Rick Remender’s Venom returns with a new artist, a new editor, and a new story arc. Do these changes usher a return to form for this once-promising series, or a deeper foray into mediocrity? The answer, esteemed reader, lies within this review. The only price of entry? Leave a comment! Whether you agree, disagree, or don’t care because you don’t follow Venom, your comments are the only way I know anyone is reading these critiques.
VENOM #10
“Road Trip” Part 1
WRITER: Rick Remender
PENCILS: Lan Medina
INKS: Nelson Decastro
COLORS: Marte Gracia
LETTERS: VC’s Joe Caramagna
COVER: Tony Moore & Dave Stewart
PLOT:
The funeral of Flash Thompson’s father receives an unwelcome attendant: Jack O’Lantern. Posing as Flash’s old war buddy, the scar-visaged murderer taunts Flash by mingling with his friends and family. “Jack” then ferries Flash to the Crime Master, who blackmails Flash with his knowledge of Flash’s identity. Unless Flash escorts the symbiote to Las Vegas for some unknown job, Crime Master will order Betty Brant and Flash’s mother killed.
Flash returns to his base, where Captain America threatens to shut the Venom program down and demands to take the wicked symbiote into the Avengers’s custody. Flash sneaks the symbiote from the compound, but Cap hounds him. The two clash, and Flash scores a punch that knocks Cap out and careens him off a cliff. Flash rescues Cap, but by the time Cap wakes up, Flash has already stolen Cap’s motor cycle and has apparently embarked to Vegas.
THOUGHTS:
Every superhero book should be this good, but I’d settle for every Venom issue being this good. This series began strongly, but the Spider-Island crossover drew focus away from Remender’s own ghoulish imagination and forced a key development, Flash’s dad’s death, to squeeze around Dan Slott’s dribblings. Last month’s aftermath issue should have revived interest, but besides one pivotal moment, the story lacked content. With issue #10, however, Remender has finally regained his stride.
Far from being decompressed, this issue seems packed. Flash confronts two villains, interacts with every member of his supporting cast, fights another hero, and chooses to go AWOL, possibly shattering his military standing. By modern standards, that constitutes much story movement. Tom Brennan, who becomes full editor with this issue, promised stuffed issues in his letters column mission statement. I know not whether this issue’s vastly improved pacing over last issue’s relates to Brennan’s influence, but so far so good.
Artist Lan Medina also joins the crew this month. His work brings a cleaner appearance to the book—an improvement over some previous artists, excluding Tony Moore. Medina realizes Remender’s haunted funhouse of a brain on paper, which is the important thing, and this issue’s snow-swept climax looks gorgeous.
In both story and art, more than half the fun comes from the villains. I really, really enjoy the new Jack O’Lantern. Yes, I say that practically every second month. “Jack” somewhat channels Freddy Krueger—he’s halloween-flavored and totally kill-thirsty, but simultaneously loveably hokey. I like seeing him psychologically torment Flash by introducing himself as a friend to Flash’s friends and family, just like Eddie Brock originally tormented Peter Parker. I have a soft spot for that type of scene and I find a great use of the villain-learns-the-hero’s-identity scenario. “Jack” works in a lot of personal details into his conversation with Betty, like where Flash served in the army and Flash’s participation in Alcoholics Anonymous. This sends a clear, chilling message to Flash that “Jack” has access to every aspect of Flash’s life. I also quite enjoy the Crime Master. Remender writes him like a Bond villain, with themed hench-men, a lavish base so far underground that it apparently sits within the Earth’s mantle, and his own cocktail waitresses.
On the friendly supporting cast side, Peter Parker and Mary Jane show up at the funeral together. Thank God it wasn’t Carlie Cooper. Nothing in the issue prevented me from pretending Peter and MJ were there as a married couple, so this issue dodged the poison that kills my enjoyment of Marvel comics when the post-Mephisto Spider-Man shows up.
Flash himself is on an interesting journey, one that has put him in conflict with Captain America. The nitpicker in me thinks Flash, being a rookie hero, should have a harder time cold-clocking Cap. I suppose Flash does have multiple military tours under his belt, and he out-powers Cap significantly, so I guess it is not that important. The imagery of Venom riding Cap’s bike is classic, and I cannot wait to see where it takes him.
RATING:
4 out of 5 (Great). If we can expect this level of quality going forward, Venom has an exciting future.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Pandora
Amazon Music
iHeartRadio
Podbean
Amazon Alexa
Player.fm
Listen Notes
Stitcher
Ah, thanks Topher. Looks like we can expect him and Flash to go at it eventually.
The “fin-head” is Death Adder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Adder_(comics)
@5 – Nope. I was reviewing the title from the start of Civil War until most of the way through 2008, but at that point I could not take how bad it was. Once or twice a year I pick up an issue to see whether or not the book still sucks. It still sucks.
@6 – It does’t look like Cap is holding back. During the fight, Cap throws his shield full force and hits Flash in the back of the head. In the scan I posted, Cap really looks like he’s aiming to impale Flash while he’s down. I’ll give you that Cap’s hope in this fight is that Flash will come around and give himself up, based on the dialogue. But it doesn’t look like Cap is fighting less brutally because of it. Even if he was holding back, you’d think Cap could hold back yet still have the wherewithal not to get sucker punched off a cliff. He’s supposed to be one of the most competent fighters in the Marvel Universe. The only explanation is that Flash got in a lucky hit. Hey, it happens, so I’m not all that annoyed by it. I said it was just my nitpick.
@7 – Experience doesn’t make or break everything, but Cap has been in hundreds of fights with people just as powerful and way more skilled than Flash, but he goes down like a chump, here.
@3 – That’s the kicker there, Chris. “Experience” doesn’t make or break everything. 😉
I think Flash won against cap because he was holding back. Cap wanted to talk to flash, not bring him down. Had he truly wanted to take him out, Flash probably would have had a harder time.
Hey crazy chris do you still collect Amazing Spider-Man?
@1 – I never saw the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. It looked like they were missing the appeal of the character. As for MJ and Pete, I get taken out of any story they appear in, too. The character has been so mishandled that I’ve been conditioned to feel a negative response when he shows up, even when nothing in particular is bad about how he’s written.
@2 and @3 Re: Cap – I’m still pretty torn about it. On one hand, yeah, physically Flash is way, way, way more powerful than Cap. Cap is “peak human” and Flash theoretically has the same level of power as the original Venom, which surpasses Spidey’s. Flash also has “two tours of duty” according to Venom #5, plus whatever black ops training they gave him before becoming Venom, and he has racked up a couple missions as Venom where he has fought super powered opponents, so he should know how to fight pretty well. On the other hand, Cap is Cap and it’s hard to conceive of him losing to someone with less war experience and who has only had mid-level superpowers for a couple months at the longest. If Flash had maybe two or three successful fights against tough opponents under his belt in addition to what he’s already done, then I’d have an easier time believing it.
@3 re: review scores – I thought someone might ask that. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what my scores mean. They are purely a measure of my subjective enjoyment as a reader, with no pretense of objectivity whatsoever. To me, a 5 means a comic is up there among the best ever. A 0 is exactly the opposite. A 2.5 is “neutral,” meaning my positive and negative feelings counteract each other evenly. The scale is symmetrical with 2.5 being the midpoint. That is, every degree higher or lower than 2.5 reflects an increase or decrease in my enjoyment from the baseline of “neutral.” So a 3 is a comic that I mildly liked, and a 2 is a comic that I mildly dislike. The amount that I dislike a 2 is the same as the amount that I like a 3 because both are the same distance away from 2.5. The amount that I dislike a 1.5 is the same as the amount that I like a 3.5, and so on. As you get further to the extremes of a scale, the each degree reflects a bigger change in the amount I liked or disliked the comic. So the difference between a 4.5 and a 5 is greater than the difference between a 3 and a 3.5. The difference between a 0 and a 0.5 is greater than the difference between a 2 and a 1.5. That’s why my scores don’t usually go above a 4 or below a 1 — the jump to the more extreme scores requires an unusual difference from the enjoyment I generally get from comics.
I hope all that makes sense. I know it’s idiosyncratic but its the best way I have come to make sense of a 0-5 scale. Of course, the interpretation varies from reviewer to reviewer.
To answer your question more succinctly, a 5 is what I would give to one of my favorite comics of all time. I would give a 4.5 to comic-of-the-year contenders. A 4 goes to comics that do almost everything right, so they are great, but don’t quite stand out enough for distinction. Venom #10 is a set-up issue at the start of a story arc, so there is little pay-off. It doesn’t have a particularly powerful emotional component. The action scene was good but it did not blow my mind. Those factors went into me giving this a 4 rather than a higher score, even though a 4 is already a very high score from me.
Nice review! I like the captions under your scans… My work computer has a training program on it for various softwares and programs, including WordPress, and I’ve been meaning to take those lessons to figure out like tips and tricks like that for a while now.
I too would have liked to have seen Cap put up more of a fight but I thought the action was pretty solid for the most part. Good issue all around. If 4 out of 5 is great, what’s a 5 out of 5? just wondering.
Good review and a great issue
I too thought Flash should have had a harder time with Cap though
Nice comparison with Krueger, I totally see it. Just please don’t have hi resort to lame sex jokes (ala: Remake’s Freddy Krueger)
And when it came to MJ/Pete, it did make me happy to see them, but I also was taken out of the book by it, because of all that’s happened since OMD. Still, Remender writes a good Peter, so I hope he shows up some more down the line.