The '90s gave Venom his most bizarre superpower, but it's not one fans are likely to see in the Sony movies. Venom: Along Came a Spider #1 released at a time when comics were doing some really crazy things. Even Venom, who already boasts a huge host of abilities, had some strange powers that could only have been thought of as good ideas during the weird and wild '90s.
Venom is one of Spider-Man's most iconic villains - enough of a fan favorite to sustain his own movie series, in which Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, the long-suffering symbiote host, soon to be seen in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Brock has had a lot of adventures with his symbiote other, but some of their abilities are absurd and shouldn't ever make it onto the big screen.
Venom: Along Came a Spider - published in 1996 - was created by the team of Larry Hama, Evan Skolnick, Joe St. Pierre, and Patch Zircher. This four-issue miniseries follows after the events of the first Planet of the Symbiotes special. In the first issue, Eddie Brock has a phone call with Anne Weying, his ex-wife. However, Eddie is a wanted man and the police plan to use Anne to trap him. During an exchange that seems strange to him, Eddie decides to find answers in the strangest way: sending his symbiote through the telephone line to her, since he can't save her himself.
The Venom symbiote is apparently capable of shrinking enough to become "molecular monofilament" and traveling phone lines to come out of a telephone receiver on the other end. Symbiote phone line travel could be a cool power to take down any foes sitting on the other end, but that isn't quite what Eddie has in mind. He wants to take advantage of another of Venom's unusual powers.
Using his other, Eddie can have a "melding" with Anne. The symbiote, which is already attached to him, travels through the phone and attaches to Anne, ing the two together. There have been instances where the symbiote hasn't been able to bond two hosts simultaneously, but that isn't the case here. Anne had previously bonded to the symbiote, and this is only a partial bonding to create a brief connection via phone line, since Eddie needs information and this is the best way for him to get it.
By ing the symbiote to Anne, both she and Eddie have access to everything the other knows. The result is a very peculiar and more than slightly suggestive . Through this bonding, Eddie knows everything he needs to know about Anne's situation and she knows Eddie's secrets, like where he's hiding out. This is a highly effective way to communicate. No words are needed, distance isn't a problem, and it keeps everything between two people and a living alien medium.
Despite this, Venom's phone line travel saw little use after this story, likely because advances in technology have made it even less practical than when it first appeared. Sadly, while Venom's mild-melding power is way more useful, it seems to depend on physical with a former symbiote host, vastly downgrading the potential of this pseudo-telepathic ability. Still, with Venom having recently claimed the title of King in Black and become the new god of symbiotes, he's more powerful than ever, so if fans are ever going to see these weird '90s powers return, it'll be in the series from Al Ewing, Ram V, and Bryan Hitch.
