Marvel Combines Venom With Another Major Villain

Marvel has been doing for Venom what the Spider-Verse story arcs and movies have done for Spider-Man – i.e., provide a framework to explore wild new variants of the character from across the Marvel Multiverse. In Marvel's Extreme Venomverse #5, one of the anthology stories focuses on one of Spider-Man's most dangerous foes deciding to take on the Venom symbiote himself, creating a whole new hybrid threat for Peter Parker! 

(WARNING: Extreme Venomverse #5 SPOILERS Follow) 

Writer Chip Zdarsky impressed a lot of Spider-Man fans with his 2021 limited series, Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow. That What If...? story imagined an alternate version of Marvel history, where Peter Parker chose to keep the Venom symbiote, rather than give it up. One sub-arc of Zdarsky's story saw Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin, target Spider-Venom for destruction using Shocker and Scorpion – a scheme that backfired when Spider-Venom killed the villains and attacked Fisk in his home, leaving him so mutilated he talked through a Bane-style mask. 

Extreme Venomverse #5 takes Marvel fans back to "Earth-21619" where Kingpin is still stewing in his defeat, as well as Peter Parker's public redemption, after shedding the symbiote and joining the Fantastic Four. The epilogue of Zdarsky's Spider's Shadow story finally gets explored: the Venom symbiote offspring Fisk was revealed to possess gets used to heal the Kingpin's body and enhance his power. Fisk wastes no time getting revenge, ambushing Peter at a public event. 

Fisk reveals his new Venom symbiote form, as well as his new name "King Pain." The Kingpin-Venom and Peter Parker battle it out across a skyscraper building, but the fight is ultimately sidetracked when the overarching threat of the series kicks back in – i.e., the entity hunting these Venom variants across the multiverse. Carnage emerges from some air vents and brutally slaughters Fisk to absorb his Venom symbiote and powers, as Peter flees the scene. 

Extreme Venomverse has been doing some pretty fun and wild variations on the character – including introducing a "Venom Noir" variant of Eddie Brock, which we previously wrote about. As with all these multiverse stories, its hard to know how permanent any of this will be in future Marvel stories. That said, Chip Zdarsky's Spider's Shadow universe being revisited like this is a good sign that something like the Kingpin version of Venom could be a character we see again.

Extreme Venomverse is on sale at Marvel Comics.