I am not forgotten, it tells me. I am not dead. A hiss. Little more than a whisper. But I answer… with a scream!

—Scream (Absolute Carnage: Scream Vol 1)

Universe: Marvel
First Appearance: Venom: Lethal Protector #4 (March 1993)
Created by: David Michelinie, Ron Lim

The Life Foundation captured Venom and forcibly extracted five “seeds” from Venom, and five newborn symbiotes emerged. One was the Scream Symbiote. Too young to control, the symbiote was merged with Donna Diego, codenamed Strike Agent Four- a mercenary suffering from schizophrenia, and together with her other siblings and their pairs, she becomes the Foundation’s guardian symbiotes.

In a battle with Spider-Man and Venom, she appeared to have died when Venom increased the power of the metabolic accelerator and in the ensuing explosion.

But, due to Life Foundation’s efforts, she and her siblings survived. She was later saved by Scarlet Spider from Venom, and she joined the former guardian symbiotes in a third attempt to get Brock to help them.

But it didn’t work, and Brock refused to help, and this pushed Scream’s host, Donna, to succumb to her schizophrenia, believing that the symbiotes and any/all who hosted them were evil. So, using a sonic blade, she killed her symbiote sister and its host, Leslie Gesneria.

Later, after some incidents and killings, when its host regained control of her sanity, Donna reached an understanding with it. And after the invasion of the symbiotes, as a redemption for her past behavior, she began seeking out other symbiotes and helping their human hosts to cope.

Later, after an encounter with a Xenophage, a predator of symbiotes, Scream was killed alongside Donna by Eddie Brock with a heated knife.

Years later, Scream, who was still bonded to Donna’s corpse, was resurrected by Knull, but when Patricia Robertson—a soldier who had hosted a clone of the Venom symbiote—attacked it, Scream abandoned Donna’s skeleton and bonded to Patricia, forcing her to hunt previous hosts. Later, Scream fell to Knull’s control, attacking Andi Benton for having bonded to and lost the cloned symbiote. Patricia’s strong will helped the Scream symbiote win over Knull’s control, but unfortunately, it succumbed again when attacked by Carnage.  Patricia sacrificed herself in an attempt to save Andi’s life, while trying to break free from Knull’s control, and the Scream symbiote left her corpse and bonded to Andi, transforming into a black-haired version of Scream.

Though Andi despised being bonded to the Scream symbiote, it protected her whenever she was attacked. While battling Big Mother, Scream was separated from Andi, but it managed to free itself from Big Mother’s clutches and saved Andi. The Scream symbiote and Andi acknowledged each other as family and accepted their bond as Scream lynched and decapitated Big Mother.

When Knull invaded Earth, Hybrid attempted to assimilate Scream but was immolated by Hellfire from within and saved a boy. And afterward, defeated the Demagoblin and saved some children.

Scream symbiote’s refusal to submit angered Knull to declare his determination to kill the host and make the symbiote watch it helplessly. Knull sicced his symbiote-dragons on her and made Scream watch it. But breaking free of Knull’s influence, Scream with Andi incinerated the symbiote-dragons with hellfire. But still with Knull gaining on them, they repelled him with an omnidirectional explosion of hellfire.

Later, she faced off against her Doppelgänger, and an odd huzzing sound made Scream behave unsteadily, forcing Andi to make them retreat. But, Scream and Andi were abruptly pulled into the Symbiote Hive-Minds by Carnage and, unable to resist Carnage’s influence, Scream allowed Carnage to take over, forming a Carnage-ized form, and going on a rampage, puppeteering Andi’s body.

And when Andi berated it for its betrayal, Scream retorted that Carnage was its true family. To end the Carnage-ized Scream’s slaughter, Andi revoked its immunity from her Hell-Mark and blasted it with Hellfire until its hold on her mind was broken. But enraged and spurred on by Carnage, Scream accused Andi of lying to and betraying it and tried to kill her, forcing Andi to blast the Scream symbiote with an explosion of hellfire, burning away Carnage’s corruption. But this killed it, leaving Andi disheartened.

Later, Dr. Steven attempted to resuscitate Scream, but failed. Dr. Steven combined Scream’s remains with Anti-Venom Serum, thus creating a new symbiote called Silence, with whom Andi bonded, thinking it was Scream resurrected.

A strain of the deceased Scream symbiote remains with Alchemax until Corwin Jones stole it and merged it with other strains from Agony, Lasher, Phage, Riot, and Toxin symbiotes to create the Madness symbiote. But Misery, another symbiote, along with Queen Cat and Spider-Man, foiled their plans. Then, it was bonded to a brain-dead human cyborg secured by Alchemax.

Bonus:

Recently, during the “Venom War” storyline, Scream symbiote bonds with Lightbright of the Wild Pack.

Powers & Weaknesses

The Scream symbiote gave its host the following powers:

• Superhuman Strength
• Superhuman Durability
• Superhuman Stamina
• Regeneration
• Wallcrawling
• ESP (Spider-Sense)
• Immunity to Spider-Man’s Spider Sense
• Organic Webbing
• Camouflage
• Constituent-Matter Generation
• Constituent-Matter Manipulation
  • Trichokinesis
  • Winged Flight

And speaking of weaknesses, like other symbiotes, Scream is vulnerable to intense heat and sonic vibrations, albeit it was unharmed by hellfire when bonded with Andi Benton.

Outside Comics:

• The earlier name given to this character in the comics was Donna. The name Scream comes from the video game Spider-Man & Venom: Separation Anxiety (November 1995) where she is one of the boss characters.
• The name Diego first appears in both Spider-Man: Back in Black Handbook (March 2007) and in the appendix of Civil War: Battle Damage Report (May 2007), confirming her identity as Scream, aka Donna Diego.
• “The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man” ride at Islands of Adventure, Universal Resort theme park, Orlando, Florida, has Scream as a villain.

Images:

Books to familiarize yourself with Scream:

1. Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety
2. Absolute Carnage: Scream
3. Scream Vol. 1: Curse of Carnage       
4. King in Black
5. Extreme Carnage

^{Pic Credits: Marvel Comics}