Never has Spider-Man faced a more vicious mass of mayhem than the super-brute known as Venom, the man whose intense hatred for the wall-crawler is matched only by the alien symbiote to which he's bonded. Venom possesses all Spider-Man's powers and even greater strength. He can disguise himself to look like anything he can imagine, and he doesn't trigger the web-slinger's protective Spider-Sense. Venom is vulnerable to fire, and loud noise can shred the symbiote right off Brock's back.

Venom began as two separate beings: Eddie Brock, a human whose career as a reporter came to an abrupt end when Spider-Man unwittingly exposed a story he wrote as false; and an alien symbiote that posed for a time as Spidey's black costume, until the wall-crawler realized it was alive and rejected it. Losing his job as a reporter drove Brock to consider killing himself. Praying to be forgiven for his suicidal thoughts, Brock's expression of fierce emotion attracted the empathic symbiote. This chance meeting enabled both beings to combine their separate hatreds for Spider-Man into one overwhelming animosity when they merged to form Venom.