Symbiote (comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  The symbiotes of Marvel Comics, also called the Klyntar, are a fictional species of alien parasites, and more than 40 of them are known in the Marvel Universe. Each one joins with a living host until the two behave as a single being. Most readers meet them through Spider-Man, though the species reaches far beyond him. Who forged these creatures, and why did they split into protectors and predators? What happens to a person's thoughts and memories once a symbiote moves in? And why does a species this powerful still have so many ways to fall?

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• 2. A Reader's Idea

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  In May 1984, three Marvel titles released at the same time carried the first appearance of a symbiote. They were The Amazing Spider-Man #252, The Spectacular Spider-Man #90, and Marvel Team-Up #141.

  The idea did not come from a staff writer. A Marvel reader came up with the concept, and the publisher bought it for $220. Artist Mike Zeck then modified the original design, and the result became the Venom symbiote.

  Readers who followed the story in order learned the origin only months later, in Secret Wars #8. Venom appeared as a named character in The Amazing Spider-Man #300 in April 1988. Carnage arrived in The Amazing Spider-Man #361 in April 1992. From there the concept spread through many storylines, spin-off comics, and derivative projects.

  The comics eventually gave the species a far stranger beginning, one that reaches back to the start of the universe.

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• 3. Knull's Forge

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  Knull, an ancient and malevolent primordial deity, is the creator of the symbiotes in Marvel's fiction. When the Celestials began a vast plan to evolve the universe, Knull saw his Kingdom being touched and struck back. He built All-Black, the first symbiote, and used it to cut off a Celestial's head. The other Celestials banished him deeper into space, along with the severed head. Knull then used the head's cosmic energies as a forge for more symbiotes. That head would later become Knowhere, an interdimensional crossroads and laboratory.

  Knull went on to wage a campaign of genocide against other gods. During one battle he crashed onto a desolate planet, and All-Black abandoned him there for Gorr, drawn by Gorr's murderous hate. Gorr tried to kill Knull. Knull later reawakened and built an army of symbiotes. With them he conquered planets, destroyed entire civilizations, and established the Symbiote Imperium.

  Then a dragon-like creature traveled to medieval Earth, and Thor defeated it. That victory broke the connection between Knull and his symbiotes. Free of him, the hive mind began to explore honor and nobility, bonding with benevolent hosts. The symbiotes rebelled and imprisoned their god at the heart of an artificial planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. They named the planet Klyntar, and the species took its name from it.

  Their kindness proved imperfect. A host with a harmful chemical imbalance or a problematic personality could turn a symbiote into a destructive parasite. These corrupted Klyntar spread lies about their own kind, so that other peoples would fear and hate the whole species. They seized planets and rebuilt the Imperium. They pushed hosts into dangerous stunts to harvest energy from hormones such as adrenaline and phenethylamine, and those hosts died quickly.

  The noble side formed the Agents of Cosmos, symbiotes paired with benevolent hosts who act as warriors keeping peace across the universe. Corrupted symbiotes were cut off from the Klyntar hive mind. Outside those two camps, symbiotes have no real culture of their own. Their personality and sense of purpose depend largely on the bond with a host. Under Knull they once spoke a symbiote dialect.

  The hive mind also carries a grudge. After a symbiote-run planet was believed devoured by Galactus, every symbiote came to loathe both Galactus and his former herald, the Silver Surfer. Knull also created the Exolon, parasites that feed on souls. They infected a group of Kree explorers called the Nameless, who lost all sense of time and began to hurt themselves in rituals meant to recall their old lives.

  One symbiote stands out from this history. It was a newborn, outcast by its own species, and the Kree soon found a use for it.

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• 4. The Black Suit

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  During the Kree-Skrull War, the Kree wanted to copy the shapeshifting of the Skrulls. They acquired the outcast newborn symbiote and bonded it to a Kree named Tel-Kar. They modified both so that Tel-Kar could keep full control. He used the symbiote's shapeshifting to infiltrate the Skrulls but was discovered. He erased the symbiote's memories and separated himself from it. The symbiote rejoined the parasitic symbiotes with little memory of its first host.

  When the corrupted symbiotes learned that this one wanted to commit to its host instead of exploiting it, they decided it was insane. They sealed it in a canister to die on a planet that would later become part of Beyonder's Battleworld.

  Spider-Man found it there in the 1984 miniseries Secret Wars, where Earth's heroes were carried off to fight their archenemies. His costume was in tatters. Thor and Hulk directed him to a device in the alien compound they used as headquarters. He picked the wrong machine and released the creature. It appeared as a black sphere, wrapped around his body, and became a black version of his costume that answered his mental commands. Spider-Man assumed the machine simply made clothing. He did not know that Deadpool had already bonded with it briefly and corrupted it with his unstable personality.

  Back on Earth, Spider-Man learned the costume was an alien life form that wanted to bond with him. He drove it off with sound waves, which hurt it, and it took refuge in a church's bell tower.

  Eddie Brock came to that church, despondent and vengeful. His journalism career had collapsed after he wrongly identified the serial killer called Sin-Eater. The man he named turned out to be a compulsive confessor. Brock blamed Spider-Man. When the symbiote bonded with him, the pair became Venom, and Venom kept the powers of Spider-Man.

  The partnership did not stay comfortable. In time the suit became too much for Eddie to handle, and the way he pulled free of it sent a signal across the entire species.

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• 5. Mind and Body

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  Flash Thompson wore the Venom symbiote as part of Project Rebirth, and at first he struggled to control it. Over time the symbiote developed a slight affection for him. The comics later established that the influence runs both ways, and that a host's state of mind shapes the symbiote as much as the reverse.

  Carnage is as psychotic as its host, Cletus Kasady. The Venom suit grew more explosive after bonding with Angelo Fortunato and Mac Gargan, both career criminals. Symbiotes paired with heroes are not shown to be as twisted, though they occasionally wrestle with aggression.

  The physical gifts are enormous. A symbiote boosts its host's natural abilities far past what others of the host's species can do. That includes strength enough to lift 50 tons or more, along with speed, endurance, agility, healing, and intelligence. Symbiotes also record each host's genetic material in a codex, which leaves traces on the host's DNA and passes information to the hive mind.

  Their healing has a catch. Eddie Brock survived indefinitely with terminal cancer while bonded. Scott Washington walked despite being paraplegic. Flash Thompson and Cletus Kasady each received legs after losing their own. Yet symbiotes tend to push hosts into depending on them, because that secures the symbiote's own survival.

  Shape is another gift. A symbiote can change its size and form at will, because it is a living tesseract. It can fit inside electric wires or the insides of a car to disable them. It can shift color and texture to blend into a background or to mimic other beings. Senses spread across its whole surface let a host see behind them, much like a Spider-Sense.

  The symbiote also reads the host's mind. When Spider-Man was first chosen, he had been thinking about Spider-Woman's costume. The symbiote built a similar costume and added Knull's emblem, the mark seen on both Spider-Man and Venom.

  That borrowed history explains a famous trick. Because the original symbiote attached to Peter Parker first, it took his genetic information and spider powers through Parasitic Inheritance. Venom and its descendants can therefore bypass Spider-Man's Spider-Sense. A fight between them is essentially a fight between Peter and his black-suited self. During the Clone Saga, Venom did set off Ben Reilly's Spider-Sense, which the comics attribute to Ben being cloned before Peter's first meeting with the symbiote.

  Symbiotes can also change a host's mood by manipulating brain chemicals. In some incarnations the Venom symbiote needs phenethylamine to stay sane, a chemical found in chocolate and human brain tissue. The host must then eat large amounts of chocolate or become a cannibal. Carnage and Toxin have threatened to eat brains, though only Venom is shown to need it.

  Individual symbiotes add their own specialties. Agony spits acid, Payback produces electricity, and All-Black can grant its host immortality.

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• 6. Weak Points

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  Sound and heat are the best-known dangers, a flaw Knull gave the symbiotes by accident during their forging. Symbiotes have grown more resistant over time, but the newest breeds can still be hurt by enormous amounts of sonic waves and heat. No invulnerable symbiote exists in mainstream continuity. Some have been modified to shrug off both. Anti-Venom, Red Goblin, Mayhem, Payback, and Grendel are examples. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, the only weakness is the heat from high-voltage electricity.

  The symbiote called Krobaa seems vulnerable to light, and Eddie Brock beat it with the flash of his camera. Chemistry also works. Doctor Doom built a virus-like bio-weapon from the Venom symbiote, and Iron Man created a cure that freed everyone it infected. Venom and Carnage have both shown susceptibility to chemical inhibitors. Hosts with strong healing factors, such as Wolverine, have resisted bonding.

  Spider-Man once exhausted the Venom symbiote by exploiting its webbing. After the symbiote had used a great deal of itself to bind him to a bell, he forced it to spin even more, and it drained like blood from a wound. The writers note that the quantity needed makes this a poor tactic in a real fight.

  Bonding limits matter too. Venom could not bond to Eddie and Peter at once, and it failed again with Flash and Eddie. The Carnage symbiote showed no such limit when it bonded people in Doverton, Colorado. Telepaths can also affect symbiotes. A corrupted symbiote that stays bonded too long will eventually eat the host's body and leave a dead husk, as happened to soldiers bonded to Grendel symbiotes.

  In one case a weakness produced a new weapon. When Martin Li used his healing power to cure Eddie Brock's cancer, white blood cells formed in Eddie's blood and fought the remnants of the Venom symbiote. The result was Anti-Venom, a mindless symbiote that cures sickness, including Spider-Man's powers, and corrodes other symbiotes on touch.

  Feeling may be the deepest weak point of all. In the storyline Planet of the Symbiotes, Eddie Brock separated himself from Venom, and his telepathic scream reached the corrupted symbiotes, who invaded Earth. Eddie, Spider-Man, and Scarlet Spider joined forces to resist them. Eddie then rebonded with Venom, and the second scream led the symbiotes to take their own lives. How they died is never made clear.

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• 7. Spawn and Successors

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  Venom produced seven children and a clone, using a limited supply of seeds inside its mass. Its first child went on to have three of its own. That first child was Carnage, which bonded with the serial killer Cletus Kasady through his bloodstream. Carnage later split from Kasady and bonded with others, including Ben Reilly, Karl Malus, and Norman Osborn, who became Red Goblin.

  In May 1993, Venom: Lethal Protector #4 introduced a darker use of the seeds. The Life Foundation wanted super-cops to police their new Utopia. They took the last five seeds from the Venom symbiote and bonded them to their best security staff, forming the Guardians. Donna Diego became Scream, Carl Mach became Phage, Leslie Gesneria became Agony, Trevor Cole became Riot, and Ramon Hernandez became Lasher.

  In January 1996, four of these symbiotes fused into Hybrid, which bonded with prison guard Scott Washington. Eddie Brock later hunted Scream and Hybrid in an effort to remove the symbiotes' evil from Earth. Hybrid survived. The US Government separated it and bonded the pieces to four soldiers to fight Carnage.

  Toxin arrived in September 2004. It was a spawn of Carnage in the 1,000th generation, and it bonded with police officer Patrick Mulligan to become a hero. Toxin was the first symbiote that Spider-Man treated as an ally, and it became something like his mentee.

  Some successors are stranger. Meridius, the main villain of the 2021 Venom series, is a time-traveling King in Black with a grudge against Eddie Brock. He turns out to be a future version of Eddie. The other Kings in Black are future Eddies too, including Bedlam, Wilde, Tyro, and Finnegan.

  Rascal, introduced in February 2023, belongs to Normie Osborn, Harry Osborn's son, who receives a piece of symbiote from Dylan Brock. Because Rascal is new, it has no knowledge of the Klyntar or of Knull. Normie compares the unbonded relationship to training a difficult puppy. The later Venom War storyline reveals that Kang the Conqueror made Rascal from a fragment of Bedlam.

  The list is still growing. A symbiote named Passenger fell to Earth in 1816 and was sealed in a jar with that label. It later merged with Boomerang to become Comeback.

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• 8. Other Worlds and Screens

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  In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Richard Parker and Edward Brock Sr. created Venom while hoping to develop a protoplasmic cure for severe illnesses. They used Richard's DNA as the base, so Peter Parker and the suit are effectively related. That version wraps a host in a hard casing like a pupa, and it can induce homicidal rage in an incompatible host. Its Carnage was engineered by Curt Conners and Ben Reilly from Peter's DNA, and it had no intelligence at first.

  Other universes bend the idea further. In Spider-Gwen's universe, a Lizard cure for Harry Osborn turns into a symbiote that bonds with Gwen, who becomes Gwenom. In Spider-Punk's world, Oscorp makes a symbiote system called V.E.N.O.M. for Norman Osborn's police, and Spider-Punk defeats it with his guitar. In Peni Parker's world, VEN#m is a giant mech-suit that gains a conscience and goes rogue. In What The--?!, a pig version of Venom named Pork Grind becomes an enemy of Spider-Ham.

  In the Spider-Man: India stories, symbiotes are tusked demons trapped in an amulet, and Venom is the only one left alive. In Earth X, symbiotes are antibodies the Celestials made to protect embryos at the cores of planets. In Marvel Adventures, Venom is merely a liquid alloy that Reed Richards warns is draining Spider-Man.

  On screen, the Venom symbiote appeared in the 2007 film Spider-Man 3, and in 2018 Venom became the title character of his own film. Carnage made its film debut in Venom: Let There Be Carnage in 2021, and more symbiotes arrived in Venom: The Last Dance in 2024. Venom was nearly in the trailers for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but the theatrical cut replaced it with Rhino's armor. A version also appears in the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

  The Marvel Cinematic Universe borrows pieces rather than the whole species. A Necrosword inspired by All-Black serves as Hela's main weapon in Thor: Ragnarok. The Exolon monks follow Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy.

  Video games have used the creatures for decades. An endless supply of symbiote clones made by Doctor Doom serve as the final boss of Spider-Man: The Video Game. In Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, a giant symbiote fed on a million stolen souls threatens New Metro City.

  In October 2022, Marvel Comics announced an event called Summer of Symbiotes, planned for summer 2023.

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