5 Most Powerful Venom Villains, Ranked

Venom has some interesting villains, some of whom are powerful enough to cause trouble for the entire Marvel Universe. This is very impressive, since Venom’s debut saw him as a villain or, more specifically, as someone who wanted Spider-Man dead for rejecting the symbiote and ruining the life of its new host, Eddie Brock. However, it was soon revealed that Venom really wanted to be a hero, and he had no problem with saving people as a “Lethal Protector” when he wasn’t seeking revenge against Spider-Man. Moving past his hatred of Spider-Man, Venom became a hero in his own right and developed his own rogues’ gallery, including a villain who almost destroyed Earth.

From lethal symbiote villains to one of Flash Thompson’s greatest villains when he had the Venom symbiote, here is a look at Venom’s most powerful villains in Marvel Comics.

5) Jack O’Lantern

When Flash Thompson had the Venom symbiote, he worked under the name of Agent Venom and served the United States government. That made it all the more interesting when his primary villain turned out to be a street-level villain who was more connected to Spider-Man than anyone else in Marvel Comics. This wasn’t the original Jack O’Lantern; this version debuted in Venom Vol. 2 #1 in 2011 and was known only as Jack, with his real identity remaining a secret.

His origin saw him kidnapped as a child by the Crime-Master, who raised him to be a master assassin. He ended up extremely disturbing, as he would scoop out his victim’s brains and put a candle inside their skull, explaining his criminal identity. He then killed the villains who used the name Jack O’Lantern in the past before finally becoming a consistent enemy of Agent Venom. He has since become a villain of Ghost Rider thanks to his death, time spent in Hell, and resurrection by Lilith.

4) Carnage

Carnage is the villain most closely connected to Venom, since, by all intents, he is Venom’s offspring. When Eddie Brock was in prison, Venom escaped and found him. Before leaving with Brock, Venom gave birth to the Carnage symbiote, which then bonded with mass murderer Cletus Kasady. Since every symbiote is more powerful than the one who spawned them, Carnage was already more powerful than Venom.

To make it worse, since Kasady was a sociopath, it also made Carnage the deadliest symbiote since it was extremely powerful and had no regard for human life at all. Carnage proved his power in everything from Absolute Carnage to his numerous deaths and resurrections. He is easily the most hated Venom villain in Marvel Comics. Carnage is currently bonded to Eddie Brock, so how that changes him in the long term remains to be seen.

3) Maker

Maker is the Ultimate Marvel Universe Reed Richards. In that world, Reed was part of the Fantastic Four, as he was on Earth-616, but things changed for him in that world. Jealousy and anger at his team led him to make increasingly immoral decisions, and he eventually became pure evil, using his intellect for world-destroying schemes. He is currently in a new Ultimate universe that he created himself.

However, between those events, Maker ended up on Earth-616 after Secret Wars and became a major enemy of Venom, of all heroes. He was extremely powerful, able to exist in every universe at once and to bring different bodies into any world, making him almost impossible to keep imprisoned. He ended up in Project Oversight under the Interdimensional Council of Reeds, and this is where Maker began targeting Venom to study in his desire to reconstruct Earth-1610.

2) Grendel

The two most powerful Venom villains are both ancient beings in the history of symbiotes. The first of these is Grendel, a powerful symbiote dragon that Knull created billions of years ago. Knull then sent out Grendel and his brethren to destroy everything they encountered, intending to plunge the entire universe back into darkness. Grendel finally found Earth in the 6th century, but was defeated by Thor and imprisoned in a glacier.

That only provided a temporary reprieve, as SHIELD accidentally exhumed Grendel decades later, and the dragon proved to be a considerable threat before Venom finally stopped him. Grendel can fly and possesses the same superhuman attributes as other symbiotes, including accelerated healing. He is also mostly immortal and has the power to reanimate corpses, as he did with Cletus Kasady and Carnage.

1) Knull

The most powerful Venom villain in Marvel Comics is Knull, and no one else comes close. Knull is an eldritch god of darkness, and he is the being who created all symbiotes, Venom included. When the Celestials awoke Knull between the Sixth and Seventh Cosmoses, they named him the King in Black, but he rejected this and actually killed one of the Celestials with the first symbiote (The All-Black).

Knull proved when he invaded Earth in King in Black that he was more powerful than just about any hero on Earth or from the universe as a whole. Not even the most powerful heroes, such as the Silver Surfer or Thor, could stand up to him. It took Venom, with the power of Thor and the Surfer, and a little help from the Uni-Power, to finally stop and defeat Knull. However, as Vecom’s most powerful villain, even his death wouldn’t last, as he has returned in the 2025 storyline Queen in Black.

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