How Venom Became A Hero

shout out to this person who just really wants me to make a video on siner from this point on I will not even mention his name just despite you in the main Marvel Universe Venom is currently considered a hero more or less he fights to save the innocent he's friends with the Avengers and spends most of his time being a supportive father to his son however it wasn't always like this way back in the ' 80s when he made his first appearance he was introduced as this borderline insane coldblooded murderer who would stop at nothing

until he killed his greatest enemy we're talking about a guy who would bite people people's heads off here so how did we get from this to this from utter rage torment and cannibalism to love peace and comfort now for those who don't know I'm talking about Eddie Brock the original Venom and the Redemption Arc that had been building for the past 30 years because despite all the countless reboots and Crossovers and spin-offs that made this video a nightmare to piece together it all comes together as this one solid story the story of a man who

was shaped by his childhood trauma went through absolute hell but eventually came out the other IDE a better person Eddie's story doesn't really get off to a good start he was raised by an angry violent father and as a coping mechanism young Eddie would get drunk and steal his dad's car this would result in a fatal car accident in which he ran down a child playing in the street now Eddie displays all of the emotions you'd expect anguish regret uh he was raised Catholic so he probably thinks he's going to burn in hell but what

really shines through is his sense of righteousness Eddie's dad is a powerful figure in their Community Eddie could easily get off scott free and it'd be like this whole thing never happened but Eddie's personal traits his moral compass overrides this he wants to tell the truth he wants to plead guilty sure he'll end up worse off because of it but it's the right thing to do Eddie's dad however has a different idea knowing what it'll do to his family's reputation he insists that Eddie pleads innocent and lies to the police to make things even worse

when he is challenged on this he savagely beats his son into accepting the plan this is the moment that shapes Eddie's future his dad is one of the only people he looks up to the only person he seeks approval from and as result the only person who can get him to degrade himself like this this love for his dad combined with his young age has left Eddie's Soul susceptible to corruption he's forced to abandon his morals and in doing so he adopts his father's messed up worldview throughout his early life Eddie never really had anything

real he considered himself part of the school wrestling team but really he was just the equipment manager he wants to study journalism but in order to get in he has to fake his application when he and his future wife Anne get ambushed by thugs Anne gets knocked out cold leaving Eddie to fight them off on his own fearing for his life Eddie's just like hey take the girl I don't care just just leave me alone it's only then that Spider-Man shows up out of nowhere beats up the Thugs and disappears into the night right as

Anne starts to wake up when Anne asks hey Eddie was it you who beat up all of these armed thugs single-handedly Eddie's like yeah and has no problem building his future relationship upon this massive lie you see Eddie's trauma involving his father has poisoned his own desire for the truth truth and so he goes along with these lies he does what he considers immoral because he's been taught to do that as a method of survival he can no longer trust himself to do the right thing Eddie eventually marries Anne and builds a reputation as a

solid reporter he releases an expose on a serial killer a move which surges his popularity in the news industry and makes him super successful however Eddie's success is shortlived as Spider-Man exposes the real killer outing Eddie's article as fraud despite genuinely believing what he had published Eddie's years of lies and deceit have caught up with him what slim chance he had at impressing his father is now completely gone his wife divorces him his very Soul gets rotten to the core I mean just look at him all he has left is his faith as a Catholic

and even that's not enough to stop him ending his own life just before he ends it all however he visits a church to seek forgiveness for what he's about to do as he sat there praying he unexpectedly receives an answer not from God but from an inorganic symbiotic alien that was created billions of years ago after Spider-Man abandoned his black costume at the top of a church latched on to the nearest life form for survival because of Eddie's emotional vulnerability combined with his strong faith he doesn't view this as a coincidence instead he sees the

Venom symbiote as fate a sign that he's part of a higher purpose the suit doesn't just bond with him physically it appeals to his life experiences they've both been rejected they both need someone else in their lives to help them and most importantly they have the same goal to kill Spider-Man Eddie's plot for Revenge corrupts his soul even further Venom is his Dark Side a representation of of all this builtup rage and Corruption and darkness passed on by his dad he'll stop at nothing until vengeance is his even if it means killing the Innocence he

valued so dearly as a kid the messed up thing is that Eddie truly believes he's in the right that it's all Spider-Man's fault and it's this Twisted sense of righteousness that enables him to do these terrible things but as powerful as Eddie now is it's still all fake his strength his weapons his clothes even they're all just Illusions created by the Symbiote they're not real and Spider-Man takes advant vage of this he exploits Eddie's inorganic webbing he attacks Eddie's illusions with his solid Sonic Blaster and in the end Eddie is defeated with a very real

very painful kick to the face over the next couple of years Eddie gets captured and then he breaks out again only to be captured again and then the whole cycle repeats like a million times as he gains more control over the Symbiote and has more time to process the whole thing Eddie's good morals begin to surface first he abandons a battle to save the life of a child then a few issues later he puts aside his hatred of Spider-Man to save innocent people from Carnage eventually it gets to the point where he just gives up

on his Vengeance altogether you see Eddie's hatred for Spider-Man may be strong but his love for his ex-wife burns brighter it's Anne who helps him break free of this messed up worldview and lets him see things for what they really are Spider-Man saves innocent people so by killing Spider-Man Eddie would indirectly be allowing these innocent people to die thus Eddie makes a truce to which Spider-Man reluctantly agrees after this Eddie gets his own comic series in which he focuses on his future as a lethal protector of the innocent but he can only look forward for

so long and his past repeatedly comes back to bite him he's given all of these opportunities for self-reflection for some sort of redemption but he half asses them he runs away he solves the problem just by shooting at it or he fakes the solution altogether so while he may be Victorious on the outside while he's saved a bunch of people he's still missing that element of truth that he once valued and his soul remains corrupt this denial of the past starts to take its toll in him he becomes increasingly more violent his mental State declines

by the minute and he becomes far more reliant on the Symbiote to survive it's here we enter the worst stage in Edd's life hell during this time he gets taken advantage of by the Sinister 6 his own symbiote theing United States government this self-control this Independence he's built for himself away from his trauma is crumbling away he starts to resent Spider-Man again once more using him as an outlet for all this repressed anger it's this giant relapse all at once falling back on villain as a coping mechanism he's consumed by fear he complet loses hold

of who he is it gets to the point where he doesn't have the mental strength necessary to hate Spider-Man anymore like he just he can't remember why he hates him as the Silver Lining to all this it turns out that the Symbiote had been planting false memories in Eddie's brain leading him to believe he had terminal cancer this is part of a twisted plan to ensure the Symbiotes own Survival this way Eddie will never abandon the symbiot because if he does then he'll die of the totally real cancer in his head this eventually backfires as

through some psychological phenomenon the false memory lead to Eddie actually getting cancer the Symbiote then says oh [ __ ] and leaves Eddie to waste away in his dying body in the end it was just taking advantage of him and abandoned him when he needed it the most just like everyone else in his life now it's one thing to fear loneliness to feel like you don't belong but when you don't feel safe in your own body anymore when you don't have control over the one thing that's truly yours that's enough to strike fear into the

toughest of minds and so what does a man do when he's faced with the fear of certain death he looks back on his life asks himself what he could have done differently and if he's lucky enough uses the little time he has left to put things right this is one of the first times in Eddie's life in which he has nothing to fall back on his dad's lies his wife's love his symbiot strength he has none of that and that's oddly freeing in a way there's nowhere else to look but inside his own soul the

only tools he has are his faith his self discipline and his love for the innocent and so Eddie begins volunteering at a homeless shelter where he meets super villain in Disguise Martin Lee aka Mr negative conveniently Mr negative has this special Healing Touch which not only heals Eddie of his cancer you think that' be enough but no the healing cells also Fus with traces of the Symbiote still in Eddie's body the result of this is the creation of a brand new symbiote antivenom having invested everything he has into his faith Eddie once again doesn't see

this as an accident he now views himself as this Messiah almost the chosen one whose mission is to cure all that is evil in the world and so he enters another phase of heroics he brings Mr negative to Justice and makes peace with Spider-Man along with it when New York is brought to its knees by a deadly virus Eddie uses his powers to heal sick citizens quite literally painting himself as a savior believe me the emphasis on this religious Messiah angle couldn't be stronger like it really goes to his head in order to cure the

whole city from this virus Eddie must give up his new symbiote and in doing so heals millions of people at once his reputation is now better than ever as he has hailed the hero of New York now saving the city if not the whole world all well giving up your own power that's a pretty good Redemption story on its own but this selfless act doesn't solve everything you may have saved the day but if you can't hold on to what you've learned then what was the whole point he's relapsed before what's going to stop him

from doing it again and so we enter the next Act of Eddie's story in which he must come back to the familiar a changed man and prove his new found understanding Eddie starts hunting down his old symbiote now in the possession of Spider-Man's old school Billy Flash Thompson during his mission Eddie bonds with another symbiote called toxin because why not and uses it to track down his replacement here flash is like a mirror for Eddie both of them started off on the same path they both had difficult relationships with their dads that shaped who they

were as they grew up they both directed their anger towards Peter Parker and used him as a way of dealing with trauma Eddie sees himself in Flash and it's this reflection that makes him change his mind in the end seeing flash trying to build this new life for himself it prevents Eddie from relapsing again and gives him the strength to keep going Eddie continues confronting his past when he hunts down Carnage a symbiote he technically gave birth to during his time as a super villain now up to this point Eddie had always viewed himself as

the protagonist the Messiah and it was this savior complex that often blinded him from his own wrongdoings thus Eddie must confront this as well in order to stop Carnage Eddie must give his toxin symbiote to someone else he must give up being the Savior to do the right thing as a result he finds that he didn't have to be this big hero towards the end and walks away a genuinely happier more content Soul it's here we get to Eddie's final stage of atonement he's put things right on the outside and now he must look Within

still controlled by his fear of loneliness Eddie tracks down the Venom SYM once more because despite all of his development Marvel just really want him to be Venom again the status quo is a lucrative thing however Eddie's time as toxin has changed him all the drugs that he used to remain stable they're making the Symbiote sick symbolically his dark side is rejecting this new man he's become and it lashes out Eddie takes the Symbiote to some scientist friends to ask what's wrong upon examination the scientists are like okay we can make a cure we can

heal the Symbiote for you But first you got to help us out and by help us out I mean go and fight some dinosaurs in the sewers I'm trying to make this story as cohesive as possible but there's no way around this he needs to fight some dinosaurs in the seers that's the conflict during his mission Eddie comes across Moon girl whose psychically linked pet devil dinosaur is being mind controlled by the evil dinosaur man sron and so Eddie must not only defeat this evil dinosaur man but also help devil dinosaur break free from mind

control now despite this premise being very out there to say the least this does still represent quite a lot for Eddie it allows him to come full circle in order to cure his own sickness he must first prevent a young child from going through their own trauma and being taken advantage of by an abusive power in doing so he's able to cure the Symbiote and really cure himself after this a bunch of cool stuff happens Eddie's on fire he's redeeming himself left and right he becomes a journalist again joining a shitty tabloid and trying to

turn it into something more reputable a tool for the truth he rejects his position as Savior of the dinosaurs in order to reach a beneficial outcome for everyone involved he teams up with the X-Men and during this crossover there's this small moment where he's talking about change and it suggests that he's oblivious to his own progress while he has changed for the better he himself hasn't recognized it because you don't just change your own self image through a couple good deeds it takes work it takes time and he's not quite there yet to top it

all off Eddie fights the red Goblin he fights aliens in space and then we get to the most recently completed Venom series Venom 2018 this is arguably the best Venom comic in the last decade it beautifully explores the character it adds a lot of really interesting lore but what I want to focus on is Eddie's relationship with his son throughout the course of the series it's revealed that Eddie unknowingly Had A Child Called Dylan instead of being born naturally this child was created by the Symbiotes and was mysteriously given birth to by an it's like

a whole Jesus thing Dylan is Jesus an is Mary Eddie is Joseph and the Symbiotes are God technically once again the religious aspect is really on the nose but this whole experience left an completely traumatized and so not wanting to deal with it she left Dylan with famously the best parent in the world Eddie's abusive father it's worth noting that Eddie had no idea about any of this hence why he didn't think to do anything before and so to connect with Dylan and rescue him from this abusive household Eddie must directly confront his trauma he

shows up at his dad's house takes still in away and he makes a promise saying how his dad will never hurt them again and such and such but it's not that simple Eddie's try over his dad is therapeutic sure but it doesn't solve much internally what Eddie instead has to do is realize his own selfworth and accept his own development he needs to put the work in believe in himself enough to look after Dylan and break the cycle of trauma that's plagued his family for decades if the Symbiote is Eddie's Dark Side Dylan is his

conscience his light his hope for a better future this isn't an illusion this is an honest tangible life that he has to look after and doing just that nurturing Dylan and being the Father Figure he needs allows Eddie to nurture his own future at the end of the series Eddie's trauma isn't completely resolved he doesn't get to run off into the sunset with a happy ending yes he's built a life for himself with Dylan he best mates with Spider-Man he's become a interdimensional God don't worry about it but at the end of the day he's

still a broken man he can't quite trust himself to know what's right he turns down an invitation to be an Avenger fulltime and he still has some Darkness inside him but that's not the point Eddie Brock's life is a story of Second Chances when he tries to take his life he stopped by the Symbiote when he's gone too far as a villain he's given the opportunity as a protector when he's about to die from cancer he's still offered a way out and sure he might not make the most of these opportunities he might not think

he's deserving of them but he still tries regardless it's not a question of whether he's a good person or not it's putting in the effort that counts trying to be better for the sake of others and for himself and so while Eddie doesn't end up as this totally good guy there's still the promise that he's working towards it also he did kill a bunch of people so like complete Redemption would be in bad taste if you haven't already go watch my last video I spent like 3 months on it for no reason and it definitely

doesn't show but whatever I'm also kind of burned out on Marvel stuff at the moment so my next video I think will be a follow-up to my childhood Comics video those who enjoyed that apparently a lot of people want more so look out for that all right I'm going to go fight Owen Lakes comics in a basement [Applause] peace on our way back home you and me shooting holes at the Moon you and me