Brock’s Column: Venom #34

THE RETURN OF THE KINGS.

By Sym B. Ote

NEW YORK.

Our insider in Knull’s Hive reported to us earlier that the fight -if one can call it that- between Eddie Brock and the King in Black was about to reach it’s end, as the Symbiote God was about to throw the symbiote-less Brock off a mountain again. However, mid fall, Brock’s old partner the Klyntar known as Venom managed to bound to him again and fly away, breaking into to the real world like Thompson did before (pictured left).

That’s where I was able to witness the return on the scene of Venom, now big as a skyscraper (Pictured right). While that made for an impressive sight, he was quickly found by the white symbiote carrying the codex of Anti-Venom. While the latter was ready to team up with the gigantic symbiote, Brock instead chose to redirect Corporal Thompson toward his grave, hinting that bonding his dragon form to his corpse might bring him back in the flesh, just like it did for Carnage.

Right after, Venom tracked down Knull and was about to take his revenge on him… When it seems he was blown to pieces by the God of light! However it later turned out that said entity was only in the process of reuniting Brocks spirit with his body and mend his wound. As Reed Richards identify the newly arrived ball of light as the Uni-power – A.K.A. Captain Universe’s source of power- the force takes the now resurrected Eddie Brock as its new host!

As for “Flash” Thompson, it seems his attempt to reunite with his body was successful, since his grave was found empty, burst from the inside out.

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Note: This issue takes place during King in Black #4 and right before King in Black #5

Well that was a terrific, but useless issue! While we didn’t get much character development, unlike the previous issues, we did get a succession of incredibly impressive visuals. From the opening page of Dragon Flash tearing through another Symbiote dragon, to Eddie reuniting with his symbiote in a awesome winged form to a spread of a Kaiju Sized Venom coming back to life, all of these moment convey a great sense of epicness.

And then we have the final page of Flash’s hand bursting through the ground at his grave. That moment was absolutely fantastic. Show don’t tell at his best. Also, on a personal note, I absolutely loathe Dan Slott’s run on ASM. So seeing the last main developpement from his run being put to rest (I am NOT sorry for that pun) definitely made this issue worth it for me. But that is a huge biais i felt i needed to disclose.

My only two gripe with this issue are pretty major however. First of all, seeing how late it came out, it should have been released alongside KIB #4. Also, unlike the previous issues, it is absolutely NOT necessary to read this issue to understand the crossover and it doesn’t bring anything to the current arc of Venom. I get it sets up the upcoming Extreme Carnage miniseries but only the last 3 pages were necessary for that, and probably could have been added as an epilogue to the upcoming Venom #200. When i can flat out remove an issue of a comic from an arc or event and not even miss a beat on the main story, it’s an automatic fail for me – no matter how cool the art was

So overall, to me, it was a C.

A very nice issue visually, very well written but completely superfluous to both the current Venom run or the King in Black miniseries