[…]Not long after Sleeper's departure, Eddie lost his job at the Fact Sheet and became a freelance reporter. He additionally began suffering from recurring nightmares about an ancient draconic symbiote, accompanied by renewed outbursts of bloodlust from the Venom symbiote - at one point undergoing a dark transformation and declaring that its god was coming in an eldritch language after mutilating the new Jack O'Lantern.
Venom was subdued by Rex Strickland, who recruited Eddie to rescue a team of symbiote-augmented supersoldiers created during the Vietnam War. When Venom liberated the Sym-Soldiers, he discovered they were being controlled by the same malevolent force affecting the Venom symbiote, and unwittingly unleashed the symbiote-dragon from his nightmares.
After a short skirmish, Venom teamed up with Spider-Man (Miles Morales) to fight the symbiote dragon, subduing it with one of Miles' Venom Blasts. However, a humanoid entity manifested itself from the symbiote-dragon, introducing himself as Knull - an abyssal god who had created the symbiotes billions of years ago.[13] Knull's avatar attempted to assimilate the Venom symbiote into the Grendel, showing Eddie the true history of the symbiotes and declaring his intent to conquer the universe. Eddie reclaimed the Venom symbiote and escaped with help from Miles, though its contact with Knull's avatar had unlocked new abilities - such as the ability to manifest a set of draconic wings. Venom confronted Rex, who revealed himself to be Tyrannosaurus - the symbiote that had once been bonded to the real Rex Strickland - and informed him that Knull was hunting him. In order to become strong enough to stop Knull, Eddie merged the Tyrannosaurus symbiote with the Venom symbiote. Using an arsenal of high-tech anti-symbiote weapons, Eddie weakened Knull's avatar enough for the Tyrannosaurus symbiote to sacrifice itself immolating the Grendel symbiote using a blast furnace; but the intense heat severely injured the Venom symbiote.
Eddie's body was found by soldiers working for the Maker while obtaining a surviving sample of the Grendel symbiote. The Venom symbiote - reduced to a seemingly mindless feral state - took over Eddie and eluded capture for three weeks, eventually resurfacing on Carl Brock's doorstep. Carl allowed the Maker's soldiers to capture Eddie, and for the following two weeks, Eddie was repeatedly interrogated, suffering from partial amnesia due to the seemingly braindead symbiote instinctively erasing traumatic memories, like the death of Flash Thompson. Escaping from the Maker, Eddie resolved to face his inner demons and make something better of himself, returning to San Francisco hoping to make amends with his father. A violent confrontation ensued where Eddie learned that Carl had replaced him with a younger son named Dylan, and he fled after the Venom symbiote tried to eat Carl in retaliation for him punching Eddie.
Dylan tracked down Eddie - whose cancer had seemingly resurfaced - and revealed that Carl was physically abusive towards him, Eddie agreeing to help him before passing out after having a hallucination of Dylan turning into Knull. Taken to a hospital in a coma, Eddie interrogated the symbiote and learned that it was pretending to have been braindead, that his sister Mary and uncle Dan had never existed - having been false memories inserted by the symbiote in order to manipulate him, and that the symbiote had been responsible for him developing cancer by altering his biochemistry. Eddie realized that Dylan wasn't his half-brother but his son, and - furious at this betrayal - told the Maker to separate him from the symbiote; but was knocked unconscious and awakened to find it had rescued Dylan as an act of redemption before departing to parts unknown.
Eddie returned to New York with Dylan in tow, and as the War of the Realms broke out around them he was approached by of Malekith's war-witches, who offered Eddie a dreamstone and the power to keep himself and his loved ones safe in exchange for him serving Malekith. Despite Dylan's misgivings, Eddie took the dreamstone - which manifested an artificial symbiote from dark elf magic - and promptly turned on the war-witch. Eddie set out to help protect innocents from Malekith's invasion, discovering that the dreamstone symbiote fed off his negative emotions, and used his considerable rage to fuel his new suit at the risk of going berserk. Attacked by Jack O'Lantern, who had also been given a dreamstone by the war witch, Eddie adapted the dreamstone symbiote into a Venomized suit of Asgardian armor but realized that the war witch and Jack O'Lantern would continue hounding him until he succumbed to his rage and the dreamstone's corruption. Eddie used the dreamstone symbiote to empower civilians in the line of fire and help them escape, then defeated Jack O'Lantern with a bolt of mystical lightning -- causing him to drop his dreamstone. Eddie spared Jack, discarded his dreamstone, and returned to Rex's bunker to wait out the War of the Realms alongside his son.
Learning that Cletus Kasady had been reanimated by Knull and bonded to the sample of the Grendel, Eddie reluctantly rebonded to the Venom symbiote. Easily overpowered by the new-and-improved Dark Carnage, Eddie barely escaped and sought Spider-Man's help. When Peter reluctantly agreed, Eddie discovered the Maker had set up shop in Rex Strickland's warehouse and built a machine to extract codices. With Spider-Man refusing to let the Maker use his godson, Normie Osborn - a former host of the Carnage symbiote - as a test subject, they set out to Ravencroft to retrieve Norman Osborn only to find that Cletus had laid a trap for them by infecting John Jameson with an offshoot of his symbiote. Cletus used his deific symbiote to turn Ravencroft's inmates into a horde of four-armed monsters and bonded Norman to another offshoot to turn him into a duplicate of Cletus' original Carnage form. As Dark Carnage unleashed his horde on the city, Venom and Spider-Man set out to save as many former symbiote hosts as they could find. Tracking down the Scorpion, whose fight with Miles Morales had been interrupted by Carnage's horde, Venom was unable to stop the Carnage-ized Osborn from rendering Gargan a paraplegic or infecting Miles with an offshoot of the Dark Carnage symbiote. Narrowly escaping with Gargan, Venom returned to Rex's warehouse to discover that the Maker had fled and Bruce Banner had completed the machine, dubbed the S.C.I.T.H.E. While the heroes had their codices extracted, Dark Carnage and his horde attacked and the Venom symbiote left Eddie to bond to Banner, who transformed into a Venomized version of the Savage Hulk. Taking up a Jury gauntler and Captain America's shield, Eddie freed Miles from his symbiote and learned that Dark Carnage planned to assimilate the Venom symbiote and attain apotheosis. Arriving too late to stop him, Eddie bonded to a gestalt of the extracted codices and killed Cletus with a Necrosword, absorbing both the Venom and Dark Carnage symbiotes - unleashing Knull in the process.
Staying at Liz Allan's house, Eddie was offered a spot of the Avengers' roster but discovered that the Dark Carnage symbiote had survived and been indwelled by Cletus' consciousness. Returning to the Isla de Huesos, Eddie attempted to negotiate with Carnage, who assimilated the Venom symbiote and tried to take over Eddie's body to finish what he'd started. Eddie managed to free the Venom symbiote but was taken over by Carnage, though Dylan - revealed to be a symbiote-human hybrid with powers similar to Knull's - remote-piloted the Venom symbiote to rescue his father. Eddie subsequently told the Avengers about Knull, leaving them furious at him and exacerbating his self-loathing at having doomed the universe to save his son. Venom was attacked by Virus, a vigilante clad in a suit of War Machine armor modified to kill symbiotes, but fended him off. Worried about Dylan's powers, Eddie took him to see the Maker and discovered he'd bonded to a synthetic symbiote from Earth-1610 and built an interdimensional portal. Virus attacked and destabilized the portal, warping him, Venom, and Dylan to Earth-1051 - a world where Eddie Brock had committed suicide, Anne Weying had become Venom, and Dylan Brock had become Knull's apostle Codex. Despite some tension, Eddie and Dylan allied with Anne and helped restore Codex's humanity, unmasking Virus as Mac Gargan - who blamed Eddie for being paralyzed by Carnage - and imprisoning him.
Spending a year on Earth-1051, Eddie and Dylan returned to Earth-616 to prepare for Knull's invasion, helping the Avengers and Earth's other heroes come up with a plan. When Knull and his horde of symbiote-dragons easily overpowered Earth's mightiest heroes, Venom offered to serve the dark god in exchange for Earth being spared. Knull refused, ripped the Venom symbiote off Eddie, and killed him by throwing him from the top of the Empire State Building. Eddie's consciousness was preserved in the Symbiote Hive-Mind as a codex, where he was reunited with Rex Strickland and Flash Thompson. With Dylan and Thor freeing the heroes taken over by Knull's symbiotes, Eddie, Rex, and Flash infiltrated the core of the Hive Mind and freed captured symbiotes who'd been severed from Knull's control. When Flash bonded to one and was incarnated as a symbiote-dragon, Knull took over Rex's symbiote and attacked Eddie. The Venom symbiote broke free from Knull's control and rebonded to Eddie's codex, incarnating as a gigantic version of Venom. Before they could attack Knull, Eddie was resurrected by the God of Light, Knull's ancient nemesis and polar opposite.[140] Transformed into a cosmic version of Venom, Eddie fused Mjolnir and the Silver Surfer's Surfboard into a battle-axe and easily overpowered Knull, ripping off his symbiote and flying him into the core of the Sun before destroying his physical body. Using the God of Light's power, Eddie destroyed Dylan's symbiote half to prevent Knull from taking over him, and was imbued with a measure of Knull's power - becoming the nexus of the Symbiote Hive. Sensing Carnage had resurfaced, Eddie used his new control of the symbiote hive-mind to direct a group of symbiotes freed from Knull's control to devour Carnage.
Moving his family into a house purchased by Tony Stark, Eddie began spending most of his time interfaced with the Hive, which let him remote pilot any symbiote with its consent. Eddie began using this to repair the damage Knull had wrought and maintain peace across the universe. However, the strain of being the new King in Black took a toll on Eddie's still-mortal body, causing him to rapidly age over the course of a few months. Meeting with various heroes and heroic organizations via symbiote avatars, Eddie warned the Avengers, Quiet Council of Krakoa, Guardians of the Galaxy, and other gods and cosmic beings of the Maker's plan to conquer Earth-616 and turn it into a copy of Earth-1610. Learning that Dylan had bonded to the Venom symbiote, Eddie gave them his blessing to operate as Venom.
Eddie began spending weeks at a time connected to the Hive-Mind but received a cryptic message from the future that his tenure as the King in Black would be short-lived and that his son and the Venom symbiote were in danger. Returning to Earth, Eddie attempted to ascertain the nature of this threat from the future by using the Hive-Mind to project his consciousness into the future, learning that his son was being targeted by an organization called the Absent Throne. Before Eddie could relay this information to Dylan - who had been lured to his location as part of a trap set by the Absent Throne - he was killed when struck by a missile fired by soldiers working for Absent Throne. While Eddie's charred bones were collected by the Absent Throne's troops and taken to their headquarters, his codex was pulled through the timestream and incarnated as a symbiote millions of years in the future, being greeted by a horned humanoid entity called Meridius - unbeknownst to Eddie the leader of the Absent Throne. Feigning benevolence, Meridius introduced Eddie to the other Kings in Black stranded at the Garden of Time. Eddie intervened when the vicious symbiote Bedlam attacked Finnegan when he tried to warn Eddie of something but was unable to stop Bedlam from taking Finnegan. Confused and angry, Eddie confronted Meridius, who dismissed his concerns and left him in the care of Tyro. Frustrated and panicking after a vision of Dylan being attacked by Bedlam, Eddie time-jumped to the 602nd century, piloting a weaponized symbiote dubbed Warstar, a vassal of Kang the Conqueror. Confused by Kang claiming they were old friends, Eddie reluctantly agreed to study time-travel under him -- unaware that Kang was working for Meridius.
Having undergone Kang's training, Eddie tapped into the Timestream attempting to change the past, only to set in motion the very events he'd been trying to prevent. Trapped at Bedlam's mindspace, he witnessed as his fellow King in Black attempted to murder his son; to make matter's worse, Bedlam revealed his true identity to be Eddie himself. Horribly traumatized by what he saw, Eddie's codex was pulled back into the Garden of Time in the form of the King in Black "Finnegan". Confronting Eddie, Meridius explained that he was stuck in a time-loop and that all the other Kings in Black - including Meridius himself - were future versions of himself. Eddie refused to believe it until he witnessed the time-loop in action, coming across his newly-arrived past self with the other Kings in Black. "Finnegan" tried to warn his past self, only for Bedlam to appear and repeat that very same scene Eddie had witnessed earlier. As Bedlam attempted to devour Finnegan in order to erase them and the other Kings from existence, Meridius appeared and persuaded him to return to the past to fight Dylan, arguing this would make the boy stronger, which could help him defeat Meridius in the boy's future. As Meridius gloated that he was inevitable, Finnegan however, remembered Meridius explaining there were seven junctions at the Garden, one for each King in Black; as there were six present, Finnegan realized that beyond Meridius there was another Venom.
Desperate to thwart the plans of Meridius -- his evil sixth iteration -- and escape the time-loop he'd unwittingly ensnared himself in, Eddie became consumed by rage and self-loathing towards his other iterations, especially the iteration of Eddie newly arrived at the Garden of Time and his precursor iteration "Finnegan", transforming him into his third iteration known as Bedlam.
When Meridius was showing the newly-arrived Eddie Brock around the Garden and introducing him to the other Kings in Black, "Finnegan" attempted to warn his past self of what was to come. Bedlam attacked and attempting to devour him, fighting Eddie's first iteration before escaping with Finnegan, a scene that would repeat itself countless times to the other Kings in Black as part of the time-loop. When Bedlam tried to destroy Finnegan in an attempt to erase himself, Wilde, Tyro, and Meridius from existence, Meridius appeared and convinced Bedlam that going into the past and fighting their son Dylan would help make him strong enough to potentially defeat Meridius in the future.
After receiving a cryptic warning from Meridius that he was going to die and that his loved ones would be in danger, Eddie tapped into the Hive-Mind to see if he could find out who was attempting to kill him and had a vision of Bedlam. When meeting with Carlton Drake, Meridius told him that both the Life Foundation and its corporate rival Alchemax were important pawns in his plans for the Venom symbiote and Dylan Brock. Saying he would do his part as well, Meridius called Bedlam's codex through the timestream via the Symbiote Hive-Mind; Bedlam manifesting using the symbiote Meridius had been indwelling. Before returning to the future, Meridius siced Bedlam on Venom both in order to continue pushing Dylan and the Venom symbiote past their limits and to further scare Alchemax CEO Liz Allan into falling in line with Absent Throne's plans.
Bedlam tracked Dylan and the Venom symbiote down to the town of Baywater, California, where they had been staying with a retired biker named Jake Yahkin. Bedlam attacked Venom while he was trying to stop a rival biker gang called the Hell Hounds from razing the city, but Venom impaled Bedlam through the head and left him for dead. Bedlam swiftly recovered and ambushed Venom while Dylan was mourning Jake's murder at the hands of the Hell Hounds' leader, impaling him through the chest and revealing he was a King in Black sent to make the Venom symbiote stronger through pain. In order to further scare Dylan, he manifested his true identity as Eddie Brock. Meridius trapped Eddie's time-travelling codex inside Bedlam's mindscape, forcing him to watch Bedlam torture Dylan to the brink of death. Manifesting in his inner world, Bedlam mocked Eddie for being too weak and devoured him, Meridius recalling him to the Garden of Time where he manifested as "Finnegan" and was attacked by Bedlam's past self as part of the time-loop.
At some point, Bedlam attacked the cyborg demon Darkoth and seemingly killed him, leaving behind a spawn that bonded to Darkoth and seized control of his body.
According to Meridius, once Bedlam's rage and bloodlust burnt out, he would be left with nothing but bitter cynicism and become the iteration known as "Wilde".
Tyro is the iteration that followed Wilde. As Tyro is the iteration before Meridius, that attempted to break the other kings and mold them into his pawns for a convoluted time-travel plot to evolve the Venom symbiote, Tyro wished to learn from Meridius in order to "become" him in the future, which he eventually did.
By his own admission, Eddie was never a particularly functional or mentally adjusted man, though he frequently made efforts to better himself. Obsessed with and desperate for success, as a child and into his adulthood he stole and lied in order to get the acknowledgement he desperately craved and further his career. His self-loathing and obsession with protecting the innocent stem from a traumatic incident where he accidentally killed a young child as a teenager, which his father went to extreme lengths to cover up - including brutally beating him when he announced his intent to plead guilty. Despite excelling academically and becoming a successful journalist, Eddie was never able to impress his father. Eddie possesses a great deal of intense rage, owing to the various traumatic and humiliating experiences he has endured over the course of his life. After the Sin Eater incident and bonding with the symbiote, Eddie focused this rage on Spider-Man and was initially obsessed with revenge against him at all cost. Early into his career as Venom he was little better than the criminals he would go on to take down, venting his rage on those unfortunate enough to cross his path, but after a fight with Wolverine he was inspired to use his powers for good - leading to him becoming the Lethal Protector. His Catholic upbringing significantly influenced his actions, in particular as Anti-Venom, and for a time he came to see himself as having been chosen by God to cleanse Earth of the symbiotes. However, Eddie's faith was not unshakable, and he would occasionally find himself doubting whether God was listening, which led him to ultimately abandon his faith. Eddie also has an odd habit of forming protective bonds to young women such as Beck Underwood, Jenna Cole, and Jubulile van Scotter, using them as a moral compass to guide his actions.
Eddie's attitude towards the symbiotes has changed significantly over the years, though it has been characterized by often-toxic codependency brought about by his fear of being alone, his addiction to their power, and the mutual cycle of rage-induced corruption between symbiote and host. His love-hate relationship with the Venom symbiote is particularly convoluted. Eddie initially refused to believe that the symbiote could have a negative influence over him, telling Anne Weying that it could not make anyone do anything they didn't already subconsciously want to. However, the symbiote's growing bloodlust began to unnerve him, and as its appetite for flesh grew, Eddie came to fear and despise it, considering it a demon that God had sent to punish him for contemplating suicide. Even before divesting himself of the Venom symbiote, Eddie blamed it for the violent criminal actions he had committed, and after they parted ways he sought to redeem himself as Anti-Venom; though his worsening mental instability and occasional relapses into his Lethal Protector persona hindered this. When bonded to Toxin, Eddie was initially dominated by the symbiote, but later worked out a "temporary" truce with it, taking umbrage with Agent Venom's accusation that he was deluding himself and addicted to the power being bonded to a symbiote gave him. After receiving a lecture from Agent Venom, Eddie embraced being bonded to Toxin, and slowly came to acknowledge that the Venom symbiote had not been solely responsible for the crimes he committed as Venom. Following his return to New York, Eddie's attitude towards the Venom symbiote had taken a complete 180, as he not only possessively referred to it as his "darling" but enacted a complex plan to reunite with it. Despite living without a symbiote for some extended periods of time, Eddie's greatest fear is being alone, and that without the symbiote's voice in his head he will go insane.
Despite reuniting with the symbiote, Eddie refused to relapse into his Lethal Protector mindset, determined to go straight and become a true super hero. The symbiote's re-corruption and renewed proclivity for violence, coupled with its volatile obsession with staying bonded to him, led Eddie to question his decision to reunite with it. However, Eddie resolved to stay bonded to it and find a way to help it recover. This magnanimity does not extend to non-humans, as he was willing to eat a Deviant Mutate to satiate the symbiote's hunger, devoured an alien he'd noticed spying on him and the Young X-Men, and wanted to eat Tel-Kar for what he'd done to the Venom symbiote. Even without the symbiote, Eddie bit off the hand of one of Malekith's war witches after receiving the dreamstone simulacrum "Magic Venom" symbiote, and devoured a chunk out of a frost giant.
Despite their rivalry, Eddie and Spider-Man eventually developed a sufficient degree of begrudging mutual respect that Eddie was willing to let Spider-Man bond to the Venom symbiote in order to even the odds against the Red Goblin. Eddie also showed that he had developed a sufficient degree of respect for Flash Thompson after their battle against Maniac, as seen by his attending the fallen soldier's funeral; begrudgingly acknowledging Flash as having been a badass Venom despite his jealousy over the symbiote's remaining affection towards him. This led to a mutual respect when they both meet each other at the Symbiote Hive-Mind, Flash saying it meant a lot to him and that Eddie was a hero too.Eddie and Peter finally put their differences aside for good and became friends/allies in order to stop Carnage from freeing Knull. Eddie would later express regret over trying to kill Peter in the past.
