Scream's History
Andrea "Andi" Benton was born on October 27th in the back of a Chevy, her father having gotten into an accident on the way to St. Mary's Hospital. Shortly after her birth, Andi's mother left her in the care of her father and disappeared, a topic which became a source of great anger and despair for her as she grew up.
Andi's life was changed forever the day Flash Thompson moved to Philadelphia, coming to live in an apartment upstairs from her father's. Andi happened to attend West Philadelphia High School, where Flash started working as an assistant coach. She usually skipped gym class, and one day she was the only witness when Flash used his symbiote-enhanced arm to throw a ball at a bully, and came to the conclusion Thompson was Venom.
When mob boss Lord Ogre put a price on Venom's head, Andi was targeted by Jack O'Lantern, a villain who knew Flash's alter-ego. Venom was unable to save Andi's father from being stabbed by Jack O'Lantern, but when he released a poisonous gas, Flash protected Andi with a portion of his symbiote, which ended up bonding to Andi rather than only protecting her from her imminent death.
Dubbing herself "Mania", Andi proceeded to brutally attack Jack O'Lantern, but after removing his mask, Venom realized it was actually an impostor brainwashed by the real Jack O'Lantern into replacing him while he was in prison. After a furious battle in which numerous supervillains looking for Venom stepped in, Mania started suffocating the fake Jack O'Lantern with her new symbiote, but Venom convinced her not to cross that line.
Andi moved in with her aunt Sarah in Jenkintown although she remained in touch with Flash, who let her keep the symbiote, though he was concerned that it had mysteriously bonded to Andi faster than it could have bonded to any other host.
While Flash went to attend to other business outside the city, Andi continued to battle the mob in order to hunt down Lord Ogre and avenge her father. Unknown to her, Flash not only had transferred a part of his symbiote to Andi, but also the Hell-Mark the symbiote had received during his battle against Blackheart in Las Vegas, for which she had been targeted by Crossbones.
When Mania confronted Ogre in his penthouse, the mob boss stated he had a chemical bomb in his chest that it would go off and unleash a death-cloud that would kill many innocents if he died. Mania called his bluff and attempted to kill him, but was stopped by Venom, and their argument was interrupted by Crossbones and agents of the Department of Occult Armaments, which Agent Venom had been investigating. One of Crossbones' allies, Master Mayhem, opened a dimensional portal in his chest which summoned numerous demons that attacked Mania, Venom, and Ogre. During the battle, Ogre was killed and Mania discovered the hell-mark gave her control over the demons and ordered them to turn on Crossbones. Venom and Mania escaped while Crossbones and his allies were fighting the demons.
Venom and Mania contacted Mephisto in order to remove Andi's hell-mark, though the demon refused to do so. When Crossbones located them once more, Mephisto helped the heroes battle him by summoning the Monsters of Evil, a legion of demonic monsters at the command of whoever had the hell-mark. When Crossbones and his allies were defeated, Mephisto stated that the hell-mark wasn't Andi's, but the symbiote's, and that Andi's symbiote was actually the Venom symbiote's long-assimilated clone. Flash promised he would help Andi remove the hell mark at any cost. However, they were unable to find any information on the Descent, and when Flash was summoned to join the Guardians of the Galaxy he left Andi behind, expressing the hope that everything would work out.
In Flash's absence, Andi continued to fight organized crime in Philadelphia as Mania. However, she slowly lost control of her anger, which caused the Hell-Mark to transfer from the Mania symbiote to her. This corrupted the Mania symbiote even further, turning it into a bloodthirsty monster she had no control over.
When Venom returned to Earth, Mania furiously attacked him, accusing him of abandoning her and demanding he fight back against her. She was separated from her symbiote by Spider-Man and passed out, before being taken to Parker Industries' Philadelphia branch by Flash. She regained consciousness when her Hell-Mark activated. Attempting to take both the Mania and Venom symbiotes, Andi attacked Flash with an army of demons, wreaking havoc in the city in the process. She was stopped when Venom's allies arrived, having retrieved a purifying elixir from the planet Wenb, which temporarily cured Andi's possession and brought her back to her senses. Venom decided to remain on Earth together with Andi and her symbiote so they could find a permanent cure.
Andi was later recruited by Venomized versions of Captain America and Doctor Strange to fight against the Poisons that were trying to consume symbiotes and their hosts. Eddie Brock, who was in possession of the Venom symbiote of her reality, was later recruited as well. She recognized the symbiote but not its host, who she dismissed as not being her Venom. At the end, the Venoms were able to plant a bomb that destroyed the Poisons' ship before the Venomized Doctor Strange sent them and Mania to their proper realities.
Now knowing that Eddie Brock was Venom's current host and reading about their actions in the newspaper, she offered to help Flash find them so that he could be Agent Venom again. However, Lee Price, a former Army Ranger who had bonded to the Venom symbiote for a short period of time, and his allies attacked Andi and separated the Mania symbiote from her using a sonic disruptor and flamethrowers. Price took the Mania symbiote for himself and used it to build his own crime organization as "Maniac," sharing the symbiote with its members to control them. Badly injured by Price's attack, Andi was sent to a hospital, where she was visited by Flash. She informed him about what had happened. Andi traveled to New York intending to help Flash hunt down her symbiote, using her lingering connection to it and the Hell-Mark to ambush a group of Inklings about to execute the new Anti-Venom, who she realized was Flash Thompson. Andi tried to help Agent Anti-Venom fight Spider-Man, who had been infected with part of her symbiote, but was unable to be of much use.
After Spider-Man was freed from Maniac's control by the Black Cat, using an Anti-Venom serum developed by Alchemax, the heroes mounted an attack on a gathering of the five biggest crime families in the world, on whose attendees Maniac had used his powers. Andi used her powers to provide cover from above. Maniac was eventually struck down and weakened by Anti-Venom, but the symbiote remained bonded to him. While she couldn't regain the symbiote, Andi was proud she could prove herself without it and set out to return to Philadelphia while Flash stayed in New York to keep an eye on Venom and Spider-Man.
Back in Philadelphia, after Flash had died, Andi struggled to adjust to civilian life and cope with the death of her mentor. Still living with her Aunt Sarah, she began suffering from recurring nightmares and hallucinations of the Mania symbiote attacking her and those around her. While the nightmares and hallucinations got worse over time, Andi dismissed them as a form of phantom limb syndrome until she was attacked by Carnage, who killed her aunt and attacked her to claim the remnants of the Mania symbiote in her body. Andi used the Hell-Mark to summon the Monsters of Evil and transform into a demonic form of her own, but the symbiote-augmented serial killer proved immune to their hellfire, having been empowered by Knull, the god of the symbiotes, and slaughtered the demonically-augmented monsters. Using a portal created with her hell-mark, Andi managed to escape through Hell, and set out to New York to find and warn Eddie Brock. While fending off a horde of symbiote doppelgangers sent by Carnage to kill her, Andi was attacked by Patricia Robertson, another former host of the Mania symbiote who had been taken over by the Scream symbiote, which had been resurrected and corrupted by Knull.
Andi managed to convince Scream to break free of Knull's control, but their discussion of how to proceed was interrupted when Carnage attacked them. Scream succumbed to Knull's corruption and Andi fled into a meat processing warehouse, trying to think of what Flash would do in her situation. Andi was ambushed by Carnage and impaled on a meat hook, but Scream attempted to rescue her. Robertson was fatally wounded in the process. The Scream symbiote separated from Patricia's corpse and bonded to Andi. Recognizing that even with her new symbiote and the Hell-Mark she couldn't defeat Carnage, Scream fled but was quickly recruited by Cloak to help turn the tide against Carnage's horde.
Left homeless in New York, blaming herself for Patricia's death, and feeling abandoned by everyone who had cared about her, Andi began a downward spiral into depression; coming to hate sharing headspace with the Scream symbiote. Staying at the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelter, she was accosted by a homeless woman named Agnes who had been traumatized by Carnage's attack on the city. The head of the F.E.A.S.T. shelter, an elderly woman named May Parker, intervened and Andi protected her from Agnes. Tired of spending her nights hunting would-be rapists to vent her rage and despair on, Andi attempted to commit suicide by jumping off the Manhattan Bridge, but the Scream symbiote saved her. Shortly thereafter, they were forced to work together when attacked by grotesque monsters formed from drowned corpses reanimated and fused to sea life by a primordial symbiote. A few days after this incident, Andi encountered a woman claiming to be her long-lost mother. While initially disbelieving, she was won over when the woman accurately described the circumstances of her birth, ignoring the Scream symbiote's warnings that it was a trap.
Andi was devastated when the woman was revealed to be another symbiote-reanimated corpse, which managed to escape by infecting the contents of a nearby seafood stall with living abyss. Spending the night at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter, she was attacked by Agnes who had been taken over by the symbiote offshoot that had impersonated her mother. During their fight, the symbiote offshoot vacated Agnes' corpse and infected the other homeless people at the shelter. The Scream symbiote took over to fight them. When the Scream symbiote absorbed a piece of the symbiote offshoot and went berserk, Andi witnessed a vision of Knull. Interviewed by Detective Henley of the NYPD, Andi decided to confront the primordial symbiote head-on and the Scream symbiote assuming an aquatic form to do so.
Facing off against the ancient symbiote dragon known as "Grendel's Mother," Scream rebuked the monster's desire to claim the Scream symbiote as her "daughter" and attempted to strangle her with hair-tendrils. Overwhelmed by the horde of undead creatures, Andi was separated from her symbiote by Grendel's Mother. Andi nearly gave up and allowed herself to drown, but the Scream symbiote managed to rebond to her. Andi finally accepted her symbiote as the only family she had left. Scream fought back against Grendel's Mother and attempted to escape by manifesting wings. Before she could fly away, Grendel's Mother dragged Scream back down to the depths and ripped the symbiote from Andi a second time. Urged to flee by her symbiote, Andi tried to swim to the surface but was swallowed whole by Grendel's Mother before she could escape. The Scream symbiote saved Andi, who fully accepted her bond to it, and as Scream ripped her way free and fled to the surface. Grendel's Mother pursued them, intent on killing Scream for having the audacity to side with humans over the symbiotes, but Scream used a nearby construction crane to lynch and decapitate the symbiote-giantess. The Scream symbiote warned Andi that this wouldn't be the end of Grendel's Mother.
Andi returned to the F.E.A.S.T. center to rest and recover. The next day Andi was confronted by May Parker, who revealed she was aware Andi was hosting a symbiote. Andi was initially worried May would kick her out, only for the elderly woman to place her trust in Andi to use her powers for good and to protect those in need, offering her a home and family at the shelter if she so desired.
One of the other homeless teens, a girl named Guinevere, developed an interest in Andi, who despite her attempts to be standoffish found herself intrigued by the young girl to both her and the symbiote's confusion. Despite trying to lay low, Scream became involved in an altercation between the Punisher and William Baker over the fate of a wealthy pedophile, the symbiote opting to kill the man to resolve the conflict. When the Punisher commended her and requested they team up, Scream bluntly refused. Andi was later approached by Detective Henley, who requested Scream's aid in tracking down homeless teenagers and children who'd gone missing over the past month and Andi bluntly refused him as well. Invited out to Coney Island by Guinevere, the two girls further bonded though Andi cut the meeting short and fled when Guinevere accidentally triggered her PTSD over everyone she'd cared about having been killed.
When Knull commenced his attack on Earth, Scream confronted the other Life Foundation symbiotes which were under Knull's control and hunting for Dylan Brock. Saving an orphaned child from being eaten, Scream was almost assimilated when the symbiotes merged into Hybrid and devoured her, but used her Hell-Mark to explode the gestalt symbiote from the inside. Assuming Hybrid had been killed, Scream took the child to safety before deciding to take the fight to Knull.
Instead of fighting him directly, Andi took the fight to Demagoblin, who was recruiting homeless children into a cult based on her twisted version of Christianity. Saving the children from the fire on Demagoblin's church, Scream was quick to destroy her glider before Knull manifested an avatar to confront her. Tossing Demagoblin aside, he showed interest in assimilating her symbiote back into the Hive. When Scream resisted his control, he sicced a swarm of symbiote-dragons on her until she incinerated them using her Hell-Mark. Knull attacked Scream directly, but she was able to injure his avatar with an explosion of hellfire. Impressed by her use of the Hell-Mark, Knull decided to let them live until he could figure out what to do with them.
Following Knull's defeat, Scream resumed searching for Demagoblin until she came across the Doppelgänger in the middle of escaping from Alchemax, which had taken to performing cruel and unethical experiments on captured extraterrestrials and monsters. Subduing Doppelgänger, Scream was attacked by one of Alchemax's Guardsmen, disarming and interrogating him as to why he was targeting them. As a broadcast of Senator Peter Krane's interview was played over a set of televisions on display at a nearby store, the Scream symbiote sensed an odd thrumming sound that only it could hear, but which made Andi feel nauseous as it increased in volume. As Andi struggled to process what was happening, the Scream symbiote began behaving erratically - ranting that it was being called by its family and couldn't resist. Confused and alarmed, Andi decided to retreat into a nearby sewer to figure out what was going on.
The Scream symbiote and Andi were abruptly pulled into the Symbiote Hive-Mind by Carnage, the source of the overwhelming urge that the Scream symbiote had felt. Silencing Andi, Carnage informed the Scream symbiote that he was planning on putting together his own Hive to rival Venom's and intended to recruit the other Life-Foundation symbiotes into it. To Andi's shock, the Scream symbiote willingly embraced Carnage's influence, allowing him to take over and causing it to assume a Carnage-ized form and go on a rampage while puppeteering Andi's body. Her consciousness trapped in the Hive-Mind, Andi berated the Scream symbiote for its betrayal, saying she thought they were family, but the Scream symbiote retorted that Carnage was its true family. To put an end to the Carnage-Infested Scream's slaughter, Andi revoked its immunity from her Hell-Mark and blasted it with hellfire until its hold on her mind was broken. As Andi lamented that she thought they would be together, demanding to know why it would betray her after everything they'd been through, the Scream symbiote - enraged and spurred on by Carnage - accused Andi of lying to it and betraying it. As the Scream symbiote tried to kill her, out of desperation Andi blasted it with an explosion of hellfire, burning away Carnage's corruption but seemingly killing it in the process, leaving her sobbing in despair as it sloughed away from her. While mourning the Scream symbiote and begging it not to be dead, Andi was placed under arrest by a squad of Guardsmen.
Captured by Alchemax, Andi learned from astrobiologist Dr. Steve that the Scream symbiote could possibly be resuscitated from remnants taken from her skin and blood. Contained in a holding cell, Andi was attacked by Phage, who had been corrupted by Carnage and sought to avenge Scream. Andi attempted to vanquish Phage with her Hell-Mark, but was overpowered and thrown through a wall just as the recently resurrected Agent Anti-Venom - who had learned of her arrest and come to rescue her - arrived. Before Andi or Agent Anti-Venom could do anything, Phage impaled Andi through the chest with an arm-blade. Agent Anti-Venom rushed the mortally-wounded Andi to Dr. Steven's lab, where he revealed he's spliced the Scream symbiote's remains with a sample of Anti-Venom to create a new gestalt symbiote. Delirious from blood-loss, Andi mistook the new symbiote for Scream and bonded to it. Introducing itself as Silence, the symbiote then took over Andi and easily trounced Phage using its cleansing touch.
