Venom Creators Meet up for the First Time Ever in Awesome Photo

It’s hard to imagine that long time collaborators for Marvel and DC Comics have never met face to face, given how their stories and characters have affected millions of fans across the world, but sometimes that’s how the industry works.

It took three decades, but the creators of the popular Spider-Man villain Venom finally got together in the same room at Phoenix Comic Fest earlier this year. Check out this awesome photo of artist Todd McFarlane, writer David Michelinie, and editor Jim Salicrup posing together.

It’s amazing that it took so long to get these three comic book legends together, but better late than never. What a coincidence that it’s finally happening right before the Venom is going to premiere in theaters.

McFarlane has been vocally protective of the character he helped bring to life in recent discussions as he gets ready to tackle his own directorial debut.

“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 [rated] R,” McFarlane told ComicBook.com. “So now the question is, like what does that mean? … I mean I know what I would do if they gave me that character; I would scare the shit 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.”

Michelinie, for his part, made an impassioned Facebook post about co-creator credit, though it’s not clear which character he’s specifically referring to, as he’s had a hand in both Venom and the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man, among others.

“Let it be known that I am a great believer in giving credit where credit is due, and I readily admit to having co-created quite a few characters in the last 40 years,” Michelinie wrote on Facebook. “However, there are other characters that I came up with entirely on my own, sitting at the desk in my office, with no input from anyone else on the planet. Characters that I put into plots, along with their names, backgrounds, motivations, personalities and frequently visual descriptions and even bits of speech patterns.”

“Those plots were sent to editors who, after approval, THEN sent them along to other individuals in the creative chain. But if I say I ‘created’ such characters– like Venom, Carnage, Taskmaster, Scott Lang and so many more– someone will come back with, ‘But what about such-and-such? He/She created them, too!’ And, according to some definitions, that’s true.” he added.

Hopefully Michelinie and McFarlane are cool with how Venom’s credit breaks down!