Who Is the All-New Venom Host? Marvel Teases the Four Suspects

“We are Venom.” When symbiote host Eddie Brock bonded with Spider-Man’s alien costume, a shared hatred of Peter Parker and Spider-Man turned the scorned duo into Venom: parasitic supervillain turned Lethal Protector. The Venom symbiote has had other hosts — including Flash Thompson (as Agent Venom), Mac Gargan/Scorpion (as Venom and the Dark Avengers’ Sinister Spider-Man), and Eddie’s son, Dylan Brock — but there’s an all-new Venom host in All-New Venom by writer Al Ewing (Immortal Thor) and artist Carlos Gómez (Fantastic Four). The only question is… who are they?

Spinning out of Ewing’s run on Venom and his five-issue Symbiote saga Venom War, which concludes with the all-new Venom’s debut in Venom War #5 in November, All-New Venom #1 (on sale Dec. 4) stars a Venom who isn’t Eddie Brock. Marvel is keeping their identity under wraps past the gold-covered first issue, but per the synopsis, the all-new Venom “could be the Journalist… the Terrorist… the Sidekick… or even the Mayor.” (More on the suspects below.)

“We take a swing away from the big cosmic thing,” Ewing told Polygon. “The pendulum swings away from that and back into a much more intimate, character-based story, but also has a lot of that ground-level superhero action, where it’s less about cosmic entities battling in each other’s mindscapes, or mysterious zones beyond time, and much more on the street — slinging webs, slinging chains, doing the Venom thing. It’s almost like my return to an old-school sort of superhero comic, but with a couple of twists that we’re gonna have fun bringing in.” 

As Dylan Brock searches for the new Venom host, battling A.I.M. and the Symbiote Squad along the way, the suspects list will include:

All-New Venom Suspect #1: The Journalist (Robbie Robertson)

Long before he was The Daily Bugle‘s editor-in-chief, a young Joe “Robbie” Robertson tried to expose the criminal dealings of his one-time high school classmate: Lonnie Lincoln, who would become the mobster Tombstone and the new Kingpin of Crime.

In the recent Gang War event that kicked off in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Robbie’s activist son, Randy, was shot and nearly killed when the gangster Hammerhead sent assassins to kill Randy’s then-fiancée: Janice Lincoln, the Beetle, a.k.a. Tombstone’s daughter. Randy was working with Mayor Luke Cage to repeal former Mayor Wilson Fisk’s law criminalizing superheroes before he was hospitalized.

“Robbie Robertson is somebody else who was touched by the big Gang War and Spidey,” Ewing told Polygon. “He’s never been tempted by power or superpowers. Has that changed after his son got so involved with the New York criminal underworld and falling in love with the Beetle? Does Robbie want to find a way to get things under control in a way that you know he can’t as a newspaper man? Is this one of the great secret identities, like Clark Kent, a newspaper reporter — or newspaper editor, in Robbie’s case — hearing about trouble, then going out and dealing with it?”

All-New Venom Suspect #2: The Terrorist (Madame Masque)

Gang War culminated in all-out war between Madame Masque and the Beetle. The daughter of former Maggia leader Count Nefaria, Whitney Frost manipulated the events of Gang War and turned A.I.M. into her army before her defeat at the hands of Spider-Man and such street-level heroes as Luke Cage, Danny Rand, She-Hulk, Daredevil (Elektra), and Miles Morales.

“Madame Masque is another great suspect,” Ewing teased. “She’s coming direct from the Gang War, which is where we last saw her in a Spidey context. She’s got plans. Do those plans involve commandeering a symbiote? Do they involve getting revenge on other gangs in an identity which nobody would ever suspect? The ultimate mask for Madame Masque? I couldn’t possibly comment…”

All-New Venom Suspect #3: The Sidekick (Rick Jones)

A mainstay of the Marvel Universe since his introduction in 1962’s Incredible Hulk #1, Rick Jones was the sidekick of the Hulk and Captain America before becoming a hero in his own right. When he wielded the Nega-Bands, Rick took on the powers of Captain Mar-Vell, and he later merged with the Kree warrior’s son, Genis-Vell, when he adopted the mantle of Captain Marvel. For a short while, a gamma-mutated Rick was A-Bomb, a blue-skinned abomination who battled the Red Hulk.

“Has the sidekick now graduated to main hero? That is the question,” Ewing said. “[The suspects] have to work nicely as a group bouncing off each other, even if they don’t always meet. Each of them has to be a nice possibility, a group where the reader can’t point to any one of them and go, like, Oh, it’s that one. Hopefully we’ve achieved that.”

Ewing continued, “It’s good writing a version of Rick that has come through a lot of stuff and out the other side. This is a much more laid-back, joke-telling, wisecracking Rick than we’re used to from me. No longer going through it… unless he’s now going through something else. Who can say…”

All-New Venom Suspect #4: The Mayor (Luke Cage)

Luke Cage as Venom? Sweet Christmas!

The former hero-for-hire formerly known as Power Man replaced Wilson Fisk as Mayor of New York City and reluctantly abided Fisk’s anti-vigilante Powers Act as the Gang War raged across the city. But when the Spider-Man villain Alistair Smythe attacked the city with an army of Spider-Slayers, Mayor Cage donned a stealth suit — and even his own Hulkbuster armor, the Cagebuster — to bust up Smythe’s operation despite being in violation of the Powers Act.

After being a member and leader of the New Avengers and the Thunderbolts, will the steel-skinned Harlem hero get an all-new identity as the Venom host?

“We’ve seen heroes get symbiotes to get a little more done. And we’ve seen that Luke Cage has had trouble hitting the streets and doing what he loves to do while behind the desk of the mayor,” Ewing said. “Would this be a way to do that? Would this be a way to pull on another identity, kick the ass that he knows needs kicking, but in a capacity where he’s not dealing with it in an official capacity?”

“He doesn’t have to answer questions that he would if he went out on the streets in his mayor outfit and did what he used to do for the community. Maybe a symbiote is the perfect cover for him,” Ewing added. “Again, who can say? I’m merely saying words. These are all just possibilities…”

All-New Venom #1 goes on sale Dec. 4 from Marvel Comics.