Mac Gargan is something of a forgotten Venom these days, having donned the outfit in the wake of Brock's cancer diagnosis in 2004. That storyline saw the main Venom cede control of the symbiote, thereby allowing the villain formerly known as the Scorpion to take control of it during one Norman Osborn's schemes against Peter.
Gargan wears the suit for a good five years after, while Brock becomes Anti-Venom - a literal symbiote hunter in a contrasting white and black suit of his own - in an effort to stop the proliferation of the alien goop. Gargan isn't able to reverse his misfortunes as one of Spidey's less competent adversaries however, and it later transpires that the Venom suit actually thinks quite lowly of him too.
The crook has since returned to his original Scorpion identity while others have stepped in to don the suit themselves. It's no surprise, then, that Gargan's time as Venom is somewhat overlooked these days, having been sandwiched in between two infinitely more interesting versions of the character.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
