[Parademon1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trivial Psychic

To be fair, She-Venom was around for less than an issue and a half, maybe 2 issues top. There was another woman (not Ann Weying) that also wore it for less than one or two issues. It wasn't like she had her own book or appeared across multiple issues for years...



Fixed.

Venom was a great character until the character himself devolved to become a meger plot tool, as the symbiote was turned into essentially Marvel's version of a WWE title.

The formula basically became: got a character that needs a temporary push in an efforts to boost a comic's sales or reinvigorate them? Throw a symbiote in it for a run and see what happens.

Reader: Shouldn't the character be built up first?
Marvel: Naw...just give him a symbiote...they're cool, and command respect. People will warm up to them and accept it eventually.

See also: Jinder Mahal, Baron Corbin, Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, Bayley

Venom has gone the way he has gone over the years due to an over-saturation of symbiotes, and the fact that they got away from what made the character what he was...Spider-Man's anti-thesis, great power with little responsibility. Outside of Norman Osborne (who has his own symbiote now btw...SMH) Venom was Spidey's most dangerous foe. He wasn't interested in amassing wealth or power. He didn't bother with robbing banks or trying to open portals to other worlds.

Venom's sole interest was killing Spider-Man, and anyone else who stood in the way of that goal. Sure, a lot of guys also wanted to kill Spidey, but Venom was different. Since he knew who Spidey was, he could be anywhere. He could be that quiet guy behind you at the coffee shop, the creep who's flirting with your girlfriend at her job, or the cop knocking on your aunt's door while you have breakfast with her. He was cunning and single minded in approach, and while he dealt in absolutes, he also had his own sense of morality that he played by. In the end though, morality or not, Brock's Venom was nothing more than a psychopath with an axe to grind and a sense of entitlement, no different than your average serial killer or active shooter.

Like serial killers in real life, that's what made him so fascinating. In a way, Venom was a metaphor for our worst fears, a fear of sudden death by someone we never expected, and that we never saw coming until it was too late. A fear that resonates in society today with the with the increasing rate and randomness of the mass killings and terrorist acts that we now see on the news on an almost nightly basis.

When they got away from that, was when they tried to turn him into a hero. Then a paramilitary black ops commando. Then a honorable space knight. And so on...and so on...and so on...

You nailed the destruction of Venom as a great Spiderman villain to a T! Same with the other poster stating how they then started doing different variations of Venom clones with the Symbiote universe. I really stopped caring about Venom as a character at that point where they started making him an anti-hero or a Black ops commando or turning a great villain like Scorpion into Scorpion-Venom, Whisky Tango Foxtrot! Same thing is going on with DP, over saturation of the character & churning out countless variants of him in figure form no matter how stupid. I have just the recent Hasbro classic Version of Venom & will be purchasing the classic 90s DP from the Sasquatch BAF wave & those will be my only 2 figs of those 2 characters. Don't need umpteenth versions of them, but I guess some people will buy anything & everything Hasbro churns out of certain characters whether they rate it or not.