Polite Dissent

9 Responses to “ The Venom Family Tree ”

1. Anonymous
   February 4th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
   

   Oh sweet Zeus…. they have a drug called slappers. I almost died of laughter. Someone please tell the writers of Batman Beyond that it’s UK slang for slut.

   -Aine

2. JockM
   February 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
   

   “Son? Are you on the Slappers? Your father and I have been reading about this kind of thing and a worried. Look you can tell us anything… oh god you are on the Slappers right now aren’t you!?…”

3. Mog
   February 4th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
   

   I did laugh, Slappers. Slut is a rather polite description of the UK slang.

4. hardtravelinghero
   February 4th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
   

   That’s pretty awesome, but how does it all tie in with Viagra?

   And perhaps you can track the Legacy Virus, or have you?

5. Matthew E
   February 5th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
   

   I seem to recall Rick Tyler using Miraclo patches back in Infinity Inc. in the ’80s.

6. Omar Karindu
   February 6th, 2009 at 7:29 am
   

   The Serum family tree isn’t too bad, really: technically, most Marvel characters with versions of it have taken the plain old version Cap did, with or without the Vita-Rays that keep you from going crazy like 50s Cap. The characters known to have taken it are: Protocide, Isaiah Bradley, Steve Rogers, “Steve Rogers” (50s Cap), Nomad III/Bucky III (Jack Monroe), Victorius, the Red Skull (using a clone-body Steve Rogers; the Serum has permanent mutagenic effects); and Diamondback (Rachel Leighton version).

   A derivative of the Super-Soldier Serum transformed Frieda Ratsel into Warrior Woman, an enemy of the Invaders in World War II (or at least Roy Thomas’s Marvel version thereof). Contrary to some accounts, Master Man and his various successors — Axl Nacht/Gottskrieger and the Master Race skinheads from Brubaker’s Cap — are products of a Nazi effort to replicate the serum sans notes, which may mean there’s no real resemblance.

   Serum SO-4, which created the Man-Thing, the second Glob (Sumner Beckwith), and the creatures of Project: Glamor was an effort to recreate and refine the original Serum, but one that was also being worked on without access to the original SSS and which had been modified to try to mutate human beings into creatures capable of surviving a pollution-driven ecological shift.

   The Burstein Process, which empowered Warhawk in its early form, then Luke Cage, John Bushmaster, Cruz Bushmaster, and several others; and whose refined version was the true source of the Anti-Cap/Super-Sailor’s abilities, is a different process entirely.

   Likewise, the Power Broker process that gave U.S. Agent, Battlestar, and scores of Marvel Universe pro wrestlers (including the Grapplers) their strength appears to be a very different process developed by Dr. Karl Malus. For one thing, it doesn’t appear to use any chemical components, just some sort of mutagenic rays. And the super-soldier Nuke has been revealed as a Weapon Plus/Weapon X creation, one involving cybernetics as well as pharmacological enhancements.

   Finally, there’s the recent creation MVP and his various clones (long story), who received no pharmacological or mutagenic treatment at all. Rather, the creator of the original Super-Soldier Serum, Abraham Erskine, had apparently developed a dietetic and physical program that could achieve similar effects if followed from birth by a normal human. (Shades of Doc Samson!)

   In any case, it’s still not entirely clear how the SSS works, unlike Venom, which is essentially an instantaneously-acting anabolic steroid. Apparently the SSS induces permanent mutations and has a retroviral component, but this retrovirus is not the whole process. Quite what the Vita-Rays are or even do to the Serum is unclear too, though missing the Vita treatment results in superhuman strength along with rapid-onset organic dementia which initially presents with symptoms of both paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. (Jack Monroe is the only person we’ve seen go through the whole series of symptoms of the Serum sans Vita-Rays; he went from the super-strong paranoid symptoms to, at the end of his life and after an alleged “cure” which didn’t entirely take, full-blown dementia with hallucinations and serious memory problems. And in between he’d been brainwashed with nanotechnology, which was likely a complicating factor.)

7. plok
   February 9th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
   

   You forgot “X Da Marvel”, Omar…

8. Jacob T. Levy
   February 13th, 2009 at 8:07 am
   

   I was pretty sure that at least tar and maybe DMN were connected as well, but those comics are a long ways down in the pile now.

9. David Johnston
   February 23rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
   

   Don’t forget that Nick Fury’s immortality serum is a derivative of the serum as well. I’m not sure whether the Goblin serum is connected but it seems to have similar effects right down to the dementia so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the same chemical even if independently developed.

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