Sorry I’ve been away, again. This
time around it was my computer. After almost five years of reliable service, it
just died on me. Over the last week, I’ve procured a new laptop and been
experimenting with it. I’m a little annoyed that this +$700-dollar piece of
equipment needed to have Microsoft Word added to it, for another $150-dollars,
but that’s my problem. Anyway, on with today’s character.
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| He's got the healing touch. And the ability to rip your arms from your sockets |
Antivenoms are an interesting bit
of medical tech, aren’t they? They’re created by “milking” the venom from a
snake, spider, fish etc., then injected into another animal, which will undergo an immune
response that will cancel out the venom’s effects.The resulting cocktail is then taken from the test subject and shipped to hospitals where they can hopefully save the life of someone that got hit with the business end of a cobra. So, like a vaccine it takes
a little bit of what kills you to save your life. It's rather fitting that for his return
to the life of superheroes and villains that Eddie Brock chose Anti-Venom as
his moniker. Let’s get to it.
When we last left Eddie Brock,
former journalist, on again off again superhero and on again off again
supervillain, he was in a bad way physically but an okay place psychologically.
He was dying of cancer, still, but he’d sold the alien Venom Symbiote and donated
the proceeds to charity. His new found good feelings died, however, when the new
owner of the Venom Symbiote also died. Quick summary of that, Angelo Fortunato
got the suit from his mobster Dad, and while they worked well together, the
suit ditched Angelo mid-web-swing after he ran from Spider-Man. Eddie, feeling
responsible, attempted suicide via slitting his wrists. He was saved, but it
could be argued that this wasn’t a mercy. As his cancer worsened, he began to
hallucinate. He was tormented by visions of “Venom,” more accurately himself as
Venom. While wandering the hospital he was staying in, he found May Parker.
Spider-Man’s beloved Aunt had recently been shot and left comatose. His Venom
hallucination persuaded Eddie to kill May. He dressed in a novelty replica of
Spider-Man’s Black Suit, and even murders a nurse that found him in May’s room,
just to be sure he was still capable of killing. But, in the end, he couldn’t
do it. Even though May was the Aunt of his nemesis, he can’t bring himself to
kill her as May is “innocent.” I guess that nurse was secretly a bank robber or
something. Anyway, he tries to rid himself of Venom by slitting his wrists. It’s
around this time that Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, found Eddie. Eddie asks for
forgiveness, probably for thinking about killing Aunt May and for the years of
torment, before defenestrating himself. Peter, being a softhearted superhero,
leaps out the window after Eddie and catches him. When Eddie next awoke, he
found himself chained to his bed. The ghostly Venom is still with him, but
Eddie makes peace with its presence. Venom will always be a part of him, and so
long as the monster in his nightmares remembers that Eddie is in control, he
can deal with it.
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| Just some good old Frenemy bonding. |
A short time later, Eddie found a
new lease on life. Superhero Attorney Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, was able to
convince a jury that Eddie was not responsible for his actions while bonded
with the Venom Symbiote. Since the psychic alien has a history of altering its
hosts mental state, it’s kind of a sound argument. He gets a job at a soup
kitchen run by Mr. Martin Li. Li is a kind hearted man with healing abilities,
and secretly uses said abilities to cure Eddie’s cancer. Not knowing about Li’s
hand in his recovery, Eddie believes it to be a miracle and redoubles his
efforts to make up for his past crimes. Things were looking good for Eddie,
until Venom came crashing back into his life. The new Venom, Mac Gargan the
former Scorpion, broke into the F.E.A.S.T. soup kitchen that Eddie worked at.
The suit had sensed a former host at the kitchen, and Gargan, being a moron,
assumed that it was Spider-Man. The Venom Symbiote, upon sensing Eddie’s now
cancer free body, attempts to leave Gargan and bond again with Eddie. Both men
are obviously freaked out by this, and more so with what happened next. Eddie’s
skin heats up and starts to burn the Venom Symbiote away. A white substance
begins to pore out of Eddie’s pores, enveloping him and transforming him. It’s
revealed that Li’s healing touch supercharged Eddie’s white blood cells, which
then mixed with the trance amounts of the alien parasite in Eddie’s blood stream,
and transformed into a new Symbiote-like creature. Dubbing himself Anti-Venom,
he charges Venom and uses his new Symbiote destroying powers to beat the
supervillain within an inch of his life. He also nearly destroys the Venom
Symbiote. Gargan escaped, but barely.
Eddie tries to use his new powers
to do good. He has…mixed results. His powers now include rapid healing of
himself and others, but there are negative side effects for guys like his old
nemesis Spider-Man. Eddie attempted to purge the trace amounts of the Venom
Symbiote that still existed in Spider-Man’s bloodstream. This attempt greatly
weakened Spider-Man, and nearly stripped him of his powers. It’s later explained
that Eddie’s “Healing Touch” is indiscriminate. Essentially, his healing powers
try to rid Spider-Man of the trace amount of radiation in his system following
that spider bite, which would take away Spider-Man’s powers as well. So yeah,
not the best outcome for Peter. Later on, Anti-Venom saves Spider-Man from
Norman Osborn’s latest scheme, and faces off against Gargan again. The Venom
Symbiote is still recovering at this time, so Gargan is back in a modified
Scorpion suit. Gargan uses a powerful toxin that nearly destroys Eddie’s suit,
but Eddie is saved from death by the Venom Symbiote. Apparently that ball of
black gunk still holds a candle for Eddie. It’d be romantic, if the Venom
Symbiote wasn’t a parasitic monster.
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| Reunions, they can be sooo violent. |
Anti-Venom then faces off against
Mister Negative, a powerful Chinese Mobster and all around bad person. While
the two fight, Eddie learns that Mister Negative is in fact the alternate
persona of Martin Li. Not in a Peter Parker/Spider-Man sense, more like Jekyll
and Hyde, where Martin Li is a genuinely kind hearted and caring individual,
and Mister Negative is a straight up sadist. Eddie doesn’t realize this right
away and goes through yet another crisis of faith. He goes through a “lethal
protector” phase again, killing small time criminals and even teaming up with
the Punisher to take down a drug cartel. Eddie grows increasingly frustrated
that he can’t expose Mister Negative’s true identity, knowing that few would
take him at his word. The whole former supervillain thing does tend to ruin one’s
credibility. So instead he starts attacking Negative’s criminal operations,
which he does very, very well. While on this personal crusade, Anti-Venom
learns that May Parker also knows Mr. Negative’s identity, and decides to fight
Negative directly, rather than risk the sweet old lady’s life by delaying.
Eddie teams up with Spider-Man and another superhero called Wraith to defeat
Negative. They ultimately win when Wraith uses her technological knowhow to
publicly reveal Mister Negative is Martin Li.
Eddie’s time as Anti-Venom
ultimately came to an end during “Spider-Island,” where 99% of New York City’s
population are turned into giant spiders by Spider-Man’s old enemy, the Jackal
and a new enemy the Queen. Eddie is forced to give up his new suit and powers
so that the superscientist can create a cure for the millions transformed into
spider monsters. A fitting end for Anti-Venom. But if you think that Eddie’s
time with Symbiotes is over, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But that’s another
story.
As Anti-Venom, Eddie gains a lot of
powers that are similar to his old Venom abilities. He can cling to walls,
swing on webs, and possess super-strength. He can also still cancel out
Spider-Man’s Spider Sense, but he uses that much less now that he’s tried to
turn over a new leaf. The suit can transform, allowing Eddie to create
disguises, extend his reach, or create tendrils. His newest ability is healing.
The Anti-Venom suit takes Eddie’s natural healing process and pushes it to the
nth degree. He can heal almost instantly from almost any injury. For example,
he was shot in the head, which would lead to either death or severe brain damage
in a normal person. Eddie just shrugged it off. He can heal just about anyone
just by being around. This doesn’t help guys like Spider-Man, anyone with
powers that are “radiation based” lose them if Anti-Venom is too close.
Also, as the name implies,
Anti-Venom is quite literally the opposite of Venom. More accurately, it’s an
Anti-Symbiote. Any Symbiote that touches him is burned away, and destroyed. He’s
also not susceptible to extreme heat or sound like normal Symbiotes. Anti-Venom
is really only vulnerable to two things, extremely powerful venoms/poisons, and
energy given off by Mr. Negative. Hence why he needed Spider-Man’s help to take
Mr. Negative down.
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| Oh great. The last thing he needs is a God Complex. |
To date, Anti-Venom really hasn’t
appeared outside of the comics. Most shows and games end long before Eddie gets
his fancy new duds. The one instance that I know of that Anti-Venom made an
appearance was Spider-Man: Edge of Time.
This is a little complicated, but I’ll try to break it down. In the far future
known of “Spider-Man 2099,” the Spider-Man of that era, Miguel O’Hara, is
investigating a scientist named Walker Sloan. Sloan works for evil cooperate conglomerate
Alchemax, which is bad, but it gets worse when Sloan travels back in time.
Sloan rewrites history, creating Alchemax Corp years before it was supposed to
be created and basically takes over the world. Miguel, who was unaffected by
Sloan’s time tinkering because he was stuck in the time portal during the
rewrite, gets a bit of modern Spider-Man’s DNA and creates a “chronal link” to
the original Spider-Man. Miguel tries to warn Peter to stay off the 66th
floor, as Miguel saw Peter dying there by fighting some monster, but Peter
rushes up anyway. We learn as the game progresses that the monster most likely
responsible is Anti-Venom, who is being mind-controlled by Sloan and his lackey
Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock. They use Anti-Venom’s powers to weaken Spider-Man.
Their plot to kill Spider-Man might have worked, had Miguel not stepped through
the time portal. He trades places with modern Spider-Man, sticking Peter in a
regeneration pod in the future before returning to the present to fight Anti-Venom.
Miguel has a greater leg up on Anti-Venom than Peter did, because his powers
aren’t the result of a radioactive spider bite. He’s able to help Anti-Venom
break free of the controls, and obvious Eddie’s a little upset at being
manipulated. That’s not the end of the game, if that summary sounds interesting
give it a look.
Conceptually, I like Anti-Venom.
From what I’ve seen and read, it is a very natural next step for Eddie. I
especially enjoy that, while one could argue that Anti-Venom only existed to
give Eddie Symbiote power again without taking the suit away from Gargan or
anyone else, they did make Eddie’s new suit distinctive from the old one. It’s
also a nice twist on the “healing” superpower. I mean, when you think of
someone that can heal others, do you picture a hulking white monster that looks
like it eats human flesh? Probably not. He’s the hulking healer, the symbiote
slayer, the astounding Anti-Venom. Next time, we’ll be taking a look at the
master of fear, Batman’s foe, the Scarecrow.
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11112/111121215/3132526-anti_venom_by_nexlamar-d4pzys4.jpg
http://wallpaperest.com/comics-spiderman-wallpaper-345450
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/b/b2/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_570_Textless_Second_Printing_Variant.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100604144629
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/e/e4/Venom27.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111007174715
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