Merge:Hybrid

Hybrid is an antihero of the Marvel Universe. He first appeared in a back-up story in the Venom: Along Came A Spider miniseries.

Character history
Scott Washington made a few appearances in New Warriors volume 1 as one of the Guardsmen involved in guarding and transporting Justice, who had been arrested and sentenced to The Vault for killing his father.

Hybrid is the amalgamation of four of the Life Foundation Symbiotes (Riot, Phage, Lasher, and Agony) - whose hosts were killed by Scream - into a single symbiote entity. The fused symbiote then sought out Scott Washington, an African-American man who was a Guardsman at the Vault (the prison for supervillains) lab facility. While guarding the symbiotes, he realized that they were not evil, not a threat, and the experiments were causing them terrible pain, so he let them go. When his superiors discovered that Scott had released the aliens he was supposed to guard he was fired. He returned to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the gang-torn neighborhood in which he grew up. Following a basketball court scuffle with members of the Eazy X gang, he was shot and crippled, losing the use of his legs.

When the Hybrid symbiotes located and bonded with him, he regained the ability to walk, and more.

Scott has a lot of anger, so that it is often the symbiotes that hold him back from acts of violence, not the other way around. Since his symbiote was originally four different entities, Scott has to contend with four different voices / personalities in his head besides his own.

As Hybrid, Scott got revenge on the Eazy Xs, the gang that had crippled him. He began to get a lot of press attention, and while most of the publicity was positive, it drew the attention of the Jury. He was captured by these self-appointed guardians of justice, who would have executed him just for being a symbiote, but he was rescued by the New Warriors. Justice offered him membership in the group, but Scott declined, citing more important work to do in his home neighborhood.



Powers and abilities
Like Spider-Man and Venom, Hybrid has wall-crawling and web-slinging abilities, he can form his symbiote into pseudopodia or tendrils creating snares and bladed weapons. The symbiote also has camouflage abilities and can blend in with its surroundings. It can also mimic clothing. Hybrid has a border-line warning sense and can "see" through his symbiote. He can lift around 30-35 tons. He can also detach a piece of his symbiote to send messages to his friends and allies, and he can shape his symbiote to form a membrane that allows him to glide through the air.

Trivia

 * Hybrid is the first African American male to play host to a symbiote. Most of the other symbiotes are white males.
 * Hybrid is the first "good" symbiote. Though Toxin is better known he came later, and Venom is an anti-hero who often appears as a supervillain.
 * Personality and character-wise he is very similar to Toxin, his successor. Both are New York cops, both are determined to use the power they derive from the symbiote for good, both display hero worship of other superheroes. (Hybrid for Justice and Toxin for Spider-Man.)