Who is Venom? What is the Venom symbiote’s “name?”
Why even ask this question? Why do we care? Because the fandom community around this character has very strong opinions around who and what “Venom” is. There’s a very strong hostile undercurrent in regards to nomenclature that claims, with certainty, that only the bonded host and symbiote as a dual entity are named “Venom.” That the symbiote alone shouldn’t be referred to in the singular in this way. Ever. Ever ever. Writers doing so are “lazy.” That it’s just influence from the movies.
A more granular analysis of the language though, evidences textual support for something a lot more nuanced.
The Person-Mantle Relationship
There are a few things to consider, first, when we’re looking at super-hero and super-villain monikers. There is the name of the person, then the pantle of the hero or villain. There are half a dozen Robins, each one filling a functional niche as Batman’s sidekick. Dick Grayson, the first Robin, has also carried multiple mantles.
There’s also precedent for subtly anthropomorphizing clothing and costumes in real life. With furries, it’s not uncommon to “name your suit” as a sort of metonymy for the underlying fursona. A line of black flats becomes The Stacia, The Jennifer, and The Bobbi to give each shoe a sense of personality that’s easier to remember for marketing purposes.
Collectively, the symbiotes from the planet Klyntar present an interesting complication to the person-mantle dichotomy and the personalities we assign our clothing. Where most mantles are merely symbols and imagery sewn into fabric, symbiotes are living mantles with their own thoughts and feelings.
With this in mind, how does this constellation of naming actually play out in the narrative over time? For the sake of this examination we’ll use the phrase the “Venom symbiote” or “symbiote” to signify a this specific parasitic organism in question and just “Venom” as the in-story mantle or villain persona.
The Symbiote Introduces Themselves
When Peter first encounters the Venom symbiote in 1984, he doesn’t know that they’re a sentient being. To Peter, the symbiote is merely “the suit” and “the costume.” Once he understands that the symbiote is sentient, “suit” and “costume” persist with the addition of “alien symbiote” and “creature” added to the array of references. And that does tend to remain the trend through the 80s and into the 90s, with “the suit” coming back pretty regularly up through the 2010s in particular.
At this point, the symbiote can’t talk themselves. All the information we’re getting about them is through their hosts.
In 1988 [Amazing Spider-Man #300] we meet Eddie Brock as the new villain Venom. While the symbiote still can’t “talk,” Eddie has a much easier time understanding them and frequently communicates to the audience what the symbiote is saying or how they’re feeling. The first few appearances of Venom, Eddie actually goes back and forth a little on plural vs singular pronouns. In ASM 300, for example, he says “You may call me Venom.” In ASM 316 it’s “when I was Eddie Brock.” In the same issue, however, he also says “our shared hatred made us one entity…as Venom.”
So what we’re trying to piece together here is how does Eddie view himself and his place in this partnership. How does he, as the holder of the mantle, define “Venom?”
There’s a very interesting clue to this puzzle in 1991 during Amazing Spider-Man #346-#347. In this arc, Spider-Man devises a way to get Venom out of his life for good by faking his own death and stranding Venom on an island. When Eddie believes he’s killed Spider-Man, he “disrobes” the symbiote and says that now “there’s no reason for Venom to exist.”
This suggests that Eddie, at this moment, sees the identity of “Venom” as something to put on and take off as he desires. “Venom” is a suit that “Eddie” wears. This aligns, generally, with the way other characters talk about Eddie, the symbiote, and Venom as sort of three different conceptual entities.
How does the symbiote feel about the persona of “Venom?”
A brief one-sided conversation in the 1992 Web of Spider-Man Annual reveals it’s the symbiote who came up with the mantle “Venom” to begin with:
“But as a new being, we’ll need a new name. What? Oh, that’s good. Like the poison Spider-Man forced me to write…We’ll call ourself Venom!”
This makes “Venom” the first name that the symbiote personally presents to the audience as a self-referential moniker. Going by the mantle “Venom” is their idea.
Carnage, Cletus, and “Red”
That same year, 1992, gives us our second symbiote-host combo to draw comparisons on, Carnage [Amazing Spider-Man #362]. At the beginning of his symbiotic journey, Cletus also uses an inconsistent combination of singular and plural pronouns, but most notably uses the phrase “I am Carnage” in contrast to “we are Venom.” He also communicates with the symbiote and calls them “red” at one point in conversation.
Now we see two common fan interpretations here. That “Red” is the symbiote’s “name” (whether assigned by Cletus or not), and that the use of the singular pronoun suggests the two are “more bonded” than Venom as a pair.
I would posit another interpretation based on what’s happening in the text at the time. That “Red” is just a throwaway that Cletus calls his symbiote because he has to call it something, and it’s not an overly personal nickname. Any redhead could become “Red” if you need to address them, and you’re so inclined. After his first appearance, he very rarely addresses his symbiote directly, at all, and doesn’t continue to regularly call it “Red.”
(I personally can’t find any examples of Cletus ever calling the Carnage symbiote Red again after his first appearance, but I can’t comfortably make that claim without checking every single Carnage appearance.)
Compare this to Eddie who regularly refers to “his other” and eventually goes on to give his symbiote pet names like “my love.”
The Maximum Carnage storyline of 1993 also reveals that from the second appearance on onward, we’re not actually looking at the exact same symbiote. Cletus says:
“But as far as I can tell, my symbiote managed to mutate my metabolism…I can now generate a dead ringer for the symbiote.”
All these pieces viewed together open up the possibility that Cletus uses the singular pronoun initially just because he doesn’t view the partnership as equal, and the symbiote is still more of a “suit” to him, at the time. It also calls into question how much of the continuity of sentience is left compared to whatever Cletus imprinted on or modified the regenerated Carnage symbiote. This may be affirmed by Carnage’s continued usage of the singular pronoun. Or it may be the simpler explanation that Carnage is a special super-bond that leads to a singular, but fragmented consciousness. All this to say it’s difficult to draw indisputable linguistic conclusions based on these early interactions.
When You Start Hopping Hosts
Around this time, also 1993, we also have Venom’s first solo series, Lethal Protector. In this series and onward, “suit” and “costume” still stick around, but we also start to see “the other” increase in usage. This repositions the symbiote into less of a “thing” and more of a “creature.” It’s the first phase of the transition into a “who” from a “what” and that shows up in some new naming and identification quirks.
In Lethal Protector #4, a Life Foundation scientist refers to the reproductive nodules he takes from the symbiote as “the last seeds of Venom.” Here, is he is specifically referring to the symbiote as Venom because that’s the organism he’s taking the “seeds” from.
In Separation Anxiety from 1994, we get a moment where the symbiote and Eddie are separated long enough that the symbiote very briefly has their own thought-text boxes for the first time. In these, we see that the symbiote has enough intellect to recognize itself and Eddie as two separate beings. It calls out for Eddie and Peter by name.
The Planet of the Symbiotes arc happens in 1995, and we get a little more information about the symbiotes as a species. This storyline suggests that the symbiotes are essentially cultural blank slates. So whatever structured language patterns they use come from their hosts. This same year, Anne Weying hosts the Venom symbiote for the first time in Sinner Takes All and the story refers to her as “She-Venom.”
Carnage gives us a cross-symbiote reference point in the 1996 story Web of Carnage. When Ben Reilly is taken over by the Carnage symbiote, he calls himself “Carnage” and “Spider-Carnage.”
In the interim, there’s a bit of inconsistency as to how physiologically unified Eddie and the symbiote are. At the end of Planet of the Symbiotes the text reads that they’re “no longer a bonding, but a becoming” and experiencing “and irrevocable linking of the spirit” that destroys them as true individuals. In the very next story, however, Eddie comfortably references them as two intellectually distinct beings and the symbiote is perfectly willing to leave him when Eddie won’t eat brains in The Hunger.
So it’s very unclear what’s meant to be happening here in terms of individual sentience, and, therefore, how it might affect language going forward.
The text does establish, however, that both narratively and metatextually, a new host-symbiote pair doesn’t automatically come up with a new mantle to work under. Rather the name, or some version thereof, travels from host to host with the symbiote. The narrative is also giving you “permission” to call the symbiotes by their mantle independent from the host. As early as the mid-90s, the text is explicitly saying that no matter how Eddie refers to himself or the symbiote personally, at a broader scale people in-world and the writers themselves are playing much faster and looser with what a symbiote-based mantle actually means for the original bond.
The Symbiotes Get a Voice
In 2003 we get a lot of new linguistic information to work with in Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 2 #1-5. Now this particular volume of this series is chronology very weird. A lot of things are not consistent with the timeline set in The Amazing Spider-Man, so we kind of have to just handwave that away to move forward.
This is the first time that we see the symbiote themself actually do a significant amount of talking on their own terms. So we get a number of panels that expands on how the symbiote feels about their current position.
First, the story establishes that Eddie feels like “two people coming apart,” something he reveals while at a confessional. The fist time we see Venom in full “monster” form they say to Spider-Man:
“I am everything of this world and nothing. You brought me here—why will you not grant me release?”
This suggests that Venom in this story (supported by the presence of new black text boxes) is the symbiote talking, not Eddie. So when the symbiote says “There is no Eddie Brock” this plays in tandem with Spider-Man’s psychic impression that Eddie’s specific consciousness is disappearing under the bigger dual-personality of Venom. So that begs the question, what is fueling that consciousness?
The story goes on to show that the symbiote has developed it’s own personality discreetly separate from Eddie. They engage in face-to-face conversation where the symbiote uses singular pronouns.
This story does affirm, through a conversation Spider-Man has with a detective, the continued pattern that Eddie wearing and bonded to the symbiote becomes Venom. However, when the symbiote is fronting the pair and says “you made me into the creature that is Venom,” it also suggests that the symbiote themself has opinions about being called Venom.
This pattern continues in Venom vs Carnage from 2004. We get a very brief glimpse of Cletus, but it is very clearly the symbiotes themselves talking to one another about the birth of Toxin. Spider-Man also implies there’s very little intellectual contribution coming from Eddie anymore while in “Venom form”, a continuation from the Spectacular Spider-Man arc. And in this story the symbiotes call each other Venom and Carnage. The Venom symbiote is the one who gives Toxin their name not Pat Mulligan. A name that Toxin goes on to keep from Pat to Eddie to Bren Waters to Rick Jones.
By this point the text establishes that the symbiote came up with the mantle of Venom, sees themself as a separate entity than Eddie, and to some degree outside of Eddie’s involvement identifies and self-refers with the name “Venom.”
Losing the Eddie Half
As we get to the first major host switch in 2004, we also see some stronger trends in how the rest of the world talks about Venom and the dichotomy between host and symbiote.
Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #6 features a super villain auction. The speech from the auctioneer reads:
“…this gentleman is Eddie Brock, Venom’s human host. Mister Brock and Venom coexist in a strange, symbiotic relationship…Venom, as you may have heard, is a super-powered, alien parasite.”
So while Eddie still doesn’t refer to the symbiote as Venom, at this point, everyone else around them does, including the next Venom, Angelo Fortunato, and his dad. That is the in-story public perception. The symbiote is Venom, and when you wear the symbiote you become Venom. We can surmise that it’s because the public still sees the symbiote as a suit rather than the more full-figured consciousness they’ve become.
This sentiment carries through the Mac Gargan era.
Mac and the symbiote have the occasional physical conversation, but they don’t have the same rapport. He also doesn’t get enough screen time to really explore what’s going on with them internally and we get very little from the mouth of the symbiote themself. Generally speaking, other members of the Thunderbolts and the public call him Mac or Venom (then eventually fakeout Spider-Man). This is the era when the phrase the “Venom symbiote” starts to get used a bit more often.
Overall, there aren’t a lot of major linguistic changes during Mac’s Venom tenure.
Flash’s tenure begins in 2011 and presents a much more initially distant relationship with the Venom symbiote. The symbiote’s sedated, Flash is regularly pushing it down and holding it back, and for good chunks of his tenure, he’s able to comfortably remove the symbiote and store it away. Before going to space, Flash has limited conversations with the symbiote, but struggles to get past animal instincts of destruction. There’s a lot of “the suit” and “the alien” and “the symbiote.” Flash calls himself Venom and he’s acknowledged as Venom in the same way Eddie and Mac were.
At the same time, Flash also directly refers to the symbiote as an individual being named Venom. In Venom Vol. 2 #4 he states, “It’s one thing with Venom; you’ve got a good a guy controlling it.” Going forward, that’s the pattern for Flash and his commanding officers.
“Venom doesn’t like it.”
“Allowed Venom to bond with me.”
“Lost control of Venom.”
“Extracted from Venom.”
“Another Venom spawn.”
“Venom’s original host.”
This lays out a consistent nomenclature for people other people in-universe when interacting with the symbiote and their mantle that bears out when referring the Eddie and Toxin as a pair as well.
There also a few very quick moments in Volume 2 where Eddie might also be falling into this pattern, but it’s highly up for interpretation. The line “I know the urges that come with Venom. I couldn’t control it.” has some ambiguity as to whether he’s referring to the state of being Venom as a pair or to the symbiote itself. And this is worth noting because Eddie is one of the last holdouts in this regard, falling more heavily on “the symbiote” as his reference point. But the hints could be there.
Well, I Guess Someone Could Just…Ask?
Venom: Space Knight runs from 2015-2016 and brings the stronger personality back from the early 2000s. After being cleansed, the symbiote is able to move around independently of Flash and have face to face conversations.
It’s Flash in issue 4 that first says “Next time we chat, tell me your name” to the symbiote. When they revisit the conversation a couple issues later, we never get a solid, on-page direct answer to the question. In issue 7 however, Flash admonishes Tarna, another symbiote host and Agent of the Cosmos, for being overly clinical when discussing their symbiotes:
Tarna: “And your klyntar can not be trusted.”
Flash: “He has a name, you know—“
Tarna: “Venom is not to be trusted.”
We have to assume then that as of roughly a decade ago, at mimimum, the symbiote is perfectly fine with being referred to as Venom independently of the mantle he shares with his host. He has plenty of time and ability to tell Flash “hey, I’d like us to go by something else because Venom is actually my special thing with Eddie,” and he never does.
Getting Back Together with the Ex
In 2016 [Venom Vol. 3], we see the return of Eddie as host, and he falls into his habit of referring to the symbiote as his “other” while Flash still tends to call the symbiote Venom. This trend leads in to the next run and all the stories in between.
There is a very strong exception in the 2018 annual wherein Eddie says “It’s just been Venom and me for a long time.” If it’s not the first, it’s one of the earliest examples of Eddie, specifically, finally falling into the trend of calling the symbiote Venom.
Venom Vol. 4, the run from 2018-2020 that gave us Knull, brings up the name question again. At the beginning of the run, it’s an offhand comment by Rex Mason asking whether Eddie knows the symbiote’s name. In the last issue, there’s a very famous conversation between Dylan and the symbiote that goes as follows:
Dylan: “What do I call you?”
Symbiote: “What do you mean?”
Dylan: “Well, like you and my dad…you guys are Venom. But, like…that’s you and him. Together. So, like, what’s your name?”
Symbiote: “Ah. I see. No one has…ever asked that.”
Then the symbiote goes on to explain that klyntar names are “emotional vibrations” through which they “distinguish ourselves in the collective hive.” This generally aligns with klyntar being heavily psychic creatures and refers more directly to their early years as a pair. However, this conversation is also factually inaccurate. The symbiote has, indeed, been asked this question before. [see Space Knight above]
So now we’re a bit stuck with a pretty tricky continuity issue. Typically when you run into this sort of thing, you want to assume the most recent information is the most correct. But because we’re doing a linguistic character analysis, we can presume a level of realistically unreliable narrator and try to wiggle both sides of the continuity change together.
There are a few keys to doing that here.
First, there’s a line in the symbiote’s extended explanation that reads “my pattern was cast out of the hive.” So it’s a name he has some distance from.
We also have a scene later in the same issue where Eddie actively passes down the Venom moniker to Dylan, saying “No, son. You aren’t Venom. And neither am I….We are Venom together.” Earlier in the run (Vol. 4 #8), Eddie also acknowledges that “Flash Thompson was a badass Venom.” What this suggests is that even Eddie himself doesn’t see the mantle of Venom as exclusively belonging to him as a pair with the symbiote. More so, the mantle belongs to whomever forms the right partnership with the symbiote.
This helps us form a subtextual narrative. A symbiote had their klyntar “name” while in the hive. When they were cast out, they either lost access to the name or it became useless without the context of the hive. After going through a few hosts, they came upon one that presented the idea that they needed a name for their new, collective persona. The symbiote comes up with the name “Venom” in the local language. That name then serves a dual purpose as mantle for the partnership but also an identity for the symbiote to use individually as needed or wanted. Then the people around the symbiote who aren’t necessarily abreast of these details, use the name Venom as a broad stand-in for lack of any better language. While at the same time, metatextually, the comic itself has started naming the symbiote Venom independent of the bond or partnership.
This allows us to keep moving without too much friction into Venom Volume 5 where now mostly Dylan and occasionally Eddie start referring to the symbiote as Venom. The symbiote has a much stronger personality and is becoming more and more a character in his own right. So it’s conceivable that changes in the filial relationship might come with subtle linguistic changes in the hosts. Coming into Venom Volume 6, it’s now standard practice for “Venom” to be both the name of the mantle worn by host and symbiote pairing and of the symbiote itself when necessary.
In Conclusion
So now who is Venom? It’s both the mantle of the symbiote-host pairing and the name of the symbiote itself. What is the symbiote’s name? In hive-mind psychic speak it’s an unpronounceable energy wave, and in English it’s Venom. This tracks, consistently, with all the other named symbiotes we’ve been presented. This organic linguistic cascade starts in the first decade of the character and has some remarkably consistent iteration.
A name is, at it’s core either whatever you respond to what someone else labels you. It’s not that linguistically black or white but it’s also really not that complicated. People use different names in different contexts and sometimes names morph and change. It’s okay for the same thing to happen to a fictional character through time, and there’s plenty of easy additional language to fall back on when clarity is needed. Ignoring how a text evolves means you’re losing story and character arcs.
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