WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Venom #35, by Donny Cates, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Ryan Stegman, Kev Walker, Danilo S. Beyruth, Ron Lim, Guiu Vilanova, Gerardo Sandoval, Mark Bagley, JP Mayer, Jay Leisten, Scott Hanna, Victor Nava, John Dell, Frank Martin, Chris O'Halloran, Jim Campbell, Matt Milla, Alex Sinclair, Chris Sotomayor, Richard Isanove and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
If there's one persistent character trait about Spider-Man that overshadows the rest for the friendly neighborhood webslinger, it's that Peter Parker is fueled by an acute sense of guilt. Peter's inactivity to stop a robber turned disastrous when the criminal turned around and murdered his beloved Uncle Ben. Guilt would similarly inform Peter after the death of characters like Captain George Stacy and his daughter Gwen but one thing that has haunted Peter lately was his role bringing the alien symbiote that would become the antihero Venom with him to Earth.
But as the Marvel Universe recovers from the crossover event King in Black, Peter learns to let his guilt over the symbiotes go and he learns this from an unexpected source: Venom himself.
During the 1985 crossover event Secret Wars, Peter mistook the symbiote for a new costume only to discover it was alive and trying to permanently bond with him. Ditching the symbiote, it instead bonded with Eddie Brock, a rival photojournalist that had previously sworn revenge on Peter for destroying his career. Bonding with the symbiote to become the murderous supervillain Venom, Peter and Eddie eventually set aside their differences when faced by a common threat in Carnage. While the two would alternate between a hostile and cooperative relationship, by the start of the crossover event Absolute Carnage, the two trusted each other and even appeared to be begrudging friends.
Ever since Eddie learned about the existence of Knull, the dark god of symbiotes, the presence of symbiotes on Earth began to visibly weigh heavily on Peter. Absolute Carnage saw Cletus Kasady rise from the grave and hunt anyone that had ever been bonded to a Klyntar symbiote. As the body count grew, Peter lamented that he may somehow be responsible for bringing the Klyntar symbiotes to Earth in the first place. This was compounded when Knull led his army of symbiotes to Earth during King in Black, poising a threat so overpowering, it threatened to plunge the Marvel Universe in eternal darkness.
In the aftermath of King in Black, Eddie and Peter have an overdue lunch together to compare notes since the final battle against Knull. In that time, Eddie had acclimated to his new status quo as the new god of symbiotes, gaining a cosmic awareness that granted him complete control over the symbiotes and all they witnessed. As Eddie used his newfound army towards good works across the cosmos, he assured Peter that he shouldn't feel guilty at all for bringing the symbiote to Earth all those years ago.
Peter and Eddie's lunchtime conversation demonstrates how far the two former mortal enemies have grown since, with Eddie having enough compassion and understanding to help Peter overcome one of his bigger character flaws. The symbiotes have incurred some cataclysmic catastrophes and garnered quite the body count since arriving on Earth but it's not truly Peter's fault, unable to control the additional hosts that the symbiotes found. And with one of the Marvel Universe's new gods working towards the betterment of society, if Peter has blame himself for the symbiotes' sins, he has to credit himself for their virtuous feats as well.
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