10 Mind Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Venom

9. The Symbiote Isn't Alien In Ultimate Marvel

Ultimate Venom
Marvel Comics

The Ultimate Universe was a neat little experiment started by Marvel at the start of the millennium designed to reimagine their comics for a modern audience. Leading the way was Spider-Man, with Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley proving to be the perfect pairing to take the wall-crawler into the 21st century. It was a cracking comic, and it's no surprise that Venom was featured heavily throughout.

Unlike the mainstream Marvel Universe, Ultimate Venom was not of alien origin. Instead, the suit is indelibly linked to Peter Parker's origins, with Pete's father having created the suit along with Eddie Brock Sr. as a means to cure cancer. Of course, with Venom being Venom things don't go according to plan, and the suit soon bonds to Parker, instilling in him all the toxic personality traits that typified his stint in the suit in the wake of the original Secret Wars crossover.

It's the same old suit at the end of the day, and its earthly origin in no way detracts from its fear factor, but it's an interesting change all the same. Much like his 616 counterpart, Brock would, of course, bond with the suit too, and engage in a vendetta against Peter, but the dichotomy presented in this context is altogether more different than the suit's familiar look would imply. Indeed, with Eddie and Pete having been childhood friends here - and not just career rivals - the conflict is particularly biting, and made for one of the best arcs in the character's recent history.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

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.