Venom: Why Haven’t the Life Foundation Symbiotes Ever Become Popular?

Although Marvel primarily focuses on Venom and Carnage, there are several other symbiotes that have yet to attain the same degree of popularity.


Venom is easily the most iconic and recognizable of Marvel's symbiotes, namely due to his relationship with Spider-Man. His popularity in the late '80s and early '90s saw the similar rise of his offspring/nemesis, Carnage. As with all good things, the concept was repeated ad nauseam with other symbiotes, although they weren't nearly as successful.


For various reasons, these other symbiotes have all fallen by the wayside. Part of this is due to timing, but even the revival of Venom as a singular IP hasn't made them any more well-known. This goes for the symbiotes and their hosts, with none of these humans having the same renown as Eddie Brock or Cletus Kasady.


Venom's First Series Introduced the Life Foundation's Symbiotes


Created by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane, the Life Foundation debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #298. A group dedicated to surviving the worst catastrophes that might befall humanity, it sought to use technology (of both human and extraterrestrial means) to achieve this goal. This led to an encounter with Venom where the Life Foundation extracted five new symbiotes from his body in a manner similar to the birth of Carnage.


These five symbiotes were Scream, Riot, Agony, Phage and Lasher, with the former being the first female symbiote ever seen in the comics. Bonded to Life Foundation mercenaries, these foes (who debuted in Venom: Lethal Protector #4) survived a defeat the hands of Venom and Spider-Man. Scream remained the most prominent of this group, although Riot got a bit of a push following the character's appearance in the 2018 Venom movie. The classic versions of these villains mostly appeared in the 1990s in various Spider-Man video games, but this push was ultimately the most publicity they received as a whole. In fact, their lack of more mainstream media appearances has been their biggest downfall.


More recently, they've returned to the limelight somewhat in Venom comics. Phage, Lasher, Agony and Riot served both their "brother" Carnage and even the symbiote god Knull, with wanton destruction still chief on their minds. Conversely, Scream (whose newest host is Andi Benton) has become an antihero, allying herself with Venom and fighting against her evil siblings. For the most part, they've only been featured in the various Venom-based crossovers in recent years, with even the current "Death of the Venomverse" mostly only dealing with variants of Venom or Eddie Brock. This has left the Life Foundation's brood fairly underdeveloped, despite their apparent potential.


The Life Foundation Symbiotes Were Too Much of a Good Thing


As mentioned, Venom was immensely popular in the 1990s, and this facilitated his shift into a heroic Lethal Protector. Thus, Carnage was used as a more villainous version of what Venom started out as, offering the proverbial best of both worlds. Unfortunately, their mutual push was definitely a case of oversaturation, as they both notably appeared in Spider-Man: The Animated Series only a few years after being created. When juxtaposed with the numerous Venom books, spinoffs and crossover events from the era, readers had more than enough of the symbiotes by the time the Life Foundation crew came around.


It didn't help that the five new symbiotes felt like an inorganic push for potential new IPs, as they were all merely palette swaps of Venom and Carnage. Their initial mercenary hosts meant that they had little in way of depth and were merely there to be bruisers. To be fair, even Brock and Carnage's main host Cletus Kasady didn't receive their best stories and characterizations until years later, meaning that these color-swapped copies were even more unlikely to receive any development. This was an area where the 2018 Venom movie improved Riot by making Carlton Drake his host and giving him a bit of a personality. Ironically, many fans didn't initially recognize the symbiote, speaking to just how obscure the Life Foundation Five have consistently been throughout the years.

Popular posts from this blog

Sofía Vergara Is the Cocaine Godmother in First Griselda Photos

Netflix shares a sneak peek of the miniseries Griselda, created by the team behind Narcos & starring Sofía Vergara as Miami drug lord Griselda Blanco. Netflix gives viewers their first look at the upcoming miniseries Griselda, produced by and starring Sofía Vergara. First shared by Entertainment Weekly, the preview images show Vergara in the title role as Griselda Blanco, a Colombian immigrant who became involved in America's burgeoning cocaine business in the 1970s and a prominent figure in the Miami drug wars of '80's. The series was created by Eric Newman and Ingrid Escajeda alongside Doug Miro and Carlo Bernand, who previously created the similarly-themed Narcos for the streamer. Another Narcos alum, Andrés Baiz, will direct the series, though he specified that Griselda will have a different feel to the team's previous collaboration. "The stylistic landmarks of Narcos are not in Griselda," Baiz explained. "Griselda has its own identity ... its own
Read more

Every Underworld Movie, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes

Fans and critics have shared opinions of the Underworld franchise, and Rotten Tomatoes is no exception. The Underworld series is made up of action-horror films revolving around the ongoing war between vampires and werewolves, each trying to destroy the other. Amidst this conflict, the love story between Selene, a powerful vampire, and Michael, a hybrid being, is a recurring theme. Throughout the series, figures on both sides prove to have hidden agendas. At times, it's hard to tell who is an ally and who is an enemy. One group may be on the brink of extinction, but this might just be what they want the enemies to think. Eventually, even humans learn of the secret war. The Underworld franchise, made up of at least five films and an animated short, has an interesting history. There have even been planned canceled crossovers with I, Frankenstein, Blade, and Resident Evil. Thanks to its fan base, an Underworld reboot had also been planned for the small screen. This is in addition to th
Read more

In ‘The Disappearance of Shere Hite,’ a canceled sex researcher is reclaimed

It shouldn’t be surprising by now that history is full of groundbreaking women whose accomplishments are overlooked and whose names get buried. Sex researcher Shere Hite’s near-Stalinist erasure from popular consciousness after writing an all-time-bestselling barnburner of feminist self-actualization — 1976’s “The Hite Report on Female Sexuality” — is the mystery that undergirds documentary filmmaker Nicole Newnham’s evocative, thrilling work of cold-case portraiture, “The Disappearance of Shere Hite.” The Missouri-born Hite had been a social-history graduate student at Columbia, chafing at the school’s dismissal of her interest in sexuality, when her activism in the burgeoning Second Wave feminist movement led her to start a project centered on women’s sexual experiences. Charting and analyzing thousands of open-ended questionnaires submitted anonymously by women of all stripes, she shocked an unsuspecting public by revealing in “The Hite Report” that women didn’t need men to achieve
Read more