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What If? Spider-Man The Other saw Peter Parker embrace the dark aspects of the black suit, becoming the symbiote Poison.
Since they were introduced, Spider-Man’s relationship with the monstrous alien symbiotes has always been a less-than-healthy one, with his black suit releasing his darkest desires and giving birth to Venom. Recent stories such as What If? The Spider’s Shadow have pondered what things would have become if Spider-Man never gave up the symbiote, but a previous story saw something much worse happen.
In 2006, Peter David and Khoi Pham’s What If? Spider-Man The Other saw Peter Parker embrace the dark aspects of the black suit and his later ’90s characterization, becoming the inhuman symbiote Poison. This form wanted nothing to do with Peter’s humanity, making one of Marvel’s greatest heroes into one of its darkest monsters. Here’s the story behind the forgotten symbiote and how it’s even more horrifying than Venom.
The story is very much a What If? to then-current Marvel continuity, namely Spider-Man’s feud with the villain Morlun. In this version of the story, Spider-Man neglected the offer of the Spider Totem creature to be reborn with stronger powers, namely over his guilt that others would not be brought back to life instead of him. This refusal to come back to life left his comatose body wrapped up in a cocoon under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Elsewhere, the Venom symbiote is still bonded to Mac Gargan, the former Scorpion. Unfortunately for him, the symbiote senses that something is wrong with Peter Parker, the person who it had first bonded with. Wanting to fix this situation, it desserts Gargan and finds it’s way to Peter’s body, which is still in some sort of metamorphosis. After a series of months of tangling with Peter’s still human but fragile psyche, the symbiote successfully bonds to him permanently.
Mary Jane somehow senses that something is awry and awakens screaming. When Aunt May tries to calm her down, they’re both met by the combined form of Peter and the symbiote. The fusion scoffs at being called Venom, stating that the total combination of the symbiote and Peter is a miracle beyond measures. Calling Venom a hopeless loser, the fusion dubs itself Poison and states its wish to bond Mary Jane to a symbiote as well so that the foursome can always be together. This inhuman persona was very similar to 1990s Peter Parker, who drifted further and further away from his humanity and began referring to himself as “the Spider.”
Wolverine and Luke Cage show up to try to fight Poison off, but the Spider-symbiote quickly does away with them. Poison offers Mary Jane the chance to be together one last time, but following her rebuke of the situation, he leaves without an argument. Instead, he goes to the grave of none other than former love interest Gwen Stacy, unearthing her corpse. Coating her in a cocoon similar to the one Peter was in, Poison waits patiently until out from the chrysalis comes a red and black symbiote, or at least its claw.
Sadly, the full form of the symbiote Gwen corpse and her further adventures with Poison have never been shown, with this form of Peter Parker actually being fairly forgotten. Given the higher than ever popularity of both Spider-Man and Venom, however, there’s sure to be a storyline down the road that revisits one of Spider-Man’s most poisonous incarnations.
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