A symbiote is an alien life form that lives by bonding to a host. On its own it is a shapeless, liquid mass; joined to a person it covers them like a living suit, makes them far stronger and faster, and shares their mind. Venom is the best known: the symbiote that was once Spider-Man's black costume, bonded to the reporter Eddie Brock. Carnage is its offspring, bonded to a serial killer, and the Klyntar and Knull are where the whole species comes from.
The comics, the films and the cartoons tell this differently, and this names the version where it matters. Every design here sits on the Venom shelf or the Spider-Man shelf.
What a symbiote is
A symbiote can survive apart from a host, but not for long and not well. Bonded, both sides gain. The host gets strength, speed, toughness and a suit that can shape itself into tendrils, blades or a disguise of ordinary clothes. The symbiote gets a body and, over time, the host's memories and habits. That is why Venom says "we": the voice is the pair.
It keeps what it learns. Venom can still crawl up walls and spin webbing long after leaving Spider-Man, because the symbiote picked those powers up from him. It has feelings of its own, too, and they run hot: Venom's symbiote never forgave Peter Parker for rejecting it.
From black suit to Venom
In the comic event Secret Wars (1984), Spider-Man is stranded on a patchwork planet called Battleworld with his costume in tatters. He finds what he takes for a machine that makes new costumes, and it gives him a sleek black suit that makes its own webbing and changes shape at a thought. Back on Earth the suit turns out to be alive. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four identifies it as an alien; it has been taking Peter's body out at night while he sleeps, and it wants to bond with him for good.
Peter tears free of it in a church bell tower, where the noise of the bells weakens it until it lets go. Below, in the same church, is Eddie Brock, a reporter whose career Spider-Man wrecked by accident: Eddie had named the wrong man as a serial killer called the Sin-Eater, and Spider-Man caught the real one. The symbiote's hatred meets Eddie's, they bond, and Venom is born. He knows Peter's secret identity, and he does not set off Spider-Man's spider-sense.
Later comics turn him into a lethal protector, an antihero who guards the innocent in his own brutal way. The 2007 film Spider-Man 3 tells the black-suit version. The later Venom films leave Spider-Man out: the symbiote reaches Eddie as one of several aliens brought to Earth by the Life Foundation. Symbiote Bond pairs Venom with the hero he came from.
On the shelf
Venom's weaknesses
Venom's two classic weaknesses are sound and fire. Loud noise at the right pitch makes the symbiote writhe and can strip it off its host, which is how Peter got free of it; intense heat burns it and drives it back. The Venom films keep both rules and use them in their fights.
The rest are limits rather than weak points. The symbiote is only as strong as the bond: pull it off Eddie and he is an ordinary man. In the comics it also craves phenethylamine, a chemical found in chocolate and in brains, which is the reason given for Venom's habit of threatening to eat people's brains. And its edge against Spider-Man, the silence of his spider-sense, cuts the other way: anyone who knows it is there can plan around it.
Later comics let a long-lived symbiote build up resistance to both, so treat them as the classic rules rather than the latest ones.
Carnage vs Venom
Carnage is Venom's offspring. In the comics, when the symbiote comes back to break Eddie out of prison, it leaves a spawn behind in his cell, and the spawn bonds with Eddie's cellmate, the serial killer Cletus Kasady. It lives in Cletus's bloodstream rather than only on his skin, and it comes out red.
Who wins, Carnage or Venom? In the comics Carnage is stronger, and the reason given is that each new generation of symbiote is more powerful than its parent. Venom rarely beats him alone, which is why the 1993 crossover Maximum Carnage forces Venom and Spider-Man into an uneasy team against Carnage and his gang. What Venom has is a cause. Eddie wants to protect people; Cletus wants only chaos, and that makes him reckless.
The films change how Carnage starts. In Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), Cletus bites Eddie's hand during a prison visit, swallows a trace of the symbiote, and Carnage grows from it. The film keeps sound as the weakness and gives Cletus a partner, Shriek, whose scream is a weapon against both symbiotes.
On the shelf
The Klyntar and Knull
For decades the comics gave the symbiotes little more than a home planet. Later stories gave the species a name, the Klyntar, and a history. Bonded to a worthy host, a Klyntar is meant to act as a kind of guardian; bonded to a cruel one, it turns violent, and the corrupted ones are the kind Earth met first.
Then came Knull. In the comics he is an ancient god of darkness who forged the first symbiote, a sword called All-Black, the Necrosword, and then made the symbiotes as his army, joined in one hive mind. They turned on him and imprisoned him at the heart of a planet they named Klyntar, their word for cage.
In the event King in Black (2020 to 2021), Knull breaks free and smothers Earth in darkness. Eddie, lifted by a cosmic power called the Enigma Force, destroys him and becomes the new King in Black, ruler of the symbiote hive. The third film, Venom: The Last Dance (2024), brings Knull to the screen as the imprisoned creator of the symbiotes, hunting for the key to his cell.
On the back of a tee
Venom, Carnage and the black suit are on the Venom shelf, drawn from canon reference art, and Peter's side of the story is on the Spider-Man shelf. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why it works on the back: a symbiote is nearly all silhouette, a black or red mass with white eyes and a wide mouth of teeth, and a shape that bold carries across a room without a word of explanation.
On the shelf
Read next: Spider-Man's rogues gallery explained (the rest of the enemies) and Joker, Clayface and Harley Quinn: Batman's Gotham explained.
Back Issue is fan-made, unofficial merchandise. We are not affiliated with, licensed or endorsed by any studio, publisher or rights holder. Character names, titles and marks belong to their owners and are used only to describe what a design shows. Rights & IP