to the moderate build of Spider-Man. He fires webbing from the top of his hands, as in the comics, but his webbing is black in color and resembles barbed wire. The Symbiote is also seen crawling across the ground, rather than flowing like liquid as its comic counterpart does. In the Spider-Man 3 novelization by Peter David, the symbiote forms into a large and host less Venom-like creature that grows from Eddie's remains and grows around the construction site pulling itself upwards. Here it attempts to rebond itself to Spider-Man. In the film, Dr. Curtis Connors analyzes a small sample of the symbiote at Peter's request. While he has no idea precisely what it is, he notes that it is similar to a symbiote and upon further testing, later reveals to Peter that the substance amplifies the darker qualities of its host (specifically aggression).

Video games

• In the arcade title Spider-Man: The Video Game, after the defeat of Dr. Doom, the final boss fight consists of a battle against an infinite number of Doom-created symbiote clones (leading to speculation that this was the source of the Mighty Avengers storyline). All the clones can be killed, but there is one "prime clone" with much more life. Defeating this clone is the only way to win.
• The video game Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage is based on the comic book crossover "Maximum Carnage" that introduced Carnage.
• The symbiote family are major characters in the video game Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety.
• In the first PlayStation Spider-Man game, Doc Ock and Carnage team up to try and unleash a symbiote army onto the whole city. The spawned symbiotes are host-less clones of the Carnage symbiote and pink in color, and serve as the strongest non-boss enemies. Venom also appears in a supporting role, and his symbiote is an unlockable costume for Spider-Man. The final segment of the game features Spider-Man escaping from "Monster Ock"; the result of the Carnage symbiote melding with Doctor Octopus. The symbiote is apparently killed when engulfed in an explosion.
• In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, the black suit appears as an unlockable alternate costume for Spider-Man along with Scarlet Spider and Tony Stark's "Iron-Spider" costume from the Civil War storyline. The Eddie Brock version of Venom also appears as a DLC playable character in the Xbox 360 version.
• In the Spider-Man 3 video game, along with Venom, Shriek and Morbius appear. Shriek's powers come from a symbiote in this game which is also black in color. However the symbiote only covers half of her body. She apparently had an attraction to Spider-Man in his black suit, most likely due to her being affected with another symbiote. This is only found on the Wii/PS2 versions of the game.
• In the Ultimate Spider-Man video game both Venom and Carnage are major characters.
• In the video game Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, Venom is a playable character and boss. Carnage is also playable on the PSP version. The Game revolves around collecting shards from the meteor that brought the Venom Symbiote to earth. The shards are used by Mysterio in tandem with his solid light holographic technology and Nano Tech to create P.H.A.N.T.O.M.'s (short for Perpetual Holographic Avatar Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters) in a plot to take over the world. After the game is completed Nick Fury states that he plans to use Mysterio's ideal to create a army of super soldiers codenamed project: CARNAGE.
• In Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Venom returns to New York to send and unleash an invasion of cloned symbiotes to rule the city. During a fight with Venom, the symbiote suddenly reproduces and the spawn bonds with Spider-Man creating a replica of the Black Suit, but with considerably more Carnage-like abilities such as projecting bladed tentacles. Over the course of the game, Venom creates symbiote 'seed-pods' in various locations around the city which absorb passing civilians and infect them with various types of symbiote ranging from Snatcher Symbiotes (the small black Symbiotes that drag unsuspecting victims to the 'seed-pods'), Zombie Symbiotes (the weak white Symbiotes), Berserker Symbiotes (the red shiny Symbiotes), Grappler Symbiotes (black and red versions of the Berserkers), and Slasher Symbiotes (the white and pink Symbiotes). The Symbiotes even manage to infect Electro, Vulture, Black Cat and Wolverine. Symbiote-Electro and Symbiote-Vulture go on to spawn other symbiotes with powers similar to their hosts resulting in Electrolings and Vulturelings. All are eventually defeated by Spider-Man and the symbiotes are separated from them.
• In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, The Mac Gargan version of Venom is part of the story and is playable after a certain point. Carnage is available via a DLC.
• In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Ultimate Spider-Man in his symbiote suit is a playable character, Madame Web having restored the black suit as it provides this world's Peter Parker with additional abilities that he will require to succeed in his mission, using her psychic abilities to prevent the suit attempting to take over his mind.

Attractions

• Scream appears as one of the villains in Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride.

See also

• Black oil: Creation of the TV series The X-Files that represents an alien entity/life force/virus. It appears as a liquid with the consistency of crude oil, can move on its own, and is sentient.
• Spawn, wears a symbiotic costume.
• Zato-1 from the Guilty Gear series, is in a symbiotic relationship with a black, sentient, creature with a liquid-like consistency. In Zato's (uncanonical) ending of the original entry in the series, the entity takes control of him.

External links

• Symbiote on the Spider-Man Wiki