Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Venom | Tagged: marvel, venom

Marvel Comics Decided To Switch The Gender Of Venom

As part of the Fanboy Rampage over the creation of Venom on Bleeding Cool yesterday, Venom co-creator David Michelinie also talked about a change to his initial origin.  Before Amazing Spider-Man #300, the concept of Venom was teased. That someone else had the symbiote costume and pushed Peter Parker off a subway station, without triggering his Spider-Sense, in Web of Spider-Man #18 by Michelinie, Marc Silvestri, and Kyle Baker. But the gender of the hand was meant to different to that of the Venom which would later emerge.

I initially had an origin for a female character worked out, but when I switched over from Web to Amazing I was asked to make the character male. I figured I could do what I'd set out to do with either gender, so that's when I came up with Eddie Brock.

Jim Salicrup, then Marvel EIC told Syfy as much a few years ago, without quite being as explicit as David was this week.

"Tom was asking for a something a little short of a miracle," he said. When Michelinie pitched his idea of a woman wearing the symbiote costume, Salicrup was interested but not sold. "I knew this villain had to be a meaner, bigger, and more powerful version of Spider-Man. Someone the fans could believe could truly defeat Spider-Man," he said. "So I do what editors do when they want to change such a major idea, I took it the editor-in-chief betting he'd suggest what I was thinking, and sure enough Tom did just that. That way, when I told David, I was able to 'blame' it on Tom."

Man, all this genderswitching in comics back in 1986, who knew? Of course, the gender of Venom has always been a perceived one, and dependent on the host. Venom has laid eggs after all. Talking of which. what did Michelinie think of Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage?

 I saw the new movie Tuesday night. I was a little disappointed; I thought the humor got way too silly, and the "Odd Couple" buddy angle just got so far away from the original intent of the character that it was hard for me to really get into things.

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