Todd McFarlane Shares Spider-Man Moment That Created Venom

It’s hard to think of a comic landscape where Venom didn’t exist, but Todd McFarlane recently revealed the circumstance that led to his creation.

McFarlane shared a page of his Spider-Man art on social media that many will recognize, as Spidey swings high above the city. It is this page that McFarlane explains led to him creating Venom, though at the time he didn’t know what the character would become.

“This is the page that CREATED Venom!!! If I didn’t like the #classic look of #spiderman so much, Venom would never have existed. Here’s why… When I took over the artwork for the Amazing Spider-Man comic artistically I wanted to draw #Spidey in his red & blue costume…but he was wearing a black costume at the time.
Marvel said they would bring back the ‘classic’ look in issue #300 if I joined the book (which I did on issue 298). Problem was…what to do with the black costume. So I came up with the alien/monster look and we had a new villain that none of us knew would be such an important character for #Marvel.

TODD
#venommovie #weareone #venom #villain #happyaccident #accident #surprise #SPIDEY”

Now Sony is attempting to translate that iconic creation to the big screen, and from the looks of the latest trailers, it seems they are on the right track. Before the footage hit McFarlane had shared his hopes for the Venom movie, one that he hoped would embrace its R-rated nature.

“The only thing that’s warming my heart — I mean Tom Hardy is obviously a good choice —the thing that’s warming my heart is they’re saying it’s going to be R,” McFarlane told ComicBook.com. “So now the question is (and I haven’t read the script), like what does that mean? Because again, we’ve seen a couple ‘R movies’ right? I mean we’ve seen Logan and we’ve seen Deadpool … So it would be interesting to me to see what they do. I mean I know what I would do if they gave me that character; I would scare the s— out of people with it. I don’t know if they want to go that far with it, cause again, you can sell a lot of shirts and toys if you don’t completely scare people, so it will be interesting.”

Venom stars Tom Hardy (Venom/Eddie Brock), Michelle Williams (Anne Weying), Jenny Slate, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Lee (Donna Diego), Riz Ahmed (Dr. Carlton Drake), Sope Aluko (Dr. Rosie Collins), and Reid Scott.

Venom lands in theaters on Friday, Oct. 5, while Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 5, 2019.