Venom is a moniker used by several characters in the Marvel Comics' fictional Marvel Universe. It was first used by the character Eddie Brock in The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (April 1988). It is now used by Mac Gargan, formerly known as Scorpion. The characters and their superhuman abilities are derived from the bonding between the human host and an extraterrestrial parasite known as the Venom Symbiote. The Venom symbiote first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man vol. 1, #252 (which was published several months before Secret Wars vol. 1, #8, which, chronologically, is when Spider-Man first encountered the symbiote).
The symbiote returned to Earth with Spider-Man at the end of the events of the Marvel miniseries Secret Wars. Soon, the symbiote began to exert more and more influence over its host, eventually threatening to take over. Spider-Man eventually was able to free himself, and the symbiote later found and bonded with Eddie Brock, a reporter for the New York Globe (a rival of the Daily Bugle), and later Mac Gargan, the former Scorpion.
Originally, the Venom symbiote was portrayed as a mute and lonely creature craving the company of a host. More recently, it has been shown as increasingly abusive of its hosts, and having the powers of speech.
Thusly, Venom was changed to Eddie Brock, a character specifically created to be Venom, and in the process, retconning a widely popular Spider-Man storyline that had run the previous year. citation needed]