Spider-Man Almost Got Venom in Brand New Day (But Not How You Think) - EXCLUSIVE
When you think of venom and Spider-Man, your mind may well go straight to Venom with a capital 'V' — but that isn't the kind of venom that Spider-Man: Brand New Day writers Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers thought of when conceptualising the film.
Still, it's the venom in spiders that makes them especially sinister (no, not like the Sinister Six), and given that we are meant to be seeing a more mature, darker version of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the idea of him having venom actually makes a lot of sense. After all, almost all spiders are venomous, so it would’ve been more likely that not, right?
While it ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor, McKenna and Sommers opened up to JustWatch about how exactly they’d approach the concept of Peter being venomous.
Did Peter Almost Get Venom In Brand New Day?
McKenna specifically admitted to us that he and Sommers “played around with the idea”.
“He would be horrified by having a venom he’s producing, which we thought was a really cool idea because it was so dark, like, ‘Wow, he’s actually developing something that’s toxic,'” the writer explained.
“There’s this cool thing where spiders are actually able to, when they bite their prey, they can dose them with just the right amount, and we thought 'Oh, what if he could tailor it so it could actually be used to counteract the effects of Jean Grey.’”
“They were just fun ideas, but I think they ended up with the right balance,” he concluded.
In the end, the way Peter disarmed Jean wasn’t through something like spider-venom. Instead, he was able to use an inhibitor he invented to keep his terrifying, more-spidery-than-ever powers at bay. If you think about it, the inhibitor being the thing that stops Jean is probably the more logical move.
If you’re going to centre a movie around Peter being afraid of his genetic mutation, it makes no sense for him to do something as visceral as biting someone. Not only that, but it’s also not exactly friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man territory.
The Most Horrifying Spider-Man Had Venom - But We’ll Never See Him in the MCU
While Brand New Day walked that tightrope between body horror and your more conventional superhero stuff, Marvel Comics really went off the deep end with Patton Parnel.
Like Peter, Patton had a pretty tough life, living with his abusive uncle Ted. However, unlike Peter, he had some pretty unsavoury traits and tendencies, like ‘experimenting’ on small animals and spying on his neighbour Sara Jane with binoculars.
Still, things took a (slightly ironic) turn when Sara Jane asked Patton to help her expose animal experimentation in Alcorp Industries. At Alcorp, she went inside a lab to free test subjects, but in the process, Patton was bitten by a big red spider. So far, so Spidey, right? Perhaps not.
The moment he unlocked his powers wasn’t anything profound — it happened after he randomly ate a mouse to satiate an unusual hunger. He then set his sights on a cat to eat, and through that discovered his webbing powers. But things got really unhinged when he kissed Sara Jane. After she slapped him, he turned into a freaky spider-like creature complete with eight eyes, eight limbs, and venomous chelicerae.
However, the worst part is undoubtedly what happens after he bites people. Essentially, swathes of baby spiders emerge from the wounds, as they did when he bit Sara Jane’s neck.
They say with great power comes great responsibility, but the funny thing about Patton is that he really just didn’t care. He even said at one point he could be a hero, but decided that the path of righteousness was too “boring.” Still, while his venomous, spider-impregnating fangs are certainly interesting, they would make for very dark and disturbing movie material — so don’t expect him to show up in Avengers: Doomsday.
