A Drop Of The Creature: Venom #7 Review

Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers about Spider-Island. It has spiders. Also, some other stuff. You have been warned.

Now if you insist upon using a comic story as a parable about a serious issue, Venom #7 is a much better way of doing it. But we’ll get to that.

This issue is a crossover issue to Marvel’s Spider-Island event that I initially picked up for only one reason: issue 7 of any book Rick Remender writes is the point where it stands a solid chance of going gloriously and disastrously off the rails.

Think about his 2008 run on Punisher, which he started in the middle of the Dark Reign event when Norman Osborne had managed to use public opinion and political intrigue to wrest control of SHIELD from Tony Stark even though he was woefully unqualified and The Green Fucking Goblin. While the X-Men remained neutral and the Avengers wrestled with ways to turn the tide of public sentiment away from Osborne even while it turned against themselves, Remender had The Punisher come up with an ingenious and crafty plan to turn Osborne’s fortunes by shooting him in the face.

That was issue 1. By issue 7, Remender had the straight-ahead, no-nonsense Punisher fighting zombies. And thus began a long, slow train wreck that culminated in the Punisher being killed and resurrected as Frankenstein. Reading Remender’s Punisher was like watching a Kardashian try to redefine pi in a room full of cocaine and NBA players: a hot mess I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

So when I saw Venom had reached the critical seventh issue, I wanted in on the ground floor of the implosion… so imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a damn good book, and arguably the best part of the Spider-Island event so far.

I call it the best part because Remender actually does something remarkable in this comic: he tells a story that supports the crossover event just enough so that you understand what’s happening in the greater story, while not requiring you to know too much about it. In just three pages, Remender shows us that there is an infestation, that people are turning into spiders, and that Anti-Venom can cure them. In three more he shows us that there is a mastermind behind everything and that Venom is undercover with selfsame mastermind… and just like that we’re up to speed on three months and $75 worth of Spider-Man comic books.

Most event crossover books are story derailleurs: every three months editorial dictates that a book will be part of some larger event, so many writers stop whatever they’re doing in their book to put their character into the event as dictated, and then try to pick up the pieces and get back to their intended story when it’s all over… usually just in time to be told about the next crossover event. So what’s even more remarkable about Venom #7 is that Remender services the Spider-Island story, while still telling his own story about the nature of addiction.

And make no mistake: this book is about addiction. After dealing with the event-related preliminaries, the book opens with Flash Thompson – Venom on this go-round – being asked to visit his alcoholic father who’s dying of liver disease. When the big fight scene with Anti-Venom occurs, Flash is forced to confront his relationship with the Venom suit, and how he hates it and how it’s been making him act, while eventually arguing with himself that he needs it.

It’s Venom Symbiote as stand-in for alcoholism. Which isn’t a perfect apples-to-apples analogy; after all, if someone quits drinking they get the shakes, whereas if Flash picked that moment to quit the Venom suit, he would be defenseless in the middle of a spider apocalypse without legs or even pants. Hell, I would keep the suit. And I would be drinking. And so would you. But I digress.

But unlike the on-the-nose, “This is a racial parable!” message that shrieked from every page of Firestorm, the addiction message in Venom was far more subtle. It wasn’t perfect; the best symbolism is quiet and only there if you want to see it, while here it was more like a dude on the corner muttering, “Smoke. Smoke” – he’s telling you he has something, but you can pass it by if you really want to.

I haven’t mentioned Tom Fowler’s pencils yet because frankly, it doesn’t do a hell of a lot for me. It’s… fine? I do enjoy how he modifies Venom from panel to panel to be a military style uniform in one to a more traditional Venom in the next; it’s a solid visual-storytelling device to show Thompson as his control waxes and wanes. But overall? It’s solid, straight-ahead penciling, and that’s about it.

But this isn’t a book to buy for the art. If you like your comics to have a little more weight than a normal punch-up in tights, and you want to support crossovers that are a little weightier than normal, give Venom a shot.

Besides, it’s Remender. By issue 8, he could have Venom using the suit to break into gay porn.