[Jay West]

Quote:

Originally Posted by webz

Sure he can. The living costume originated as a concept for Ironfist. The movie, cartoons, and Ultimate comic all prove you don't have to carbon copy the original story. And honestly, the original story has aged poorly a LOT.
Venom needs a retconn/reboot origin more than Superman, batman, xmen, or wolverine. The human temper tantrum bonded to a bitter jealous ex-girlfriend symbiote is lame, and really was never intended to be a lasting character. The symbiote was the character. Eddie was expendable. Unfortunately, fanboys loved him, so Marvel's plans for killing off Eddie and having the symbiote jump around the marvel world was stopped for a while. Eddie wasn't even the original Venom. He was a last minute add. Original Venom was supposed to be a woman who miscarried her pregnancy due to a Spidey vs baddy battle. Marvel execs thought that was too dark, so they changed it to a temper-tantruming bodybuilder, popular in the late 80's comics.

All those examples you note still tie him to Spider Man. What story has aged poorly? Secret Wars, Spider Man wearing the symbiote in the early comics, Venom as a spider villain? I like Venom a lot right now, but for me that is driven by the richness of his connection to SpiderMan. And of course there’s that big white spider on his chest that doesn’t make much sense without a Spider Man connection. Unless you take it away like in the movie and you get a generic alien movie.