Edward Brock (Earth-4126)

"Brock was weak. Brock was useless. He's gone now. All that remains is poison. Poison for you, Spider-Man! We are Venom!!!!!!!"

-Edward Brock

Debt
Eddie Brock was a deadbeat journalist for the Daily Bugle, who constantly got yelled at by Jameson. Brock planned on getting back at Jameson, but he learned from the bank that he was broke, and he owed the government $3,000,000 from loans and tax. Eddie didn't know what to do, especially after he was evicted from his apartment. He began staying at a motel that he found a dead person staying in. They hardly had enough money to cover one month's rent.

The Masked Man
Eddie took up an offer given to him by an old friend. The offer was to join a gang and rob New York blind. He saw no other option, and joined. After his friend was arrested, Eddie secretly became the new head of the operation, with everyone else thinking he was the same person. He used a gas mask to keep his identity a secret and called himself the Masked Man.

Symbiote
After one of his operations was a failure, most of his gang was arrested. But he and two others remained. Both the cops and Spider-Man were hot on his trail. After losing both of them, Brock and his gang hide out in an abandoned church. They stayed there for hours and the cops never found them. When Spider-Man arrived at the church, it wasn't to catch them, it was to get rid of his alien suit. Brock's curiosity won him over and he moved closer to it, but it attacked him, bonding to him.

Venom
Brock kept his operations going, hiring more guys to back him up. He used his symbiote to enhance his strength and he battled Spider-Man, rather than running from him every time he showed up. Eventually, during a stand-off between Brock's gang and the cops, most of his men were downed or arrested, and the symbiote took full control, turning him into Venom. He took out all of the cops and disappeared for nearly two months before showing up again.