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Maniac
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Real Name
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Lee Price
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First Appearance
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Venom (Vol. 3) #1 (November, 2016)
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Creators
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Mike Costa, Gerardo Sandoval
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Team Affiliations
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Black Cat’s Gang, Inklings
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Aliases
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Venom
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Base of Operations
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New York City
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Powers
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Superhuman strength, Superhuman speed, Superhuman agility, Wall-crawling, Organic web-spinning, Poisonous bite, Camouflage, Limited shapeshifting,
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Skills and Abilities
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Trained in hand-to-hand combat
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Paraphernalia
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Maniac symbiote
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Maniac (Lee Price) is a supervillain in the Marvel Universe and an enemy of Venom.
History[]
Early Life[]
Born in Queens, New York, Lee Price had a rough life growing up, being brutally bullied as a child and seeing his mother being constantly beaten up by his father. In order to escape from his suffering, Lee set hisapartment ablaze, killing his parents, and pinned the crime on a mutant boy with pyrokinesis he had previously befriended. Suppressing the traumatic memory, Lee convinced himself that the mutant boy had done it and that his father had abandoned him. Taken into protective services, Price spent five years as a ward of the state before joining the Army Rangers. Lee was injured in a mine explosion that killed several members of his squad and cost him two of the fingers on his left hand. Discharged due to his injury, he registered as a disabled veteran in order to receive benefits — which did not come through — and was unable to find employment with any domestic security firms, leaving him in a desperate situation.
Becoming Venom[]
Faced with eviction from his apartment, Lee accepted a job from Mac Gargan to act as muscle for the Black Cat's gang during an arms deal with Tombstone's crew. After delivering the package, the situation escalated when Tombstone's men refuse to pay and insulted Black Cat, and both factions pulled guns on each other. Lee was unarmed, but he was saved from being shot when the Venom symbiote abruptly intervened, desperately searching for a new host. When the symbiote bonded to him, Lee overpowered it with his will and - disregarding its outraged protests - used it to kill everyone present including the members of Black Cat's gang and even his childhood friend Tony Consiglio, in order to keep his possession of the symbiote a secret for maximum benefit.
Once he returned to his apartment, Lee engaged the symbiote in a mental confrontation and repelled its attempts to take him over. The following day, Lee decided to return the merchandise to Black Cat, claiming to have been the sole survivor of the confrontation between the two gangs, and offered her the use of his services, attracting the suspicion of Adams - Black Cat's second-in-command - and Mac Gargan. When he returned home, Lee was attacked by Firebug, an assassin sent by Tombstone, which prompted him to transform into Venom to fend off his assailant and kill him to maintain his secrecy.
When the fight was taken to the street, Venom was confronted by a pair of FBI agents who had tailed him from Black Cat's hideout. The symbiote abandoned Price and tried to bond with one of the agents, but relented when Price was shot and mortally wounded. The symbiote rebonding to him, Venom escaped injured, and took refuge in Tony's apartment. Having investigated Lee and his associates, the FBI agents caught up with him and offered him an ultimatum: work for them as an informant or risk becoming public, thus turning into a target for law enforcement agencies and vigilantes.
Lee met with Agent Bagman, one of the FBI agents, outside Parker Industries, where the symbiote mentioned it had been held prisoner before bonding to him. Lee noted that the symbiote was sounding less intelligent than it had before, but their conversation was interrupted by Bagman, who requested Lee get the symbiote to reveal Spider-Man's secret identity. Bagman gave Lee time to consider the request, after which Price was summoned by Black Cat, who asked him to intimidate a Daily Bugle reporter who was writing an exposé on her crime group. Noting that Black Cat's trust in him was slipping when he was paired with Mac Gargan and issued the order not to kill anyone, Price accepted the job despite the increasingly feral symbiote's concerns. However, Gargan - dressed in his Scorpion armor - decided to eliminate Price and frame his death on the reporter after killing him too. The Venom symbiote emerged to save Price from being beaten to death, and the ensuing battle was recorded by bystanders and posted online. Venom defeated Gargan and would have eaten him had Spider-Man not intervened. Retreating, Price abducted the reporter and threatened him to learn Adams' address. That evening Venom attacked Adams, who revealed that he'd told Black Cat that Price had lied to her and was the symbiote's host. Price retorted that Black Cat would go after Adams as well, since he'd gone behind her back, and offered him protection - plotting to turn Adams over to the FBI and take over Black Cat's organization once she was arrested. However, Agent Bagman was revealed to be an informant for Black Cat's gang and in league with Adams, ambushing Price with a helicopter armed with incendiary missiles. Venom managed to hijack the helicopter, but this caused the FBI to call in their Anti-Symbiote Task Force, led by the Venom symbiote's former host Eddie Brock.
Lee planned to take the helicopter down the Hudson River andescape from there. However, Spider-Man's appearance prompted him to change hisplans, attacking the hero. While Spider-Man was engaging Venom, the FBI arrived and attacked him, giving Brock a window of opportunity to brief Spider-Man on a plan to take Price down. Spider-Man returned to confront Venom and expressed his desire to rebond to the symbiote. Lee failed to keep the symbiote under his control and it separated from him. The FBI subsequently contained the symbiote with Spider-Man's help, who had actually been bluffing, and Lee was then arrested by NYPD officers. While he was imprisoned in the New York Corrections Supermax Facility for Superhuman Incarceration, Lee's time behind the bars was brief. His attorney managed to build a case arguing for Price's innocence on the grounds that the Venom symbiote possessed the ability to mentally influence its hosts, leading to Lee's liberation.
Maniac and Death[]
Price and a pair of thugs ambushed Mania with a sonic cannon and flamethrowers, badly injuring her and separating her from her symbiote. Price took the symbiote for himself and rechristened himself Maniac, returning to New York and forcibly recruiting other super villains by infecting them with pieces of the symbiote. After accumulating enough manpower in the form of his Inklings, Maniac attacked Black Cat's gang and used his symbiote to take control of her and her people. Lee's intention was to use Black Cat's operations tomake his way into a gathering of the five biggest crime families in the world,to which Hardy had been invited for the first time, so to take control of them as well.
Media[]
Appears in Spider Man Unlimited