Venom #1

History

The series was published under Marvel's Tsunami imprint, an early-2000s initiative aimed at attracting manga-influenced younger readers, with Venom #1 shipping in May 2003 (cover-dated June 2003). Daniel Way, whose prior Marvel work had been limited to a Spider-Man: Tangled Web two-parter and the abortive Epic Comics miniseries Gun Theory, was given the book as his first major ongoing assignment; Francisco Herrera penciled the opening 'Shiver' arc (#1–5) and returned for the 'Patterns' arc, with Carlos Cuevas on inks and Edgar Delgado on colors for issue #1. The series ran 18 issues through November 2004, comprising four story arcs — 'Shiver,' 'Run,' 'Patterns,' and 'Twist' — before concluding with its central plot threads unresolved, a situation that persisted for years afterward and was only partially addressed when the Mania symbiote resurfaced in the 2011 Rick Remender Venom series.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Patricia 'Trish' Robertson (Earth-616), a 24-year-old U.S. Army communications specialist stationed at the Christmastown radar station in the Canadian Arctic, who becomes the central protagonist of the 18-issue series.
• First appearance of the Venom symbiote clone — later retroactively named Mania — created by the Ararat Corporation from a severed piece of the original Venom symbiote's tongue and engineered as a bioweapon intended to trigger a global extinction event.
• First appearances of all supporting cast members introduced in this issue: Colonel Michael Malone, Daniel Jackson, Harold Saunders, Jerome Delacroix, Perry, and Ivan (the sled dog who becomes the clone's initial animal host after it escapes the Ararat facility).
• First appearance of the Ararat Corporation, the villainous organization — secretly operated by an alien colony of nano-technological spider-like machines led by an entity called 'Bob' — that serves as the series' overarching antagonist.
• Written by Daniel Way with art by penciler Francisco Herrera, inker Carlos Cuevas, colorist Edgar Delgado, and lettered by Dave Sharpe; John Miesgaes served as editor.
• Published under Marvel's Tsunami imprint (May 7, 2003 release date; June 2003 cover date); the issue opens the 'Shiver: Part One' arc, with the story set entirely north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.
• The opening arc's horror-isolation tone was a deliberate homage to John Carpenter's The Thing, with the symbiote clone hopping between hosts in an Antarctic-style remote-outpost setting — a stylistic choice noted in contemporary reader commentary and confirmed in Marvel's own annotations.
• The entire 18-issue run has been collected in trade paperback form multiple times, most recently as Venom by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection, keeping the run continuously available in print.

Cast · 8 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Venom

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#6 1st appearance — Frankie