Ultimate Venom

(Ultimate) Venom
File:Ultimate venom.jpg Venom Art by Mark Bagley
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Ultimate Spider-Man #33
Created by	Bill Jemas Brian Michael Bendis
In-story information
Alter ego	Edward "Eddie" Brock Jr.
Team affiliations	Spider-Man, Bolivar Trask
Abilities	A human host linked to a protoplasmic suit that imitates its previous link, Peter Parker. In addition, the being can use pieces of it to swing like Spider-Man and can overload Spider-Man's spider-sense.

Ultimate Venom is a fictional character created for the Ultimate Marvel Universe. He is based on the Earth-616 continuity's Venom.

Character History

File:EddieBrockJr.jpg

Eddie Brock Jr.

Eddie Brock Jr. was Peter Parker's closest childhood friend. However, the genesis of Venom began years earlier. Instead of a sentient alien, a genetically engineered protoplasmic "Venom Suit" was designed by Richard Parker and Edward Brock, Sr. Parker intended it to be used for medical purposes in his quest to cure cancer, but Brock Sr. was more interested in the military applications of the Suit. After the deaths of both Parker and Brock, Eddie continued the research, using two samples from a Suit he found in his father's fridge that was originally created for Richard Parker's DNA. One of the samples bonded with Peter, which led to a variant of the "alien costume" storyline from the original Marvel Universe.

Afterwards, Peter warned Eddie of the dangers of the Suit when its enhanced metabolism and aggression nearly drove him to kill. Eddie, angry at Peter for destroying his Suit, (their 'inheritance') used a second sample to become Venom. The Suit consumed Eddie alive and drove him insane, forcing him to feed on other humans.

In the recent Ultimate Spider-Man video game, Eddie gained full control of the Suit after finally absorbing the remnants of the first sample in Peter's blood, and developed the spider-symbol on his chest. The Venom Suit had been forcing him to kill innocent people, such as civilians, policemen, and even Silver Sable's mercenaries and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s troopers to sustain his constantly depleting health. This was in stark contrast to Earth-616's Venom, who deplores the loss of innocent life.

Venom soon murders Bolivar Trask, the man he thinks is responsible for the death of his parents, unaware that Eddie Sr. was accidentally responsible for the crash by testing a Venom Suit on the plane. However, due to recent evidence in the "Silver Sable" arc (and the words of writer Brian Michael Bendis) it seems that the Ultimate Spider-Man game is no longer part of the Ultimate continuity. Silver Sable, who was a key player in the game, did not recognize Peter at all in her maiden appearance, although she knew his secret identity in the game. Of course, it is possible that something happened to her that made her forget.

File:Venom-sm.jpg

Ultimate Venom's size compared to Ultimate Spider-Man's size

Ultimate Venom is still at large.

The first appearance of Eddie Brock was in Ultimate Spider-man vol 6, and in that book he is also Venom.

Recently new plans were announced for Ultimate Venom and Carnage. [1]

Power and abilities

Ultimate Venom is much more physically powerful than Spider-Man, although he does not have the same amount of speed and agility. His suit cannot create organic webbing, but instead uses extruded tentacles to 'web-swing' from building to building. In the video game Ultimate Spider-Man, however, he uses his impressive physical strength to leap from building to building at an incredibly fast rate, jumping several hundred feet in a single bound.

Unlike the original Marvel Universe Venom, who does not activate Peter's spider-sense, Ultimate Venom instead overloads it, to the point where Peter is in such physical mental pain that he sometimes cannot move. This seems to have stopped once Venom absorbed the cells of the first sample from his blood, as both parts of the Suit had been trying to reunite.

Unlike the original, Ultimate Venom is not specifically vulnerable to sonics or fire, but given that Peter was able to dispose of the first Venom sample (and later Carnage, which was based partially on the same DNA) in an industrial smokestack, some weakness to fire must be assumed. Brock seems to have had a much greater negative reaction to the suit than Peter did, probably due to the genetic similarity between Peter and his father, who was the suit's intended user. After Spider-Man tangles with the Shocker again and gets hit with a sonic blast, he dismisses it as relaxing, indicating the suit has no weakness to sound. Judging by the things that can injure or kill Venom, such as shocks from downed power lines, Venom is vulnerable to things that compromise the entire suit all at once, so that there is nothing left to regenerate from.

Also of note is that when Peter wore the Suit, it was a small sample stretched over his entire body, making it thinner, and thus more likely to vaporise in extreme electricity; however, Eddie took a whole jarful of the suit, making a mix that could quite possibly withstand the same amount of voltage Peter suffered.

Trivia

• While Venom's suit does not display the trademark white spider during his comic-book appearances, he gains it in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game. Considering the game is apparently canon, there is a strong possibility that Venom's spider-symbol will appear in an Ultimate comic. The symbol has accidentally appeared on his chest in small panels, such as when he was electrocuted at the end of the Ultimate Venom arc.
• Ultimate Venom stars in the video game, Ultimate Spider-Man as a playable character.
• Actor Topher Grace, who will play the movie version of Venom in Spider-man 3, stated that his real name in the movie will be Eddie Brock, Jr. His name, therefore, appears to have been derived from the Ultimate Marvel version of Venom.