Marvel Reveals Two Big Venom Villains’ True Identities

Marvel's Venom has dropped two big villain reveals in one issue! The latest Venom storyline "Venom Beyond" has seen Eddie Brock and his Dylan transported to a strange alternate dimension. This new reality is especially strange for Eddie Brock, as the path of his fate is very different from the one he lived in the main Marvel 616 reality. For one thing, Eddie discovers that his ex-wife Anne Weying is the one who became Venom (and then Agent Venom), and now leads the resistance against Codex. But in Venom #28, we learn that the identities of both symbiote overlord Codex and Venom-hunter Virus are even more surprising!

Warning: Marvel's Venom SPOILERS Follow!

In Venom #28, Eddie Brock and Dylan try to converse with Anne and her team of symbiote freedom-fighters (Spider-Man, Carnage, Deadpool, and Scream) and get up to speed on what broke this world. They discover gruesome details like the fact that in this reality, Eddie Brock successfully committed suicide inside that church where he discovered the Venom symbiote - leaving Anne to find the symbiote later while mourning Eddie. Unfortunately, the history lesson is cut short when Codex's symbiote force (The Thing, Wolverine, Sabertooth, Omega Red, Juggernaut) attacks.

While Agent Venom's squad battles the villains, Codex himself is back at his citadel, interrogating the other traveler from the alternate universe: Virus. The self-made Venom-hunter has always had a major grudge against Eddie Brock, but we've never known why. Now we do: once Codex interrogates Virus he bonds him to a symbiote. To our surprise, Virus emerges from the bonding tank feeling very good - that's because Virus is actually Mac Gargan, aka Scorpion, aka the former Venom of the 2000s "Dark Reign" and Thunderbolts runs.

During the events of "Absolute Carnage" Gargan was left a paraplegic during an attack by Carnage and a Carnage-suited Norman Osborn, but it's Eddie Brock that Gargan apparently blames. After all, it was Eddie who forced Mac to jumped back in the fight against Carnage, after the villain tried to flee. Gargan got old tech from heroes and villains like Green Goblin, War Machine, Shocker, etc., and became Virus to hunt Venom down. Now that he once again has a symbiote (and is once again using it in his Scorpion persona), Mac Gargan combining pretty much everything from his strange history in Marvel Comics.

The final surprise of Venom #28 is that Codex is actually Dylan Brock, Eddie's son with Anne. Without Eddie around, it remains this version of Dylan is apparently Anne's son, and also a frightful foreshadow of what Dylan of the main Marvel Universe could become, if corrupted by the dark god of the symbiotes, Knull.

Venom #28 is now on sale.