Edge of VenomVerse #5 Review (Spoilers)

And with this review, I will finally be caught up with this insane shipping schedule for Edge of VenomVerse. It’ll be nice to take a little breather before… VenomVerse ships weekly in September? With an additional anthology issue? FFS. 

Regardless, this issue delivers us the second Pool of this anthology series, written by horror author, Clay McLeod Chapman, a returning talent from Edge of Spider-Verse. Will Deadpool be more or less annoying than Gwenpool? And who will be declared the MVP of Edge of VenomVerse? 

Be sure to check out the reviews for the other Edge of VenomVerse stories here: #1, #2, #3, and #4

Edge of VenomVerse #5: Deadpool

Writer: Clay Chapman

Artist: James Stokoe 

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

C.Artist: Francesco Mattina

Editors: Nick Lowe & Devin Lewis & Allison Stock

Editor-In-Chief: Axel Alonso

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend, I’ve Come To Bond With You Again: Deadpool receives a mission from forces beyond his universe (aka the Writer) that involves him fighting an alien parasite that consumes its host to make it part of a legion hive-mind. Wade discovers he bit off a bit more than he could chew, but he pairs up with the Venom symbiote to achieve success. After completing his mission, he goes on a symbiote infused run of superheroing, before he is summoned by Captain Venom to fight in the upcoming war. 

A Tapeworm Softly Creeping, Left Its Brood While I Was Sleeping: This is the creative team I was most excited about for this series. I am a big fan of the horror work Clay Chapman has done, in comics and film, and he is my top choice to write a Carnage series. And James Stokoe is a force to be reckoned with, who cut his teeth on monsters like orcs and Godzilla. This time around, the creative team decide to tackle alien parasites. This story wears its love of Alien and The Thing on its sleeve; the issue opens with a homage to the iconic chest burster scene. The places they visit are named after the protagonists of each franchise (Ripley Diagnostics & MacReady Hospital) and one of the few human characters is a doctor named R. Scott (Ridley Scott helped bring Alien to life). As I mentioned in my review of Edge of VenomVerse #3, I feel like it is okay to use the influence of others to fill it the gaps of single issue stories, so long as the issue is aware and has fun with it. And boy, does this issue have fun with it. When you have an alien parasite crawl up Deadpool’s behind and then later have his healing factor shit it out, I am along for the ride. 

Stokoe is the MVP here, pulling triple duty as the penciler, inker, and colorist. His art style is heavy; heavy lines, heavy colors, heavy inks, heavy shadows. And this creates a very grimy world, one where you can see light pollution in the night sky. He gives things a very physical sense of motion, but one of the best things about this comic is how characters interact with the world. A band saw has to be plugged into an outlet, a defibrillator paddle is tossed around the page until a character uses it, and items that lie in the background of one panel become projectiles on the next page. One of my favourite little details is that the Venom symbiote is present and animate in the background for several panels before finally bonding with Deadpool (and the case labels it as a Klyn’tar, so Chapman clearly did his homework.) 

Stokoe’s character work is top notch. Infected characters have an unnatural body language. You can see the phallic obsessed influence of H.R. Geiger in everything from tongues to Venompool’s webs. Speaking of Venompool, he has one of the best designs in this anthology. There is enough of both Venom and Deadpool in the design to be notable, but the mesh together into something more beastly, right down to cloven hooves. Stokoe also uses a classic Spider-Man trick, making Venompool’s eyes tiny but expressive. Even Deadpool’s katanas are affected by the bonding process with the symbiote and there is a nice sequence that shows just how deep the symbiote’s bonding goes. And that is nothing compared to the monsters he fights, which feel like a mixture of The Thing, a xenomorph, and DC’s Starro character. This book is full of slick unnatural sound effects that really help bring the horror to life. The sound effects warp around the effected area in clever ways, so hats off to Clayton Cowles for his work. 

The story is nothing amazing, the Venom symbiote is a silent partner, and there is too much crude humour that misses the mark but I still wound up enjoying this tale. Deadpool is a character that can get away with being too annoying or too crass. The comic is laser focused on Wade, with maybe five lines in the whole comic belonging to other characters (one of whom is an owl.) Perhaps I am exhausted of Venoms that exist on one side of a scale that ranges from castrated to psychotic, because it did not bother me that Venom remained mum this time. And despite some of the jokes falling flat, there is a continual riff on The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel that made me smile every time it came up. And there is a superheroing sequence that is good for some chuckles. One thing I like about the actual story is how the symbiote basically turns Wade into the very thing he is fighting, something reflected silently by other characters trying to kill him. 

I am left with some questions I had hoped this final issue would answer. The world Wade is drawn into at the end seems to be an inverse of his previous (red buildings and blue skies become red skies and blue buildings), so where exactly is Captain Venom assembling his army? I imagine Captain Venom’s origin story is coming in VenomVerse proper, but having every issue in this anthology end the exact same way seems like the editors were a little lazy. We also know nothing of the coming threat or what happened to Gwenompool. I would have liked something different to distinguish the conclusion of this anthology; I put a lot of time, thought, and money into this series. 

Verdict: We have yet another Venom story where the artistic team carries the story, as is the case with 4/5 issues of Edge of VenomVerse, the current Venom series, and Venom: Spaceknight. This is a monstrous love letter to alien horror movies and the whole creative team has fun with the concept. The ending is a little disappointing, but that has to do with the series as a whole, rather than this individual issue. I hope Cullen Bunn and Iban Coello can live up to the highs of this series and avoid the pitfalls of the lows. 

Pros: 

• Stokoe’s lively world
• Humor that hits the mark
• Venompool design

Cons:

• Humor that misses the mark
• Lack of answers

B+ 

Edge of VenomVerse MVP: All in all, this series was much better than I was expecting. We had two As (including an A+), two Bs, and a D (which came from a first time writer). This is a clear MVP though and that is the Host-Rider. His design (and that of his vehicle) is far more Metal than DC’s new event, he had not one nor two but three developed personalities, and he made quick work of a Deadpool hybrid (which is great, because the Pools are nearly as present in this series as the Venoms). So hats off to Simon Spurrier, Tigh Walker, and Felipe Sobreiro for their work and I hope the character lives long enough for them to return to him.