Venom: Dark Origin #1 Review

No time for witty banter today. I’ve got to steal something, then give them back and pretend that I’m a hero.  I call it the Eddie Brock syndrome.

Comments below please!

VENOM: DARK ORIGIN #1
Chapter 1
WRITER: Zeb Wells
ARTIST: Paco Medina
INKS: Scott Hanna
COLOURS: Matt Milla
LETTERS: Joe Caramagna

PLOT:
We see Eddie Brock as a child, living with a spiteful sister and a mourning father after the passing of Brock’s mother during childbirth. He steals a neighbour’s cat and gives it back, pretending he found it when it ran away. Eddie has a knack of knowing when people lie, which helps him to lie…A LOT. Later, in high school, he pretends that he’s part of the wrestling team to impress a girl and gives back her pom pom, which he stole (I’m seeing a pattern here).

Eddie takes a liking to journalism, because he sees journalism as a way to make the truth. He enrolls at ESU for journalism, but when his reference is about to be exposed as a lie, he hurries to lie again to fix it. He gets into an argument and nearly goes crazy, but manages to get a girl to walk him to his apartment because he doesn’t know where it is.

Eddie takes her to the rough part of town where they get attacked by thugs. That’ll teach him, he actually lives in the dorms and lied to get more time with the girl. Pattern exposed. Just when all hope is lost for Brock, Spider-Man turns up and stops the muggers before swinging away. When the girl asks Eddie if he saved them (she’s clearly delirious), he takes all the credit.

LIKES:
-We see a sort of deeper side to Eddie Brock
-Paco Medina’s art is very solid

DISLIKES:
-Nothing we haven’t seen of Brock before

THOUGHTS:
Well, this is supposed to show us some meaning to why Eddie Brock is Eddie Brock. A “Venom: Year One”. A deeper side, but all we get is one thing. He’s a bit of a *!#$.
That’s really all we get from this. We see that he wants the truth, but then he lies all the time. Either it’s poor writing (which I don’t see it as) or we’re beginning to see that Eddie just isn’t right in the head. I especially liked the scene when he freaks out at ESU, it shows that when his lies don’t work, he really has nothing left to fall back on.

We see more of his family life and his Catholic upbringing, but none of this is expanded on much. It’s just there. I would have liked to see more of what was around Eddie, what turned him into this, but what can you do?

I always enjoy Paco Medina art. I’ll admit it. He could be drawing in crayon and I’d like it. However, this issue is a bit sketchy, not horrible, but it could have been better. Everyone just seems very thin and scrawny. It’s not off-putting, I just found it different from his previous work.

FAVOURITE QUOTE:
DR WEIMER: You did an internship at the San Francisco Chronicle?
EDDIE: Yes
DR WEIMER: Quite impressive for a high school student. But the number you listed for your reference led to the custodial office.

Get your way out of that one, Brock.

OVERALL:
3 webheads out of 5

Solid issue. Was well done, even though it wasn’t anything we had never seen before. Will it maintain my interest for 5 issue?

We’ll see.