How Venom’s Co-Creator Really Feels About Tom Hardy’s Marvel Movies

The comic book origins of Venom are storied and dramatic. The legend goes that a Marvel Comics fan named Randy Schueller wrote a letter to the company in 1982, suggesting that Spider-Man’s costume be changed from the classic red-and-blue color scheme to a more minimalist black-and-white outfit. Marvel liked the enclosed design and paid him $220 for the idea. Spider-Man was in the black outfit for a few years thereafter.

Later on, John Byrne stated that the black outfit was not made of cloth. Instead, it was composed of a partially biological alien material, itself a conceit invented to cover the fact that the costume would be ripped in one panel only to show up miraculously repaired in the next.

Later still, it was established that the biological costume was a sentient alien entity made of liquid that had mentally bonded with Spider-Man, making it a symbiote. After wrestling with the alien entity in his brain, Spider-Man would rip it away from his body and go back to his cloth duds. The living alien costume would then wrap itself around one of Peter Parker’s rivals, Eddie Brock, who bonded with the alien glop and transformed into the monstrous Venom. Venom was essentially Spider-Man’s evil twin, sporting a big mouth with evil teeth. Artist Todd McFarlane is credited as one of the co-creators of Venom, along with writer David Michelinie. This was in 1988.

Venom went on to become one of the more celebrated villains in Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, and the character has headlined his own books for decades. He has since appeared in Sam Raimi’s 2007 film “Spider-Man 3,” and was given the star treatment in Ruben Fleischer’s “Venom,” an unexpected $856 million hit for Sony in 2018.

And how does McFarlane feel about the “Venom” movies? Superhero films, after all, tend to alter their comic book counterparts for practical reasons, which, one might assume, would irk certain creators. McFarlane, though, is totally at peace with it.

Fleischer’s “Venom” stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, the man who bodily bonds with an alien symbiote, and who, post-bonding, can transform into a hulking tar monster with a shark-like face. Despite Venom’s habit of biting people’s heads off, the film landed a PG-13 rating and attracted a huge, huge audience. Curiously, though, the “Venom” movies are largely devoid of references to Spider-Man, forcing the Venom concept to stand on its own. Be that as it may, the concept was strong enough to warrant sequels in the forms of Andy Serkis’ “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” in 2021 and Kelly Marcel’s “Venom: The Last Dance” in 2024.

The “Venom” films haven’t been terribly well-reviewed, but they remain weirdly beloved, largely because of Hardy’s committed, gonzo performance and the subtle themes of queer romance between Eddie and Venom.

Speaking with CBR at the 2025 MEGACON Orlando, McFarlane was diplomatic, saying that the version of Venom in the films “doesn’t bug me.” He added that he had no creative input on the “Venom” movies but loved what Hardy did with the part:

“Tom Hardy, you know, sort of did a cool thing. I got to meet him for the first time, you know, about a month ago or something. And super cool. If you’re asking the basic question, would I have written and directed exactly like they did, of course not, right?”

It seems, though, that McFarlane’s only palpable objection to the “Venom” movies is that Venom himself was too heroic.

It’s worth remembering that Venom was created as a villain and is typically drawn with rows and rows of giant, sharp teeth. Sometime in the 1990s, however, Venom became too popular to keep around as a villain, so Marvel published a miniseries called “Venom: Lethal Protector,” reimagining the character as a chaotically good antihero. The “Venom” movies then retained the antihero status for the character while also adding an element of wild humor. This was far from the resentful shadow-being envisioned by McFarlane, who never really liked the idea of Venom as a hero to begin with. In his own words:

“I would like … Look, as the guy who co-created Venom, and especially the look of [him], to me, Venom’s not a good guy. Like, in my brain. Like, they turned Venom into kind of a good guy after I left, Marvel. So in my mind, he was a he was a villain. […] And then I left. […] [It was] when I had my back turned that, all of a sudden … I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Venom’s a good guy?’ I think my tendencies are always to go sort of dark and serious.”

He went on to explain that “Venom” should have been violent enough to warrant an R-rating, adding that he would have made no efforts to make Venom sympathetic or relatable. Instead, he would have preferred something closer to a horror movie than a superhero movie. 

McFarlane, as it were, found great success in his post-Marvel days with his character Spawn, which he invented for the creator-driven Image Comics in 1992. “Spawn” also got the feature film treatment in 1997, although it wasn’t well-received. As of this writing, another “Spawn” movie is stuck in development hell and has been trying to move forward since at least 2017.