The symbiote later known as Dreadface was a member of a warlike space-born empire that travelled the cosmos seeking out the greatest warriors of each world they came across, took them over, and used them to conquer the planet and slaughter its civilizations.^[1] At some point, it was captured by Devos the Devastator and contained in an isolated chamber aboard his ship while he searched for a way to kill it, intending to exterminate its entire species. In the wake of the Fantastic Four being captured, the symbiote's containment unit was breached and it escaped, stowing away on the Fantastic Four's ship.^[2]

When the Fantastic Four returned to Earth and crash-landed on a tropical island in the South Sea, the symbiote escaped and bonded to a gorilla; later attacking the Thing and the Human Torch, who had been left behind while Reed Richards and Sue Storm took Alicia Masters back to New York. When the Thing proved evenly matched to the gorilla, the symbiote transferred to him and took over his body. After a short battle, the Human Torch was able to separate it from Ben; but when he let his guard down the symbiote ambushed and bonded to him.

Dubbed Dreadface by the Thing, it was apparently destroyed when Ben ruptured the ship's fuel tank and goaded it into throwing a fireball, causing a huge explosion that seemingly incinerated it.^[1]

Dreadface survived and crossed the ocean, arriving at Limestone Island and bonding to a woman named Carrie Burke. Dreadface offered its services to Carrie's lover Emanuel King in exchange for information regarding Earth and the locations of Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm. With King's financial assistance, Dreadface began constructing a machine to duplicate itself, intending to use its clones to conquer the Earth. The superhero Wildstreak was attacked by one of Dreadface's copies, though the Thing intervened to save her and killed it with a high-voltage power cable. Dreadface's duplicates bonded to Emanuel King's employees, killing enforcers sent by crime lord John Buscelli to collect on the money King owed him.

Revealing that it intended to conquer Earth, Dreadface jumped to King's enforcer Mr. Fishman and discarded Carrie's corpse, which had been drained into a desiccated husk. Outraged by his girlfriend's death, King attacked Dreadface, who casually defenestrated him and declared its intent to conquer the Earth through organized crime. King warned Ben Grimm and Wildstreak of Dreadface's plan, and when they attacked him Dreadface sicced his clones on them. Dreadface attempted to transfer to the Thing, boasting that while humanity would take roughly fifty years to exhaust Earth's natural resources, it would only need a few months. When Franklin Richards arrived, Dreadface threatened to use him as its next host in order to lower the Thing's guard, and began to transfer to him when Grimm punched him; but they were forced apart by Richards' psychic powers and King triggered Limestone Island's self-destruct sequence, seemingly killing the symbiote before it could recover.^[3]

Dreadface escaped and decided that Franklin Richards, now going by "Psi-Lord" and leading a team called the Fantastic Force, would make an ideal host. Taking over a gang of thugs led by a woman going by Deadly Doris, Dreadface lured Franklin's aunt and teammate Huntara into a trap and bonded to her. Using Huntara's body, Dreadface tricked Franklin into letting his guard down and took over him. Dreadface revelled in its newfound power, but was immediately attacked by the enraged Huntara. Realizing she would sooner kill her nephew than allow him to be its puppet, Dreadface attempted to escape into the body of Devlor, but was sucked through a portal created by Huntara before it could do so and was returned to the depths of space.^[4]

As a symbiote,^[3] Dreadface is capable of bonding to other organisms, taking control of their bodies, and using their powers as its own. It was also capable of magnifying their abilities to some extent, as while bonded to a gorilla it was capable of trading blows evenly with the Thing;^[5] and could produce tendrils of its constituent matter to attack its opponents.^[3]

Dreadface was vulnerable to fire, needing to retract from Johnny Storm's arms to use his pyrokinesis and seemingly being killed in an explosion.^[1]

• Despite Dreadface being an amorphous alien parasite made of living darkness, being vulnerable to intense heat, belonging to a warlike spacefaring empire with the same modus operandi as the Symbiote Imperium, and outright calling himself a symbiote in Fantastic Four Annual #26, the 2011 FF: Fifty Fantastic Years #1 databook says there is no evidence that he is a member of the same species as Venom.