I shall prevent future Spidey arguments by dispensing my encyclopedic knowledge of the character. My 14+ years of collecting every Spidey related comic to come out in that time frame, plus collecting a number of previous comics + reading most of them through collections + meeting Stan Lee and John Romita Sr and getting them to sign an old Amazing Spider-Man shall be my credentials
In comicbook canon...
The Origins of Venom: Version 1
Spidey gets summoned by the Beyonder to fight with other superheroes against super villains on a battle world planet. During the course of this battle, Spidey's costume get's damaged, and he sees a machine that supposedly makes replacement costumes. He pops his head in and accidentally transports an alien being from it's home planet. This alien is part of a symbiotic alien race that travels the universe conquering planets. Ironically, THIS symbiote isn't quite as evil as the others, and doesn't want to take over planets (although this wasn't revealed till the mid 90s, this is part of comic book continuity). After finding out that this creature was trying to permanently bond with Peter, he had the fantastic four zap it with high frequency sonics, and assumed it dead. But it slinked away, later jumping peter and forcing him to desparately go to a bell tower in a church for the sonics the bell gave off when struck. This causes the symbiote to leave him, and slink down into the church, again, peter thinks it's dead.
Instead it finds Eddie Brock, a devote Catholic, who's gone to the church to ask forgiveness for what he will soon do - commit suicide. See, this guy came into his newspaper and confessed to being a serial killer. He wrote the article revealing this, and the police arrested this man. Shortly thereafter, Spider-Man revealed who the REAL serial killer was. Brock's career was ruined, and he lost everything. The symbiote sensed his hatred for Spider-Man (and that he had cancer, which the symbiote could feed off of, but that's a totally unrelated story... let's just say that Eddie Brock is dying of cancer in current continuity while the symbiote is having a rousing good time... but I'm sure closer to the movie, they'll bring him back in full force ) and decided to bond with him, forming VENOM.
Venom's Origin: Version 2... the ULTIMATE version
Peter's father is a scientist (not a secret agent like in regular continuity), and alongside Eddie Brock's father, works on developing a cure for cancer. They get as far as creating a "suit" that could heal any injury, sickness, and possibly cancer, before Edie and Peter's parents are killed in a plane crash. Eddie is not a muscle builder. He's a studnet under Curt Connors (the lizard, or for movie fans, the professor with one arm in Spidey 2 that Peter gets a talking from), working on continuing peter and eddie's research. By accident, peter gets some of the suit on him, and he forms a costume. He goes out, saves some people, get's shot through the arm....
In comicbook canon...
The Origins of Venom: Version 1
Spidey gets summoned by the Beyonder to fight with other superheroes against super villains on a battle world planet. During the course of this battle, Spidey's costume get's damaged, and he sees a machine that supposedly makes replacement costumes. He pops his head in and accidentally transports an alien being from it's home planet. This alien is part of a symbiotic alien race that travels the universe conquering planets. Ironically, THIS symbiote isn't quite as evil as the others, and doesn't want to take over planets (although this wasn't revealed till the mid 90s, this is part of comic book continuity). After finding out that this creature was trying to permanently bond with Peter, he had the fantastic four zap it with high frequency sonics, and assumed it dead. But it slinked away, later jumping peter and forcing him to desparately go to a bell tower in a church for the sonics the bell gave off when struck. This causes the symbiote to leave him, and slink down into the church, again, peter thinks it's dead.
Instead it finds Eddie Brock, a devote Catholic, who's gone to the church to ask forgiveness for what he will soon do - commit suicide. See, this guy came into his newspaper and confessed to being a serial killer. He wrote the article revealing this, and the police arrested this man. Shortly thereafter, Spider-Man revealed who the REAL serial killer was. Brock's career was ruined, and he lost everything. The symbiote sensed his hatred for Spider-Man (and that he had cancer, which the symbiote could feed off of, but that's a totally unrelated story... let's just say that Eddie Brock is dying of cancer in current continuity while the symbiote is having a rousing good time... but I'm sure closer to the movie, they'll bring him back in full force ) and decided to bond with him, forming VENOM.
Venom's Origin: Version 2... the ULTIMATE version
Peter's father is a scientist (not a secret agent like in regular continuity), and alongside Eddie Brock's father, works on developing a cure for cancer. They get as far as creating a "suit" that could heal any injury, sickness, and possibly cancer, before Edie and Peter's parents are killed in a plane crash. Eddie is not a muscle builder. He's a studnet under Curt Connors (the lizard, or for movie fans, the professor with one arm in Spidey 2 that Peter gets a talking from), working on continuing peter and eddie's research. By accident, peter gets some of the suit on him, and he forms a costume. He goes out, saves some people, get's shot through the arm....