[(Between Venom:Dark Origins and Lethal Protector)]

• A collection of different points in time where Venom and Spiderman face off with each other

• Begins all the way back during the Secret Wars where Spidey found the symbiote on Battleworld

• Peter does not know it is a symbiote yet nor that it is alive but knows it can act for itself. Peter goes to the Fantastic Four to inquire about it

• Mr.Fantastic deduces and reveals to Peter that it is, in fact, alive and has attached itself to Peter mentally and physically after which Peter decides he really wants to be rid of it

• Mr.Fantastic uses a sonic gun in an attempt to get it off which works. Sonics are one of the only two things that can weaken a symbiote besides fire

• Mr. Fantastic keeps the symbiote in containment in the Baxter Building

• The symbiote escapes its captivity and returns to Peter’s apartment impersonating a Spiderman costume. The next day Peter unknowingly selects the symbiote costume and the two struggle for control where en route to the Baxter Building to get the sonic gun, Spidey goes to a church with a large bell instead to rid himself of it again which he does. The symbiote, now knowing it is unwanted, leaves an unconscious Parker but in the duration of its bond, has learned to feel emotions

• The next part of the story shows an unidentified figure pushing Peter onto railroad tracks and then later grabbing his ankle through an open office window causing him to lose balance when sticking onto a building 

• The next panels cut to a man who has a vendetta against Spiderman as well as joined with the abandoned symbiote. He vows to make Spidey suffer

• The man, joined with the symbiote, goes to Peter’s house and emotionally terrorizes Mary Jane. Peter thought he killed the symbiote at the bell tower but is now in doubt after what MJ has told him

• MJ and Peter make plans to move from Chelsea St to the Bedford Towers condos 

• The man and the symbiote begin their murders with a guard at the Lady of Sorrows church which is the same church where Peter abandoned the symbiote as the man says that there is where it all began for them and will murder anyone who gets in the way of their revenge 

• The man has a warped sense of justice as he believes murder justifies his cause

• Peter and MJ move in

• Peter notices a similarly dressed man swinging through Manhattan and figures it must be MJ’s attacker/the symbiote and so follows the man taking the sonic gun with him into an abandoned building where he is then attacked

• The attacker reveals himself to be Eddie Brock who Spidey recognizes from the Daily Globe, a rival to the Daily Bugle. Eddie’s personal reasons for hating Spiderman are explained in Venom: Dark Origins. He calls himself Venom

• The symbiote has completely bonded physiologically with Brock preventing Spidey from being able to obliterate it using the sonic gun. Spidey beats Venom in their first battle using his wits

• Venom is put in the custody of the FF and then incarcerated in the Vault of which he escapes 

• Brock firmly believes Spiderman is solely accountable for the way that he is now

• Brief appearance of Hydro-Man in a brief scuffle with Spidey

• Eddie hitchhikes from Colorado where the prison is to NYC where he takes refuge in underground fallout shelters

• Peter and Mary Jane are currently living with Aunt May in a boarding house which she owns

• Black Cat looks for Peter at Chelsea St and the Bedford apartments after a long absence from each other due to their relationship deteriorating and stumbles upon Venom who happens to be looking there at the same time. He mentions Peter’s wife, making Black Cat upset

• Venom and Black Cat fight. Venom breaks her nose and spares her life after realizing she doesn’t really know where Peter is

• MJ tells Peter that Venom is on the loose again 

• Peter leaves to find Venom who finds Peter instead and the two battle again in a meat plant where Spidey manages to give him the slip. He accidentally drops a piece of paper with his current address on it which Venom picks up

• Venom proves to be a formidable foe for Spiderman, arguably one of the most formidable as its abilities include being able to mimic its previous hosts’ abilities such as:

• Spidey’s abilities to stick to surfaces

• Spidey’s webbing

• Spidey’s super strength in addition to Eddie’s

• Creating snake-like tendrils for slipping through small gaps/choking

• Large globs to suffocate victims

• Separate pieces of itself to function simultaneously 

• Shapeshift to imitate clothing

• Camouflage within its surroundings to appear entirely invisible

• Eddie shows up at Peter’s house and explains that he wants to meet up so they can finish their battle. He doesn’t attack him then and there because if he forced Peter’s hand, many other enemies would know his secret identity and he doesn’t want or need competition. Only two other villians know this secret who are Green Goblin and Doc Ock

• Peter and Brock battle on the beaches of Montauk. Venom quickly and easily gains the upper hand but Peter uses a trick by telling the symbiote he wants it back after which it tries to leave Brock for Peter but cannot because the bond is so strong, rendering Brock unconscious 

• Venom is in the Vault again incarcerated alongside The Controller, Rhino, and Hydro-Man

• Another villain, Mentallo, helps Brock escape by telepathically forcing a guard to open Brock’s cell 

• Many villains escape their cells, including Electro who liberates more others using his powers

• Captain America and Hank Pym arrive to help the Vault as does Freedom Force, Mystique’s former Brotherhood of Mutants along with new members Super Sabre and Crimson Commando who are actual heroes. They currently fight for the U.S. government after mutant-human relations deteriorated to an all-time low

• Several more Avengers arrive to help including Hawkeye, Vision, Wonder Man, Iron Man, and She-Hulk

• Prior to FF’s arrival, the head of the Vault, Truman Marsh, contemplates detonating the facility but is redirected because of their arrival timing. Marsh directs them to a location where Avalanche uses his abilities to access utility tunnels which they can navigate to reach the prison cells. The quake activates the bomb which leads to Marsh gaining a fatalistic attitude, planning to leave everyone in the Vault, and attempts to escape by elevator but not before....... 

• .....Venom intercepts him 460 m below the surface where Marsh was planning his escape 

• Minutes after the Avengers arrive and look for Marsh, they deduce that there is a bomb beneath them but don’t know where

• The Avengers contact FF about the bomb who are ambushed suspiciously by water in the tunnels 

• The Avengers are given blueprints to the Vault by one of the head scientists, Dr. Brewster

• Vision uses his intangibility to go underground to find the inmates. He finds Marsh and another man held hostage by Venom and in contact with Dr. Brewster, not believing her about the explosives and as he’s about to kill the other man, Vision phases through him rendering him unconscious 

• Vision is K.Oed by Ulysses Klaw by using his sound blast. Thunderball of the Wrecking Crew takes charge of the villains which Venom strongly opposes and as he’s about to attack, Electro intervenes with a thunderbolt

• The villains divide as Thunderball takes Electro and Ironclad with him to confront the Avengers and Venom stays with his group to wait the Avengers out

• 30 m above the villains, Wonder Man, Wasp, and Hawkeye are ambushed by Titania, Moonstone, and Piledriver; Freedom Force is ambushed by Grey Gargoyle, Hydro Man, and X-Ray in the tunnels, and Cap and She-Hulk by Ironclad, Electro, and Thunderball. The tunnel group face an ultimatum to join the villains or perish as Mystique hesitates with her answer then radios Cap for assistance leaving her decision ambiguous and She-Hulk suspicious of her. Electro’s group is defeated prior to the call

• Armadillo and Rhino assault Venom because they don’t want their sentences sabotaged. Klaw and Basil incapacitate them and Venom continues to threaten Marsh

• Freedom Force make it up to the level where the Avengers are with their offending captors who were defeated by Wonder Man’s group and join Cap and She-Hulk

• Venom arrives with KOed Hank Pym and Iron Man. Hank regains consciousness who tells Venom about the bomb who’s still calling the bluff. It takes Thunderball’s smarts for him to believe it. Thunderball teams up with Iron Man and Hank to diffuse it

• Venom has Klaw put a sound barrier around the other heroes

• The bomb is diffused and Thunderball is given credit which Venom really does not like. At the same moment Vision arrives releasing the rest of the heroes from Klaw’s sound prison and ensuing in a battle

• Iron Man uses Mentallo’s control discs, amplified by his own armor, to telepathically command the villains to surrender

• The Avengers look for Marsh who Pym suspects has gone below to the facility’s nuclear department in a last ditch effort to detonate it. The Avengers arrive to find Venom there too and incapacitate him but not before he kills Marsh by throwing him into radioactive waste. Iron Man and Radioactive Man absorb as much as they can to dispel it in the sky

• Venom escapes for a 3rd time this time by faking his death and taking his pulse down to near 0 bpm. He resumes his mad path of vengeance on Spiderman   

• Venom forces Spidey to fight him in Central Park where Spidey barely manages and Venom gives him the slip

• Peter meets Venom in the tunnels where they fight along with a couple of other Spiderman enemies named Styx & Stone who have their own grudge against him. The 3 villains take each other out and Eddie is admitted into Ryker’s Island Penitentiary

• Brock meets his cellmate Cletus Kasady who we know becomes the homicidal crazed maniac Carnage. The symbiote finds Brock (which was partially disintegrated by Styx) and together they escape prison. The symbiote reproduces and unknowingly leaves a piece of itself right beside Cletus.....birthing a monster and one of Spiderman’s most twisted enemies

• Venom uses the Daily Globe to find Spiderman and kills a former co-worker in the process

• Brock exposits to himself how the symbiote still survived from Styx’s cancerous touch due to its unearthly biochemical makeup

• Venom and Spidey brawl again and Venom freezes Spidey in a lab then transports him to a deserted island so the two can fight in peace

• The battle is more of a fight for survival as Spiderman becomes the hunted but manages to fake his death when he uses a skeleton and leaves it at the very spot Venom threw a car at and caused an explosion with

• Venom’s path intertwines with Darkhawk aka Chris Powell when Powell is on the trail of a man named Philippe Bazin who has kidnapped his father. The trail leads him to a plane taking off to the Caribbean Islands where it crash lands and just where Venom so happens to be. They encounter and fight

• Darkhawk cannot fight to his full potential as his chest amulet has been ripped out of the suit by Tombstone. Darkhark draws his power from the Darkforce Dimension like Cloak and Dagger. Venom uses his ability to camouflage as an advantage

• Venom lets Darkhawk go by feigning his own defeat because he sensed Darkhawk is an innocent and has less than a day to live without the amulet

• Darkhawk finds Philippe and his men. Sadly, Darkhawk’s father is killed. Darkhawk makes a promise to him to protect his family. The whole reason why Philippe had him kidnapped was to discover the secrets of the Darkhawk suit which he coveted

• Back at Ryker’s Island, Cletus is heard talking to himself which a guard goes and investigates. He coaxes the guard to come closer after which a yell is heard attracting two other guards only to see the guard dead by being forcibly pulled through the bars and Kasady gone through a hole in the wall. A man is murdered by a figure cloaked by a red symbiote in similitude to Venom now going by the moniker Carnage

• Carnage begins his endless spree of genocide

• Peter deduces Kasady is the killer and has escaped his cell and when he finds him at his hideout, sees him transform into Carnage confirming his suspicions

• Peter faces off with Carnage and is absolutely no match. He luckily survives. He tells MJ he has no choice but to enlist Venom’s help 

• Peter brings Johnny Storm (Human Torch) with him because he borrowed a sonic gun from the FF. They find Venom who immediately goes on the offense and incapacitates them both by smashing the gun and using sand and water to extinguish Johnny’s flames 

• Johnny uses a Nova Flare which distracts Venom after which Spidey lures him away allowing Johnny to use a sonic blast from the Fantasticar. Spidey uses this moment to tell Venom about Carnage 

• Spiderman and Venom make the deal to work together

• Venom finds Carnage by using its ability to sense its offspring. He is stronger than either Spidey or Venom and gives them the slip deliberately pointing them to his next target- a photo of Jonah Jameson with a hole on the forehead

• Carnage arrives at the Bugle and kidnaps Jameson. Spiderman and Venom find him at a heavy metal concert on a hunch. Carnage runs and abandons Jameson as the fight transitions over into the subway tunnels

• Carnage returns to the concert hall above with a bound/captive Jameson who instead of running, called the Bugle to tell them the story. Venom attacks Carnage giving Spidey the opportunity to tell Jonah to run and to use the P.A system to weaken Venom and Carnage

• Not weakened enough, Venom attacks Spidey but then Mr. Fantastic arrives with a sonic gun and subdues him revealing Spiderman had a backup plan the entire time

• Venom berates Spidey for his betrayal provoking Spidey’s guilt which gets to him

• The conclusion of the story arc sees a mysterious couple about to board a flight to NYC and are somehow connected to Peter Parker’s life

• A backstory to Eddie’s first ‘justified’ murder