The black symbiote's first host, as we all know thanks to Spider-Man 3, was Peter Parker. Of course, we all know how that run ended.

Eddie Brock became the second Venom via the explanation I gave in my previous post. After a while of fighting Spider-Man and enforcing his own brand of justice, Eddie Brock began to lose control of the symbiote and it was revealed that it feeds off of it's hosts' adrenaline (There was also mention of cancer that the symbiote either fed off of it or attacked cancer patients to take their adrenaline...I'll have to read that story again to get a better understanding of it.). As Eddie was beginning to run on empty and the symbiote became pregnant, it tried to re-bond with Spider-Man so that it would have a strong enough host to reproduce. As Eddie was dying and the symbiote alone kept chasing after Spider-Man, Spidey managed to trick the symbiote back onto Eddie, sending them back to their neutral Venom persona in which neither has dominancy. I don't know how the symbiote's offspring turned out but I do know that this incident resurrected the neutral Venom's hatred of Spider-Man. After a while, Brock no longer wanted to live with his evil counterpart and sold it to one of Marvel's most powerful (Economically, not super power wise...) criminal, a guy named Don Fortunato. The two have yet to rebond to date.

Don Fortunato gave the symbiote to his son, Angelo. However, the symbiote abandoned his weak host in the middle of a leap from one building to another. The incident left the symbiote free and Angelo falling to his death.

After Angelo, the symbiote approached one of Spider-Man's oldest, though under-rated and very unlucky, villains, the Scorpion (Not to be confused with MK's Scorpion .). Scorpion used to wear a suit that gave him powers similar to Spider-Man's and an acid-spewing/laser-shooting tail though I'm not sure if he still had it by the time the symbiote came to him. Either way, the two merged and formed a new Venom, one that looks drastically different from the Eddie Brock version. The two are now on a team of government-supervised villains known as the Thunderbolts. The team hunts down super people that don't register their identities with the government and turns them in (Marvel recently had a major comic book storyline called Civil War that you'll probably never see in any of their movies. If you want to know more about this registration thing and what the Thunderbolts do, you'll have to look into Civil War via comics or Wikipedia.). Although I've yet to notice any indication of this, Wikipedia says the symbiote has almost complete control of Scorpion (Whose real name is Mac Gargan...) though it seems the people running the Thunderbolts (Their director being the original Green Goblin no less!) have the symbiote under their control hence why it hasn't run amock in the organization and killed a lot of people.

Also, as FLStyle's link points out, Eddie Brock's ex-wife donned the symbiote on two occasions though she had less control over it than Brock did. The incidents saw her kill two thugs and eventually drove her to commit suicide as a result. I'm not sure when she donned the symbiote...it was probably during Eddie Brock's illustrious run with it and before Angelo Fortunato's lack thereof.

So, in short, there have been four characters to be called "Venom." In total, the black symbiote has had five hosts in Marvel's main cannon storyline. As FLStyle pointed out, there's been at least one non-cannon story that showed the symbiote consuming other characters in the Marvel universe (One that I know of saw the symbiote consume almost every character in Marveldom.). Then there's the Ultimate Spider-Man series which I don't keep up with on account that it's utter crap.

I don't know as much about Carnage but if you have more questions pertaining to Venom or what little I know about the Life Foundation symbiotes, Toxin, or Carnage, I'll be more than happy to answer them.

ohh ok, yeah I was just about to say the symbiote already took over spider-man first right?What you just said and in Spider-Man 3 they showed this part accurately from what I've read recently in the comic based storyline.

Interesting, thanks guys.

Yeah, the Church scene was accurate and done well. I'm very glad they got that scene right as it's one of Spidey's most important. However, the rest of the Venom storyline was botched.

In the movie, Venom was just an enraged Eddie Brock who was purposely doing evil with the sole intent of killing Peter Parker. Brock was nothing more than an evil Eric Foreman who chose to die with his symbiote. In the comic books, Eddie's a devout Christian who couldn't even kill himself to escape the pain Spider-Man brought upon him by ruining his editorial career because he knew that suicide was a sin. In the comics, he shows up at that chruch simply to pray, not to ask Jesus to kill Peter Parker. Also, as you know, Venom was a mixture of good and evil intents, not just a sadistic, revenge-seeking jerk with a rage-enhancing lifeform crawling on his skin. Another thing we both know is that, in the comics, Brock willingly gave up the symbiote and wouldn't ever put his life on the line for it (Well, maybe back when they had a partnership and not one controlling the other.). Dying with his symbiote like he did in the movie seems more like something Cletus Cassidy would do with his Carnage symbiote. Two other major problems with the movie Venom were that he didn't have his trademark gigantic tongue and when he spoke, it seemed like Brock was in control. In reality, the Brock Venom would refer to himself as "We" and other like pronouns (So long as the symbiote wasn't in control and there was an equal share of control.).

Not that I don't like the third Spider-Man movie, quite the opposite. I loved what they did with Harry Osborn (Although I was hoping he'd come up with the Hobgoblin costume rather than his New Goblin thing.) and they actually made me give a crap about Sandman (In the comics though, he's far less sympathetic and wasn't really Uncle Ben's killer.). It's just that I was looking forward to Venom and thought he'd be the main attraction to the movie and yet they got him horrifically wrong. I mean, I know movie adaptions of comics are never 100% accurate but they normally get within the ballpark area of what their characters are like. Venom is one of the most inaccurately portrayed comic characters to ever make it to a movie...at least within recent history.

Sorry for the rant everyone, just had to get that out of my system. ...No, wait, I'm angry!

Ok, time for another comic question.

Did the Silver Surfer ever lose his powers or die?