Venom officially hit theaters on Oct. 5, and it finally answers MCU fans' questions about what exactly Sony's "Spiderverse" may look like. While Sony may not actually be able to use Marvel's Spider-Man (currently Tom Holland) in its new superhero movies, it will include other characters from the comics, starting with Venom who is Spider-Man's greatest nemesis in the comics. Venom serves as a sort of origin story that portrays the binding of a symbiote from outer space to a human host. That host is a journalist named Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), who procures Venom's powers and becomes a powerful antihero.
The powers that Venom possesses include a few that Venom the movie leaves out and a few that you get to watch in action, like the actual venomous bite inflicted by the symbiote's ginormous yellow chompers. They look like what you might imagine a bear's teeth combined with some shark teeth would look like, and it's certainly the most menacing-looking aspect of the evil adversary. Or maybe it's those Tim Burton-esque eyes. Either way, you can't try to convince anyone that Venom doesn't look terrifying.
Without its human host, the alien symbiote that transforms into Venom doesn't look scary at all given that it naturally just looks like shiny black goop. If you're a true Spider Man fan — or if you're just over the age of 17 — you might remember that menacing goop from 2007's Spider-Man 3. In that trilogy's end, though, you don't get a full idea of what that alien goop is actually capable of.
Venom's powers go far beyond a vicious bite. Sure, it's totally creepy that Eddie Brock's malevolent alter ego bites off people's heads and feeds on their brains, but really Venom isn't all about his teeth. As you may have guessed, especially if you saw Spider-Man 3, Venom basically serves as an "evil version" of Spider-Man. That means that Venom has Spider-Man's web-slinging skills and is super agile. The reason for that actually doesn't have anything to do with the alien being's original home on some foreign planet, but because of what happened after the symbiote was brought to earth.
See, in the comic books, Venom temporarily used Spider-Man as its human host in Marvel's Secret Wars 12-issue series in 1984. That bond left the symbiote with some of Spider-Man's powers, due to Venom's genetic memory that allows the non-human black slime to carry its previous host's DNA to the next body. Those aren't Venom's only super-villain characteristics, though. Venom also has super strength — which Brock's impressive build partly contributes to — the ability to heal its host, shape-shifting powers, the ability to create weapons literally out of nothing, heightened-sensory perception, and the ability to reproduce itself.
There's really no denying that Venom has an impressive set of powers. The greatest test of those powers would definitely occur when — or if — Venom had a chance to battle against Spider-Man himself, but it's still uncertain whether or not Sony will get to portray that epic match-up.
Regardless of Spider-Man's participation in the Spiderverse, there are plenty of other fun characters from the comics that could rival Venom, even with his impressive stock of powers.
