Venom’s love of chocolate in Let There Be Carnage is weirdly true to comics

Venom: There Must Be Carnage is all about relationships: Eddie and Venom, Venom and Carnage, brains and … chocolate?

It’s a Venom movie through and through — and that means weird, outlandish stakes are introduced to the titular couple’s struggles. Including dinner dates!

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage.]

Both casual and veteran Venom lovers will find plenty of laughs in this book. Venom 2’s story which sees the eponymous Symbiote and its host, disgraced reporter (and lobster aficionado) Eddie Brock, fighting and eventually breaking up over (among other things) dietary restrictions. Symbiote gets sick of chocolate and brains. Eddie doesn’t see the problem. It’s a tale as old as time.

Is this true? In factWhat happens in comics? Do you think the sinister spider ever ate some donuts? Does he truly love chocolate? Yes, yes, and it’s complicated! To find out more, we need only look at a handful of comics by Venom solos from the 1990s.

The first, and arguably most famous, instance of Venom’s drastic dietetic desires comes from writer David Michelinie and artist Erik Larsen’s Spider-Man #333The movie features Spider-Man fighting off a Venom attack. Venom, still solidly on the villain side of superhero alignments, lunges at Peter Parker while proudly proclaiming “We want to eat your brain!” A line memorable enough to be quoted on action figure packaging, cementing the Symbiote’s signature hungers.

Image: David Michelinie, Erik Larsen/Marvel Comics

But it wouldn’t be until 1996’s more absurd but aptly titled spinoff, Venom: The HungerWe discovered the why and how of the brain phenomenon. In that series, the Venom symbiote, spurred by its insatiable desire to eat brains and scorned by Eddie’s desire to uh…not do that, leaves Brock naked and alone in a desolate part of New York City to go get what it needs.

Brock, hot on the heels a separation, took on the appearance of a Xenomorphesque snake to feed itself while Brock was kept in a prison of horrors by Dr. Paine, a cannibalistic monster.

Paine, who enjoys a good brain from time to time as well, took it upon himself to explore Eddie’s ailments and discovered that Brock was scarce in a real-life brain chemical called phenylethylamine, more commonly known as PEA. Whether it was because the symbiote had been eating at Brock’s PEA and had run out, or because Eddie never produced enough to begin with, Venom needed more. Other brains are the most probable source.

Image: Len Kaminski, Ted Halsted/Marvel Comics

Second most popular source of Phenylethylamine is Chocolate. The natural source of phenylethylamine is chocolate. Determined to save their relationship or die trying, Eddie Brock escaped Paine’s clutches and chased after the symbiote with flamethrower, sonic weapons, and candy in tow. The two eventually reconciled in a loving, slimy embrace, and Eddie’s narration notes that the brain makes an abundance of PEA, a governor of emotions, when you’re in love. It was so sweet.

The implication the story ends on is that Eddie is ready to live with and love Venom again, sharing the PEA the Symbiote desperately needs while keeping some chocolates (cheekily tucked away in a Valentine’s Day heart shaped box) on hand for a sweet surprise from time to time — mirroring the movie’s eventual reconciliation.

Comics are not to be confused with comics. Carnage, please!’s plot make reference to Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA), a blue green algae that produces more PEA than both chocolate and human brains, but maybe they’ll get to that in the sequel.