Venom is Rewriting The Origin of Spider-Man's Black Suit All Over Again
Spider-Man's black suit has a convoluted history, and as Venom recollects the suit's origins, it seems the alien symbiote isn't sure how it got here.
Warning: contains spoilers for Venom: Lethal Protector #1!
Old school Marvel fans know the complicated and convoluted history of Spider-Man's black suit and Venom. As time went on, that history has been tweaked and adjusted, and it just happened again. This can be found in the recent reboot of Venom: Lethal Protector. The first issue was written by Venom co-creator David Michelinie and drawn by Ivan Fiorelli.
The original first appearance of Spider-Man's black suit was in the coveted eighth issue of the fantastical '80s crossover Secret Wars. The series centered around taking a whole bunch of heroes and villains and bringing them to fight on an amalgamated planet called Battleworld. In need of a replacement for his tattered and torn red and blue suit, Spider-Man finds a machine that repairs costumes. However when he uses it, Spider-Man isn't given his old costume. He is given an all-black one instead. Fond of this new suit and its abilities, Spider-Man brings the suit with him back to Earth.
Of course, Spider-Man learns that the suit is in fact a living alien called a symbiote and that it is changing his behavior for the worst. Infamously, Spider-Man gets rid of the suit in a church and it inevitably bonds with Eddie Brock to form the villain Venom. However, Venom has always viewed himself more of a lethal protector, and that's what this new series is about. While talking with his symbiote, Eddie Brock recalls how it got to Earth. It's mentioned very briefly, but the way it's phrased makes it appear that the suit had a completely different journey than the one mentioned above. He says that the suit was taken from his home planet to Earth. There is no mention of Battleworld at all. It also mentions how he chose Peter Parker, which is strange given that the suit came out of a machine.
It's not surprising that the black suit’s history is glossed over in the series. It was probably mentioned very briefly just to establish some backstory, which is admittedly very complicated. Streamlining the black suit’s origins makes for a much simpler reading for this series. After all, the symbiote and Venom's history is no stranger to retconning. There were several changes in last year's King in Black storyline that adjusted a lot of the symbiote’s past.
If taken at face value, Eddie Brock's comments here are actually very revealing. He mentions that the suit chose Peter, not that it came out of the machine. However, if these two statements are in line with one another then that means that the suit saw Peter wanting a repaired costume and chose to leave the machine to bond with him. This is also interesting given that Thor used machine before Peter and the suit chose not to bond with the God of Thunder. So even though Venom’s origins are constantly shifting, there's still a lot to be learned about Spider-Man and the black suit’s past.