Top 10 Villains Who Have Worn the Venom Symbiote

This hypothetical story takes place in the year 2060, giving readers a possible glimpse into the future of the Venom symbiote. After being augmented with machinery by the Kingpin, the suit became deadlier than ever thanks to its newfound ability to interface with machinery and the internet. After shooting Eddie Brock during a confrontation, Wilson Fisk donned the newly upgraded suit for a battle with a scantily-clad Spidey. After luring the hulking new iteration of Venom to the woods, Peter destroyed it using fire, putting his boy scout training to good use to create an impromptu torch.

And speaking of possible alternate futures, Marvel published an entire line of comics set in the far-flung future of 2099. In this future timeline, a new version of Spider-Man faced off against a futuristic Venom. We’ll get to all that later, but in the meantime, we can’t help but mention the brief time when the 2099 Venom symbiote bonded to that timeline’s iteration of Namor’s son, Roman. After a pitched battle with Spidey, the futuristic Sub-Mariner stole the symbiote from the lab where he was being held prisoner. Sadly, the series ended just a few issues later, so we never got to see this epic new combo in action.

A denizen of the Ultimate Universe, an alternate reality that was the focus of a now-defunct Marvel line, this seemingly normal scientist bonded with that universe’s version of the Venom symbiote. This caused him to transform into perhaps the most monstrous iteration of the character yet, an eyeless and tentacled nightmare right out of Lovecraft. At the end of the day though, Venom is still Venom no matter how weird you make him look, so he naturally went after Spider-Man. Thinking that the wallcrawler was actually Jefferson Davis, the father of Miles Morales, Venom attacked the Davis-Morales home and kicked off a fight that ended with both Conrad and Miles’s mother dead.

In case it wasn’t already evident, the Venom symbiote tends to bring tragedy and hardship wherever it goes. This is especially true of Eddie Brock’s ex-wife. After being shot, she was allowed to bond with the symbiote to save her life, which transformed her into the first iteration of She-Venom. But she was sadly unable to control the symbiote’s murderous urges, and she took several lives before the symbiote returned to Eddie. Not helping the situation one bit, Eddie told her that the symbiote can’t make its host do something they don’t want to do, plunging his ex into a black hole of guilt that eventually caused her to take her own life.

Now this one is just plain sad. The son of a high-ranking mob boss, this mild-mannered young man was bonded with the Venom symbiote by his dear old dad in an incredibly misguided attempt to “make a man out of him”. Because exposing your son to a dangerous alien parasite is good parenting, right? After becoming Venom and confronting Spider-Man, the lad disgusted the symbiote by running away when Spider-Man got the upper hand in the battle. The suit voiced its displeasure by leaving his young host while they were in mid-swing, sending the poor kid plummeting to his death, making his time as Venom both short and tragic.

Before the Sub-Mariner briefly became the Venom of 2099, the symbiote was under the control of this oddly named fellow. The half-brother of Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099, he was a pretty nasty customer even before bonding with the symbiote, which he came across in the sewers after being nearly killed in a run-in with his timeline’s version of The Punisher. By the time it met its latest host, the symbiote had mutated and developed a few new powers, including acidic saliva. But for all its new powers, the symbiote retained its weakness to sonic attacks, something that Spider-Man 2099 eventually used to defeat it.

During a time period when Dock Ock had transferred his mind into Peter Parker’s body, and subsequently vowed to live his life as a superior Spider-Man, Otto came across the Venom symbiote when it was being used by Flash Thompson. Ever the egotist, he figured that his superior intellect would be more than up to the task of controlling the symbiote, and he allowed it to bond with him. It turns out that, surprise surprise, Ock was completely wrong on that count, as the symbiote eventually escaped his control and went on a rampage. In the end, it took calling in The Avengers to clean up the mess.

A small-time criminal who came upon the symbiote purely by chance, he’s since proven to be one of the most dangerous individuals to ever don the suit. A former US Army Ranger who received special training against psychic attacks, he’s one of the few individuals able to control the symbiote completely. And given that he’s got some serious violent tendencies, that’s actually pretty scary. After some time using the Venom symbiote to kickstart a career in organized crime, he was eventually separated from it when it returned to a former host. Since then, he’s used a portion of the symbiote to continue his criminal activities as Maniac.

After years of antagonizing Spider-Man as the Scorpion, this longtime supervillain was approached by Norman Osborn, AKA the Green Goblin, with a heck of a proposition. Osborn had recently been made the head of a government task force and was in the process of assembling his own twisted iteration of The Avengers. As a member of the team, the former Scorpion used the symbiote and posed as Spider-Man. He’s without a doubt the most ruthless individual to ever possess the suit, which pushed him even further into violence and mayhem. Thankfully for just about everyone, he and the suit were separated by Carol Danvers.

We know, the first character to take the name Venom has spent just as much time as a hero as a villain. But despite his later efforts to use the symbiote for good, his time as a villain is still a defining aspect of the character’s legacy. Picking up the symbiote after it was separated from Peter, this former Daily Bugle journalist became one of Spidey’s deadliest foes, their mutual hatred for the web-slinger turning them into one of the biggest threats he would ever need to overcome: a twisted, evil version of himself with killer pecs and more teeth than a shark. Suddenly Dock Ock doesn’t seem so bad.