Spectacular Spider-Man: The Hunger-A Case study in Major Narrative Shifts (Short Version)

Note: There are two versions of this: a shorter outline view and more detailed one describing my logic. This is the shorter version.

I’ve determined there’re two ways comics can approach a Big Narrative Change. There’s the unexpected and the out of character. And this has nothing to do with fandom response or the quality of the story but rather narrative justification. Does the Big Change flow logically from what we know of the story so far? And since any big change is going to have multiple story beats, you might have elements of both types over the course of the narrative.

The fandom-reviled One Day More storyline from Spider-Man is a great example of all these things. Peter is already stressed about the events of Civil War. Aunt May is shot as a direct result of revealing his identity. He and Mary Jane are both guilt spiraling, and he goes looking for anything to save Aunt May. Mesphisto finds him in that desperate moment, offers him a way out in exchange for his marriage to Mary Jane, and they both agree. Peter’s already been shown to do stupid and desperate things when it comes to the safety of his family. You can reason out that they might take this measure.

What’s harder to swallow is that Peter and MJ, after experiencing this separation, would roll over and take it. Loopholing the devil is a storied narrative tradition. If it had it been a temporary separation or there was some other satisfying narrative growth as a response, it would be a much more palatable change to the Spider-Man canon.

In the Venom canon we have a very interesting one of these in Spectacular Spider-Man vol 2 #1-5 from 2003. The arc is called “The Hunger.” It’s a major tonal and narrative shift, and large chunks of the fandom consider it out of character or narratively unjustified.

I see it as a secret third thing: a shoedrop moment.

In the sense that, on the surface, it feels very out of left field, particularly when you’re a more casual reader. If you go back through the story, however, and do even moderately close reading, you can find a lot of things that you can interpret as foreshadowing. So not really an “out of character” change but rather “the hints were there, and we just took a direction you didn’t expect.”

Let’s examine some of the reveals of Spectacular Spider-Man: The Hunger focusing on the symbiotic bond between Eddie and the alien:

• Someone is attacking cancer victims, leaving them in critical condition but alive.
• Eddie is shown in confession saying that he feels like he’s being punished for his sins because he’s been cursed with a “demon.” We zoom out to find that the symbiote is nearby, but in a more detached state from Eddie’s body.
• In a fight with Spider-Man, we learn Eddie is no longer in control of the bond and mentally falling apart underneath it. He doesn’t consider himself Venom anymore in any real way.
• Eddie is caught between being dragged along by the symbiote’s whims and desperation that it doesn’t seem to want him anymore.
• The symbiote never stopped being obsessed with Peter, and that was the secret driver of much of their anger and vendetta. The symbiote wanted Peter, and Eddie was afraid of losing the symbiote to him.
• Eddie has had cancer for a number of years, and the symbiote was basically keeping him alive.
• The kind of cancer Eddie has produces excess adrenaline. This is part of what attracted the symbiote to Eddie to begin with. The people the symbiote is having him attack have similar cancers, and it’s feeding off their excess adrenaline.
• The symbiote is looking for a new host because Eddie’s body is degrading past the point of use.
• Spider-Man forces them to rebond because he thinks Eddie’s the only who can truly control the symbiote.

There are a few bits of fallout from this story that never quite get picked back up again, but that’s not a totally unexpected thing in comics. This story, however, lays the foundation for a lot of stuff going forward, including the first host transition to Mac Gargan. If you don’t accept this story as being cohesive to the narrative that precedes it, you’re going to have a much harder time accepting the twenty-five years of story that follow.

So if we try to analyze the Venom story from the start up to this storyline specifically looking for narrative justification, what does that look like?

What we learn during the Alien Suit Saga and up to the birth of Venom:

• The Venom symbiote responds to thought commands. (Amazing Spider-Man 252)
• There’s something inherently menacing about it (ASM 252)
• The symbiote copies and enhances the physical abilities of the host. (ASM 253)
• It can take over the host’s body without the host knowing. (ASM 258)
• It has enough intelligence and ambulation to escape imprisonment, get around on its own, and seek out Peter again. (Web of Spider-Man 1)
• It will attempt to bond against a host’s will. (Web of Spider-Man 1)
• It experiences some manner of human recognizable emotions. (ASM 300)
• It can have some manner of effect on a host’s behavior and personality (ASM 300)

What we learn from Venom’s first tenure as a villain and the birth of Carnage:

• The symbiote still prefers Peter, even after bonding to Eddie. (ASM 317)
• Eddie and the symbiote actively communicate to each other as separate people and seem capable of sensing different things about their environment.
• Their shared vendetta tries to avoid harming “innocents,” but they’re not great at keeping to it consistently.
• Eddie sees the identity of “Venom” as a persona akin to putting on a costume. The symbiote is something he “wears” that turns them into Venom that he can take off whenever he chooses. (ASM 347)
• It reproduces asexually and doesn’t have family structures. (ASM 362)
• The symbiote can withold information from its host. (ASM 362)
• Eddie dropped his vendetta for Spider-Man after Spider-Man did him a great turn, but it’s unclear how (or even if) he convinced the symbiote to do the same. (ASM 375, Lethal Protector 1)

The Venom mini-series hero era leading up to Planet of the Symbiotes:

• It is unclear who’s actually in control of the symbiotic relationship and that there must alway be some kind of power imbalance. (Venom: The Madness)
• The symbiote can be affected by outside physiological forces. (Madness)
• Eddie resisted the bond, initially. (Venom: Separation Anxiety)
• When separated from the symbiote, he regrets his actions to the point of suicidality. He genuinely doesn’t know who was in the lead during all the murdering. (Separation)
• While separated, he starts to see the symbiotes as a threat. (Separation)
• As per the Life Foundation hosts, communication with their symbiote is difficult and a massive force of will. (Separation)
• One Life Foundation host describes the symbiotes as “evil,” but she may also be suffering from a delusional disorder. It’s unclear how those two things resolve, but it does point to the a symbiote’s ability to enhance mental health issues. (Separation)
• Being unbonded is physically painful for the symbiote, and they have a preferred host. (Separation)

New information from the Planet of the symbiotes storyline:

• The symbiote comes from a species of conquerors. They feed on strong emotions, and use up their hosts to the point of death.
• They’re also adrenaline junkies and force their hosts to take huge risks.
• The symbiote says it’s different from the rest of its species and favors unity over domination, but it’s questionable how much we can trust that claim.
• Eddie is still unsure whose thoughts are whose.
• The symbiote is capable of psychic manipulation on a large scale.
• Eddie still sees the unbonded symbiote as a threat.
• Eddie’s perception of the symbiote vs reality may be compromised.
• There’s an inherent horror to symbiotic bonding.
• Eddie and the symbiote go through a new stage of bonding, but it’s unclear what that actually means and remains so through the story to follow.

How things unfold through the end of the mini-series era up to the “death” of Venom:

• We immediately see uncertainty in what their new bond actually means because the text gently contradicts itself. (Venom: Sinner Takes All)
• Affirms the symbiote is able to move a host to immediate gruesome violence with the suspicion it can overwhelm the human element completely. (Sinner)
• Anne describes the bonding process as being “seduced” and “evil.” (Sinner)
• Eddie is concerned about the symbiote’s ability to control its own killer impulses. (Sinner)
• The more the bond continues, the more Eddie is starting to experience a degradation of self. (Venom: The Hunger)
• The symbiote can completely change a hosts perception of reality down to taste. (Hunger)
• The symbiote requires phenethylamine, a chemical found in brains (among other things). (Hunger)
• The symbiote is able to overwhelm Eddie’s control in pursuit of eating brains and separates when Eddie refuses to accommodate brain-eating. (Hunger)
• Their level of psychic connection, even while separated, might be the ramifications of the aforementioned “becoming.” (Hunger)
• While separated, Eddie’s primary concern is that he’s the only one who can control it. (Hunger)
• Whatever the underlying reason, the symbiote presents a massive threat when denied a neurochemical is requires or desires. (Hunger)
• The symbiote can be sedated with dopamine. (Venom: License to Kill)
• The vendetta against Spider-Man is still under there somewhere. (Spider-Man: The Venom Agenda)
• The symbiote temporarily dies due to a dopamine overdose. (Venom: The Finale)

There’s also a very interesting comic from this era as part of the Uncanny Origin series. It’s an expansion on the origin story. It affirms most of what we already know and does add a little bit of extra weight to Eddie’s anger. However, it also contradicts a some minor timeline points. More interestingly though, is a line Eddie says while in the church just before the symbiote approaches.

“…I know suicide is a mortal sin, but unless you can show me something—some kind of sign from above.”

We end up seeing a little bit of a narrative parallel to this later.

The final lead-up to Spectacular Spider-Man: The Hunger:

• The symbiote still has a thing for Spider-Man and pursues him first when it returns to life. (Peter Paker: Spider-Man Vol. 2 #9)
• Eddie does not want to rebond and goes so far as to jump out of a window to prevent it. (Peter Paker: Spider-Man Vol. 2 #9)
• The symbiote forces the rebonding to create a version of Venom closer to their villain origins, all the internal work from the Lethal Protector era disappearing.
• Anne is traumatized enough by her time as Venom that she commits suicide, and Eddie doesn’t seem to realize him and the symbiote’s roll in this. (ASM Vol.2 #19)
• A clone of the Venom symbiote that hasn’t had Eddie’s influence on it acts like we’ve been told to expect from their home species: violent, using up hosts. (Venom Vol. 1)
• We properly affirm that the host has some manner of control over the symbiote (Venom Vol. 1)

And then we reach Spectacular Spider-Man: The Hunger.

Let’s review what we know about this story, but now with some references to previous story beats with a similar vibe:

• Someone is attacking cancer victims, leaving them in critical condition but alive.
• Eddie is shown in confession saying that he feels like he’s being punished for his sins because he’s been cursed with a “demon.” We zoom out to find that the symbiote is nearby, but in a more detached state from Eddie’s body. (Separation Anxiety, Sinner Takes All, ASM 347, with a narrative parallel to Uncanny Origins)
• In a fight with Spider-Man, we learn Eddie is no longer in control of the bond and mentally falling apart underneath it. He doesn’t consider himself Venom anymore in any real way. (ASM 347, The Hunger)
• Eddie is caught between being dragged along by the symbiote’s whims and desperation that it doesn’t seem to want him anymore. (Separation Anxiety, Planet of the Symbiotes Prt.1)
• The symbiote never stopped being obsessed with Peter, and that was the secret driver of much of their anger and vendetta. The symbiote wanted Peter, and Eddie was afraid of losing the symbiote to him. (ASM 317, Separation Anxiety, Peter Parker Spider-Man #9)
• Eddie has had cancer for a number of years, and the symbiote was basically keeping him alive.
• The kind of cancer Eddie has produces excess adrenaline. This is part of what attracted the symbiote to Eddie to begin with. The people the symbiote is having him attack have similar cancers and it’s feeding off their excess adrenaline. (Planet of the Symbiotes Prt. 3)
• The symbiote is looking for a new host because Eddie’s body is degrading past the point of use. (Venom Vol. 1)
• Spider-Man forces them to rebond because he thinks Eddie’s the only who can truly control the symbiote. (The Hunger)

All the major beats for this story exist somewhere else in the narrative, sometimes multiple times. It’s not just about citing sources, however, but rather synthesizing the story and viewing the comics as being in conversation with each other. But now imagine someone who’s read 90s Venom comics, but none of the one’s I’ve cited. Imagine a reader who started with Flash Thompson from the mid-2000s then started working backward. A reader who previously had only seen the movies and started with Venom Vol 1 and SSM: The Hunger. Someone who started with All New Venom.

Every single one of these readers is going to have a different perception on SSM: The Hunger and how they think it fits with the overall character narrative. With all those readers in consideration, it makes such a huge shift, even if technically justifiable, extremely difficult to do. Because fan reaction can be so strong.

But also inconsistent.

The Cates Venom run is extremely well-regarded. He also completely rewrites Eddie’s cancer to suggest that the symbiote was manipulating Eddie’s memory and faking medical tests. This does not play smoothing with SSM: The Hunger but also retroactively borks the Anti-Venom storyline wherein Eddie’s cancer is cured by Herman Li. Cates tried to justify the choice meta-textually, but it is not clean. Despite this and some other small but notable retroactive continuity questions, you do not see commiserate complaints about the run as a whole.

Because in the end, it’s not the story itself but varying fandom perceptions of it that speak to how a major narrative change is interpreted.