Fans of Fox's Spider-Man: The Animated Series will most likely regard Venom as being a Spidey villain and nothing else. He has that tragic edge - as do most Spidey rogues - but Brock's Venom in particular underwent a massive shift in his years under the suit, going from straight up 'doer of the nasty' to a morally complex vigilante in the wake of the bizarrely lauded 'Maximum Carnage'.
Despite the story lacking in just about every department, Brock's shift in attitude turned out to be a welcome one, with the premise of the character begrudgingly setting aside his differences with Parker resonating with readers right across the board. Brock would later ditch New York for San Francisco in the Lethal Protector arc of 1993 (supposedly the inspiration for the new film), and would wrestle with the suit on more than one occasion.
Later changes in creative direction would send Brock back to his villainous ways (cemented by a gruesome fight in which he seemingly kills Sandman), but those moments spent away from villainy made for a welcome change - one the character would continue years later.
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.
