A lot of us like to read the book before we go into a movie adaptation of something. Whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Ready Player One, there’s always some difference to spot. With comic-book movies, that can be harder to do, as they’ll take from countless storylines made up of individual issues released over decades. Thor: Ragnarok, for example, takes inspiration from the Planet Hulk storyline that had Hulk conquering a planet and ruling it in a story otherwise unrelated to the Thunderlord. Talking in a video shown at Sao Paoulo’s Comic-Con Experience 2017, Venom director Reuben Fleischer revealed where we can go to see what he’s basing his portrayal of Spidey’s most fearsome foe on.

Fleischer gave us two titles to work from.

The first is Venom: Lethal Protector, a 1993 series that had Spider-Man and his more handsome friend Venom teaming up to fight five new symbiotes named Scream, Phage, Riot, Lasher, and Agony. It was the 90s, so everything was super edgy. These five were, like Carnage, spawned from Venom himself. The other story is Planet of the Symbiotes, which had an entire army of symbiotes invading our planet.

It’s already been confirmed that Tom Holland will not be appearing in the movie as Spider-Man, so we likely won’t see a Spider-Man at all, despite him playing a prominent role in both stories. Star Tom Hardy did confirm that the movie is set in San Francisco. Rumors are floating around that Carnage, the Venom symbiote’s first spawn, is going to be the main villain. The known cast includes Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed, Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, and Scott Haze.

Venom is slated to hit theaters on October 5, 2018, so we have most of a year to wait. Despite some misgivings, I’ll admit I like where this is going.