Why Do Symbiotes Look Like Spider-Man?

Spider-Man may have started off with just one symbiote, Venom, but now there are a whole bunch running around the Marvel multiverse. That might have you wondering, just why do symbiotes look like Spider-Man?

Here’s What You Need to Know About the Symbiotes’ Appearances

The answer used to this question used to be simple. They don’t. Venom looks like Spider-Man because, before bonding with Eddie Brock, Spider-Man was wearing the Venom symbiote. It copied Spider-Man’s suit logo and when it was ‘rejected’ by Spider-Man, it kept the logo. Why? Partly because of its connection to Spider-Man and, perhaps, also to mock Spider-Man, who it resented. Eddie Brock also has his own reasons for disliking Spider-Man. Before going full hero, Venom set himself up as the city’s ‘lethal protector’ so it’d make sense that he’d keep the symbol.

As for the other symbiotes, they look humanoid because there’s a human wearing the symbiote. Carnage is one exception but, even when he was bonded with Cletus Kassidy, he didn’t use Spider-Man’s symbol. As for each symbiote’s ‘mask’, it’s been suggested that’s a feature of the symbiote itself. At least, that’s how things were, before Marvel shook the symbiote universe up.

Who is Knull and How Does He Shape the Symbiotes?

It’s since been revealed that the symbiotes, referred to as the Klyntar, share a hive mind and, while there were several Earth-born symbiotes, there were even more out there in the cosmos. Venom was addicted to anger because of a bad experience bonding with his first host. Because Klyntar can connect with each other and share knowledge, it’s possible that aspects of Spider-Man’s appearance were passed along between the Earth-based symbiotes, either consciously or unconsciously. I’m speculating a little there.

What has been confirmed by one of Venom’s writers is the origin of Venom’s symbol. The Klyntar were created by an ancient, eldritch being known as Knull. Knull has his own symbol, resembling Venom’s. And one now-deleted Twitter account suggested that Venom “he unconsciously shaped the spider symbol to vaguely resemble Knull’s dragon-like symbol”.

Donny Cates who was, at the time, writing Venom, replied with “EXACTLY! Yes”, confirming that this was his intention. Well, either that or he saw that it was a cool idea and decided to pretend he’d had the idea all along. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s the first. And, since Knull is essentially the father of all symbiotes, that memory should be within all of them.

So, the answer to why symbiotes look like Spider-Man that not all of them do, but the ones that wear a combination of Spider-Man’s logo and Knull’s dragon logo do so through shared memory. They look a little like Spider-Man and a little like Knull. And if you want to know more about Venom, we have an explainer on the character in both the upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and comic book history.