After bonding with Venom, becoming the King in Black, and even taking on the monstrous Carnage symbiote, Eddie Brock has experienced more reinventions than almost any character in Marvel Comics.
At AIPT, we’ve been following every twist and turn of Eddie’s journey in our exclusive Venom Unleashed column, charting the ever-evolving mythology of Marvel’s most complicated antihero. Now, in Venom Unchained, writer Charles Soule and artist Juanan Ramírez are stripping Eddie down to his most vulnerable state yet: a man without a symbiote, without power, and forced to confront what those relationships have truly meant to him.
Following the events of Eddie Brock: Carnage and Death Spiral, Venom Unchained finds Eddie imprisoned and facing an uncomfortable truth: his connection to symbiotes may have become something far more complicated than heroism or necessity. As Eddie grapples with loss, addiction, identity, and the lingering shadow of his time as the King in Black, familiar allies like Sleeper return with agendas of their own.
Ahead of Venom Unchained releasing on August 5th (Final preorders by July 6), I spoke with Charles Soule about Eddie’s dependence on symbiotes, why losing his powers doesn’t mean losing his greatest strength, what makes Sleeper such a fascinating partner, and why Eddie Brock remains one of Marvel’s most misunderstood heroes.
Oh, and don’t miss the exclusive unlettered interior art below, too!
AIPT: You recently put Eddie Brock through one of the most unusual chapters of his life in Eddie Brock: Carnage, and now Venom Unchained picks up after that relationship ends. What aspects of Eddie’s experience with Carnage did you most want to carry forward, even after the symbiote is gone?
Charles Soule: My work on the Carnage series really started with the question as to why in the world Eddie would bond with Carnage at all. Carnage has been the great devil of the symbiote universe almost since the start – completely evil, a serial killer, a monster. The answer I chose was that Eddie is in worse shape than he realizes and that he’s essentially addicted to symbiotes. The power, the connection, the way he feels when he has one. So, once he’s lost Venom and doesn’t have any other symbiotes available to him, Carnage seems like a possibility. Eddie rationalizes the situation (as addicts often do) by saying that he can control Carnage better than anyone else could, and if he’s with Eddie, that means no one else is being corrupted. Good intentions leading to hell, basically.
To me, that seemed like an aspect of Eddie’s personality that wouldn’t just vanish when Carnage does (which happened in the very fun Death Spiral story). Also, importantly, Eddie now knows he has this issue, which adds some new notes to his character’s overall arc. So, as the story continues here, we find Eddie imprisoned, without a symbiote – without a way to get his “fix,” essentially, which puts him at a very low point. I wanted to spend time in this story thinking about where Eddie might go from here… and that’s the story!
AIPT: One of the most interesting things about this series is that Eddie begins it without a symbiote at all. How did stripping away his greatest strength change the way you approached him as a protagonist?
CS: I think Eddie’s greatest strength isn’t necessarily his symbiote. Symbiotes are certainly a source of superpowers for him, but I’d say Eddie Brock’s greatest strength is something more like his unwillingness to quit. There’s a lot of “pick yourself up and keep fighting” in Eddie. That said, there’s no question in my mind that he doesn’t like not having a symbiote, and he feels more himself, more fully realized when he does. At this point, he’s spent most of his adult life with one, and running around without an alien buddy (of some kind or another) probably feels something like most people might feel if their left arm suddenly vanished, or they encountered some other significant physical change that forced them to adjust their way of moving through the world. It’s not easy for him, and there’s a period of denial, of adjustment, maybe even more Eddie Brock-style questionable choices – as we’ll see.
AIPT: Issue #3 asks whether Eddie could reclaim the mantle of King in Black. Without spoiling anything, how much of this story is about Eddie wrestling with the consequences of giving up that power in the first place?
CS: While it’s not a direct through line, exactly, if you’ve been reading my take on Eddie from Carnage through Death Spiral and then here, it’s pretty clear that I think Eddie would be at least somewhat preoccupied with that loss. He was one of the most powerful beings in the universe, but even more than that, he was connected to so many beings. Eddie has always been something of a lonely person, I think, from his childhood on up. That’s part of why the bond with Venom (and other symbiotes) works so well for him. So, again, losing the abilities of the King in Black would weigh on him – he thinks about it, remembers it, and in some ways that experience (and the loss) guides some of his decisions even now.
AIPT: Sleeper plays a major role in helping Eddie escape prison, but the solicitations hint that the symbiote has plans of its own. What makes Eddie and Sleeper’s relationship different from the other symbiote partnerships we’ve seen over the years?
CS: Sleeper is extremely independent, both in its powers and its goals. I think that most symbiotes have (or create) a sense of alignment with their hosts, like they sort of end up wanting the same things. Sleeper, however, does whatever the heck it wants – which makes sense because it has the very unique ability among symbiotes to exist on its own without a host. In many ways, Sleeper is more of a complete personality and being than some of the other symbiotes we spend time with (don’t come after me, Venom fans! It’s just a take!) So, with that in mind, obviously Sleeper is going to have goals and ambitions, just like any thinking entity. What they are… read and find out!
AIPT: You’ve now written Eddie Brock as Venom, Carnage, and now during a period where he’s caught between identities while Knull and Hela wage war. After spending so much time with him, what do you think people still misunderstand most about Eddie Brock?
CS: I think there’s a tendency to characterize Eddie as sort of a screw-up, like someone not to be trusted with important things – like raising his son, or being a hero, or possessing and using the power that symbiotes convey. I don’t think that’s fair or correct, but I do think he’s capable of enormously bad judgment. That makes him endearing and more interesting, at least as far as I’m concerned.
There’s this whole thing in Marvel where the heroes are depicted as having godlike powers but feet of clay, and Eddie feels like a character who embodies that perfectly. I’ve had a great time steering his story so far, and I look forward to seeing what the fans think of where it goes in this latest chapter.
Like what you read? Be sure to preorder Venom Unchained by July 6th, and purchase it in comic book shops on August 5th!
You must be logged in to post a comment.