Eddie Brock was dying and sold his symbiote at an auction. It went to this mobster's son, but the symbiote found him lacking and abandoned him in mid-air and then went to Gargan.
One of the better ideas I think to come out of Mark Millar's brief tenure on Spider-Man.
I always had a problem with Eddie Brock Venom. Venom himself is a strong concept, evil Spider-Man with that godlike black suit, didn't set off Peter's Spidey Sense, kinda an anti-hero, that works. The guy in the suit though, he just had the worst motivation. He was a reporter whose column in the Globe was read by millions and he was writing about the Sin-Eater murders as they occurred. As a result of those articles, he stated that he was contacted by the aforementioned sad sack Emil Gregg, who confessed to being the Sin-Eater (Michelinie actually based this on a real event that had occurred in New York during the 1970's, when someone claiming to be the Son of Sam approached reporter Jimmy Breslin - again the credit for the reference goes to Comics Creators). Brock began telling Gregg's story but was pressured by police and the Globe's lawyers to reveal his identity before he killed again. And of course, we know what happened. Gregg was a phony and Stan Carter was soon revealed as the real Sin-Eater. Brock was fired and ostracized by his former colleagues, and as he described it - forced to write venomous (hence his supervillain name) celebrity pieces for tabloid magazines in order to survive. And rather than say, being mad at Gregg for being a screwed up liar, Brock blamed Spider-Man for exposing Brock and Gregg's fraud.
I mean uhhhhhh so you're a supervillain WHY exactly. That's not even how the Sin-Eater story happen, you idiot! The story was only a couple years old, you couldn't have just checked it out, David Micheline!?
There's a reason why every single re-telling of Venom's origin ditches this entire "I fucked up and got caught now I'm mad at Spider-Man???" origin, making up more compelling, logical reasons for Brock to hate Spidey AND Peter.
- In the 1990's animated series - Brock is Peter's less than ethical rival photographer at the Bugle (as opposed to being a reporter at another newspaper) - and tries to promote his career at the expense of Spider-Man. He grows to hate both men, which gives him an already built in motivation when the symbiote first bonds with him.
- In the Ultimate version, Eddie Brock Jr. is the son of Richard Parker's science and business partner, as well as a childhood friend of Peter's. Eddie is a little unstable anyway, but eventually turns on Peter because after he shows Pete the miracle "cancer suit" their fathers developed, Pete goes behind his back to conduct experiments on it - which he discovers when he turns on the TV and there's a black suited Spider-Man fighting crime in front of the cameras!
- In Spider-Man 3, Brock is a rival photog like in the animated series, but with the extra kicker of being young and a contemporary of Peter Parker's AND something of an Anti-Parker - unethical, full of himself, and obnoxiously flirtatious with the ladies. You can easily see this young man doing something stupid, ruining his life, but refusing to take responsibility, unlike the older, more experienced, comic book Brock.
- In the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, Eddie has a livelong connection with Peter, as both their parents died in a plane crash together. Peter got some great guardians in Peter and May while Eddie had to fend for himself, which caused a divide between them even if Eddie tried to hide it. As the series progresses, Eddie develops animosity towards Peter due to a series of misunderstandings, often involving photographs Peter had taken while secretly disguised as Spider-Man. This ultimately damages their friendship. In the series Spider-Man finds himself merged with an alien symbiote which Doctor Connors was studying at ESU. The loss of the alien meant a loss of funding for the lab, and as a result Eddie had to be let go from his job as lab assistant (his only source of income for tuition). Spider-Man eventually manages to separate from the symbiote after revealing its true intentions. He attempts to destroy it in front of Eddie, thus incurring an animosity towards Spider-Man as well as Peter, which attracts the alien. The symbiote then subsequently bonds with Eddie, revealing to him Spider-Man's identity, making him the first and only person in the series to learn his secret identity. Boom, a supervillian with logical dramatic motivations are born.
All of these, particular the last one, make a lot more sense to me than comic Eddie's whole thing.
Meanwhile, Mac Gargan is the Scorpion, and he's pretty much always been a mid-carder with a hard-on for Jonah. Giving him Venom gives him a push to the Main Event level(excuse all these wrestling terms, Serpentine will translate later), and also frees Venom up from his silly original incarnation. Venom gets to do a lot of fun, Venomy stuff, although the highpoint for me was of course his appearance in Ellis/Deodato Thunderbolts. Rather liked how they compared it to a drug addiction you now is bad for you but you just can't shake.
Edie wasn't totally thrown away though. In fact, I think one of Dan Slott's best inventions was Anti-Venom. It gives Edie his own symboite, lets him do his Dark Avenger Anti-Hero status partly played for laughs, and his redemption arc, to make up for the evil he's done in the past, is a stronger dramatic spine than his original story. It all climaxed in a pretty fantastic way when he has to sacrifices his symboite to help save New York City from Spider-Island. Finally got to be the big hero on TV with Reed Richards. I like to think this was the last story he ever starred in and all that Toxin stuff just never happen in my head. Really can't get a better ending for that guy.
and current Flash Thompson Venom is cool, too. Its taken a character who has mostly just hung around on the fringes of the franchise for 40+ years because he was in Stan Lee's original ASM run, and finally makes him an active character again now that high school's over and he can't bully Peter anymore.
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