This is one of the more ridiculous spiders I’ve had to post, but it’s not just a variant cover. The Tsum Tsum version of Spider-Man has had actual comics made of it, where it is shown that it is not only alive, but it had super powers, and has even teamed up with the real Spider-Man.
Spider-Tsum Tsum can shoot webbing, swing, crawl on walls, and change its size (and mass?) at will. Also, it only speaks in emojis.
It all starts here!
Edge of VenomVerse is the first VenomVerse related title. This mini-series will lead up to the events of the main story, and likely introduce us to several new versions of Venom from different realities.
First up, we meet a young Laura Kinney who is being held in a secret facility by a group known, so far, only as the Facility. Laura comments to herself about her many previous attempts at escape, and that this time will be different. She slaughters a group of heavily armed and armoured soldiers, and to avoid some toxic gas being released from the wall vents, she ducks into another lab. Here she finds that Facility is also holding what we recognize to be a symbiote (aka a Klyntar), and she uses her claws to cut the glass. The symbiote immediate slips through the single cut and covers her, much to the horror of the next group of soldiers who find her.
After living homeless for several months, and making friends with a group of other homeless teens, Facility agents find them and attack. It turns out Laura has shared a small amount of the symbiote with each of the kids, allowing them to do things like form a hand of claws, or the classic Venom jaw of teeth, but not much else. They fend off the soldiers for a time, but they’re cornered in a back room of an abandoned building. Just when they need X-23 the most, the symbiote recalls its wayward parts from the other kids, sensing it needs to be whole. As soon as the last bit attaches, Laura and the symbiote are suddenly teleported away, leaving the kids defenseless.
This is where X-23 Venom first meets a Venomized Captain America who tells her they have a war to win.
Spider-Girl, aka Jennifer Justice is a rare sort of character, seeing as she is from a comic book within the MC2 Universe. Within that comic series, she is the daughter of Spider-Man. Spider-Man is the ruler of Planet Spidera and all the the spider people, such as Black Widow and Spider Woman, making Spider-Girl a Princess to her people.
Annie is the 14-year-old daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker on Earth-18119 featured in Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows. She inherited her powers naturally from her father, but since an X Gene is not involved, she does not count as a Mutant. Despite that, she was offered membership in Charles Xavier’s school for the gifted. Her costume was designed by her parents, and thus incorporates quite a bit of padding and armour to protect her.
The whole Spider Family
Mary Jane was first seen in her Spinneret costume in The Amazing Spider-Man Renew Your Vows #1, a full series continuing the story from the 2015 Secret Wars mini-series by the same name.
In the Secret Wars mini-series, a new villain named Regent had developed technology into a suit of armour that allowed him to use the super powers of capture subjects. He defeats and captures all the heroes except for Spider-Man and takes over for years. When Peter and Mary Jane’s daughter, Annie May Parker, starts developing spider powers herself, they can’t stay hidden any longer, and in the ensuing battle are thankfully able to defeat Regent, though not alone.
During the final fight, Mary Jane steals and uses a slightly less powerful version of Regent’s suit that he has developed for his closest, most trusted servants to use. In the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man Renew Your Vows series, it is revealed that Peter was able to shrink down Regent’s technology into a new suit that can tap into his powers, and grant them to Mary Jane. And thus Spinneret is born!
It’s possible that there is a downside to the Spinneret suit, as Peter mentions that he can feel when the Spinneret suit kicks in and taps into his powers when Mary Jane is nearby. In fact it even sets off his Spider Sense. I will just note that the Spinneret suit does work when Mary Jane is nowhere near Peter, so it’s not like she only has his powers when she’s near him. It is also unknown if she can tap into anyone else’s powers, or if she can only get spider powers from it. As of this writing (4 issues into the series) no side effects of this tapping technology are yet known, but I doubt it would have been brought up if there weren’t any!
EDIT: In issue 8 of Spider-Man Renew Your Vows, Mary Jane is so distracted by a Mysterio illusion that showed her daughter injured and trapped, that she drained so much of Peter’s powers that he momentarily passed out.
Mary Jane putting on the Regent suit to help save her family
The Venom symbiote has been a constant part of the Spider-Man story for a long time. It’s had many hosts, it’s black and white patterns are inspired and shared with many Spider-Men and Spider-Women. But it’s never been quite like this.
Eugene “Flash” Thompson, as Agent Venom, joined the Guardians of the Galaxy in hopes of finding out more information about his alien partner. Eventually, prolonged time in deep space started affecting the symbiote and it started acting paranoid, and even violent. It finally took over several members of the Guardians’ crew and directed their ship to an unknown region of space, finally landing on an uncharted planet.
This planet turned out to be the original birth place of the symbiote race. Once Flash, once again in possession of the symbiote, realized the symbiote was being called here by its race, he chose to merge with them believing he would finally get the answers he so desired. After several moments, he emerged reborn.
The alien symbiotes were able to communicate to the Guardians that all the symbiotes the universe has known so far have been a corrupted faction of their race, the Klyntar, that in truth desires to make the universe better. Once back on the homeworld, the Venom symbiote was able to be cleansed of its corruption and purified, giving it new powers. The Klyntar proclaim that Flash’s symbiosis is now a perfect one, and presumably, the Venom symbiote won’t lash out in vicious anger anymore.
Since this process, this “Agent of the Cosmos” has demonstrated abilities such as forming the symbiote into large crystalline looking structures, as well as form sharp implements like blades, which, so far, only other symbiote offspring have been able to do. He can even survive in the vacuum of space now. Whether or not that is the extent of his new powers remains to be seen.
Flash is the star of a new solo comic series called Venom Space Knight.
In the MC2 Universe, Normie Osborn eventually became the owner of the Venom symbiote, but his honest and peaceful nature calmed the beast and it lost its evil ways, and desire to hurt people. Oddly enough he’s shown on the cover here as having six arms, but in the actual comic pages he only has two. Maybe he manifests extra arms at one point, but I wasn’t able to find more images like this one.
Black Tarantula, aka Carlos LaMuerto, is a Spider-Man villain who, while wearing a black and white spider suit, does not have spider powers, and is also not related to Venom in any way. Instead he is a crime lord who seems possibly immortal if his claims of being over 700 years old are true.
While it seems he can’t die from aging, he can be hurt or wounded, however to combat that he also has a healing touch he can use on himself or even others. He once easily broke the super powered assassin Delilah’s neck and healed her on the spot just to make a point.
In the MC2 universe, the Black Tarantula role has apparently been taken over by Carlos’ son Fabian. They pretty much look the same except that Fabian’s arms are partially bare, so I’m just going to lump them together for this entry.
While this guy isn’t really a spider character per se, I included him because I remember when I first saw him long ago I thought he was somehow related to Venom, and I figured I’d include him to clear that up for others too.
During the Spider-Island side story of the 2015 Secret Wars comics, the Spider-Queen managed to succeed in taking over New York City, and transformed the vast majority of the citizens, and heroes, into spider people.
One of the few people who avoided being changed and taken over is Flash Thompson as Agent Venom, thanks to his symbiote protecting him. Flash ends up assembling a series of artifacts and serums that could further transform other heroes (werewolves, vampires, lizard people) so that the Spider-Queen couldn’t control them.
As Agent Venom, Flash is hugely susceptible to the weaknesses of his symbiote, one of the main ones being sonics. This is a huge problem considering the Spider-Queen has a hugely powerful sonic scream.
Luckily, after rescuing Spider-Man, he tells Flash about the Sonic Proof suit he had made, but never used himself. Flash puts it on under his symbiote, and when the Spider-Queen later blasts him with her scream, the symbiote is able to peel away from the brunt of it and Flash is able to continue the mission and save the day.
Positively Jim 