Panel(s) of the Day #1335

5 Comments

1. @Aqu@

   I agree that they could have done character growth and development to make this shift with Venom. But it’s like they realized “The readers love Venom, we need to make him a hero, or at least an anti-hero.” It’s like he was showing up in his first appearances and was his original villainous self, and then the next time he showed up he was talking about “protecting the innocents” and they pretended he had always been like that and hoped the readers would get collective amnesia and think “Oh, I guess Venom *was* always like this.”

   They could have used the time between appearances to say that Venom had taken this time to think about who he was and what he was doing, and gradually change his character. But it’s like they were in such a rush to switch him from villain to anti-hero immediately with no time to explain why.

2. See, it’s not that I’m against the redemption of a villain (assuming that a psychopath could redeem himself: it’s probably an argument for a psychology class), it’s how you do it that matters.
   For Venom I feel they should have done it in a loong time, instead of cutting right to the end of the path: bam, he’s a hero now and everybody agrees.

3. I understand why Marvel did it back in the 1990s. They started out the character of Venom as a murderous psychopath. They didn’t anticipate the readers loving him so much that they would want to read stories where he was the protagonist, so they realized they would have to redeem him (minorly) by introducing his “protect the innocents” mindset – even though this went against his actions in his earlier appearances.

   This happens a lot in fiction – a villain becomes so beloved that they change their character to make them more heroic and have them fight on the side with the hero. The character of Helena on Orphan Black is an example that comes to mind – in season 1 she was *the* villain – a murderous clone that was coming after our heroes. But she became such a favorite with the viewers that in later seasons they softened her character, tried to explain her actions away, and eventually she was on the good side, even though some of the characters should have been saying “Hey, we all like you now, but remember when you were killing all of our ‘sisters’ back in season 1? What was up with that?”

4. What you point out is the reason I didn’t like the recent development for Eddie Brock (pre-King in Black). He has always been a psychopath, but out of nowhere heroes like the Avengers trust him and they’re all buddy-like. There’s even a cringe-making scene where Carol Danvers finds him attractive.
   And why? Because the story Cates wanted to tell needed it.

   Story-over-characters is what I don’t like of today’s Marvel, especially when you realize the reason behind it is that they can’t afford to make characters grow (which would be the fuel for characters-driven stories).

5. “Eddie, just think about all those innocents! Like the prison guards you needlessly killed the first time you broke out, or the beat cop you killed at the church where you tried to kill me, or … you know what, forget I said anything.” LOL