Warning! This article contains spoilers for Free Comic Book Day 2023: Spider-Man/Venom Venom’s origin in Spider-Man 3 was not well received by fans, but in one of Venom’s latest comics, it seems the explanation given in the film wasn’t as lazy/overly simplistic as it initially seemed, as that controversial origin is now Marvel Comics canon.
In Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, the Venom symbiote comes to Earth via a random meteorite landing right next to Peter Parker’s scooter, before latching onto it and later infecting Parker through symbiosis, creating the Black-Suit Spider-Man which eventually leads to the birth of Eddie Brock’s Venom. In the comics, Spider-Man picked up the symbiote during the original Secret Wars–an event that was happening in deep space. Then, in the movie Venom, the symbiote was brought to Earth similarly to how it came to the planet in the ‘90s Spider-Man cartoon. It was picked up by the astronaut John Jameson and hitched a ride aboard his spacecraft, thereby invading Earth upon the ship’s descent. In both the comic and the Venom film/Spider-Man cartoon, the symbiote is picked up after a human finds it in space, yet in Spider-Man 3, the alien just plops down from the stars right next to Peter with no explanation whatsoever. While that was a pretty annoying lack of storytelling passion, it seems as though symbiotes coming to Earth by attaching themselves to meteorites is just something that sometimes happens (and could be insidiously deliberate).
Venom’s Arrival on Earth in Spider-Man 3 Also Happened in the Comics
In the Free Comic Book Day 2023: Spider-Man/Venom story designated “January, 1940” by Al Ewing and CAFU, readers are taken back to the year 1940 where a team of scientists and businessmen known as the Williams Brothers are speaking with a reporter about the newest superhero on the scene: Flexo. Flexo is seemingly a rubberized robot who can bend, stretch, and is virtually unkillable. What’s interesting about Flexo, however, isn’t what he can do, but how he was made. Flexo is actually a symbiote that the Williams Brothers found and then nurtured until it grew into a suit large enough to encompass an entire ‘robot’ superhero. And the Williams Brothers found this incredible substance in a meteorite.
While it is still super lazy writing that the meteorite in Spider-Man 3 hit the ground right next to Spider-Man, the fact that it came to Earth this way should no longer be controversial. As proven in this comic–which promises to lead into the ongoing Venom series, giving this origin even more credibility–it seems as though symbiotes have been coming to Earth via meteorites since the ‘40s, at least. Who knows how long this method of interplanetary transportation has been used by the symbiotes, and if it’s something that can be linked back to the original King in Black himself.
When Knull held the throne of the King in Black before Eddie Brock killed him and took the title for himself, he spread his symbiotes out across the cosmos for eons before they eventually turned on him and trapped Knull within their planet. This means that Knull likely controlled the meteorites his symbiotes were riding when invading planets, as he effectively had control over all their minds at once before the symbiotes fought back for their own autonomy. Could this mean that the King in Black targeted Peter Parker for symbiote infection in Spider-Man 3? Probably not. But that doesn’t discount the fact that symbiotes invading planets through meteorites is something that they canonically do in the comics, thereby soothing the controversy surrounding Venom’s origin in Spider-Man 3.
Free Comic Book Day 2023: Spider-Man/Venom by Marvel Comics is available now.