Same Symbiote, Different Day: Venom #10 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers, such as the fact that Venom rides Captain America’s motorcycle. Which you learned from the cover to your left. Damn covers have no regard for spoiler alerts. However, consider yourself warned. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a guy walks into a Marvel comic, and he gets confronted by Captain America. Cap tells the guy that he’s out of control and he needs to be brought in, so the guy tells Cap that he’s always respected him and that Cap’s been a big influence on him, and then he punches Cap in the temple, steals some of his shit and gets away clean! Ha! Get it?

Oh, you’ve heard that one? Of course you have. It’s been a staple of Marvel Comics at least since Daredevil: Born Again. So much so that Mark Millar and Matt Fraction hooked it for The Punisher during and just after Civil War. And then Mark Waid took it for Daredevil #2 just three or four months ago. Hell, Daniel Way used it in Deadpool this fucking week. And now Rick Remender’s dusted it off for Venom #10. And considering all these characters wind up kicking Captain America’s ass when he shows up, it’s reaching the point where I’m beginning to think that Captain America’s Kryptonite is simple respect; if Baron Zemo had offered to shake Cap’s hand before shooting off that rocket, this book would take place in the Wunder Universum and everyone would be eating schnitzel right now.

This time around, Cap shows up to shut down the government program that hooked Flash Thompson up with the Venom symbiote. Unfortunately, Cap’s timing leaves a little to be desired, since Thompson is being blackmailed to do crimes as Venom by Jack O’Lantern and Crime-Master – because nothing proves you’re a master criminal like telling everyone you’re a master criminal. Ask Keyser Soze. But I digress.

Anyhoo, Flash is being blackmailed, so he steals the Venom symbiote from the government just as Cap shows up. Cap demands the suit, for good reason; if I were dressed like Captain America, I’d try to jack some clothes, too. Anyway, whacky shenanigans ensue, Venom winds up tuning Cap up and stealing his motorcycle to get away – because nothing helps you fly under the radar like wearing a spiked, black leathery unitard while riding a red, white and blue Harley Davidson. In the real world, a guy traveling in that getup wouldn’t make it 100 yards unless he took cover in a gay pride parade, but what the hell.

If it sounds like I’m being dismissive of this issue, it’s because I’m kind of feeling that way. There’s nothing wrong with this book per se, it just feels like a rehash of things that have been done to death. Hero being blackmailed into committing crimes to protect his loved ones? You can’t swing a dead cat in the back issue section of any comic store without hitting a silver-age Superman acting like a dick to protect someone from getting hurt; just ask my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to stop swinging dead cats in his store. A misunderstanding that causes superheroes to fight? Yeah, that almost never happens in comic books. And then there’s the “fighting Captain America even though I respect him so much” gag, which I think we’ve demonstrated is safe to put back on the shelf for another few years. Please?

When it comes to the art, well, it’s more of the same feeling of, “Um, okay.” Lan Medina is a perfectly competent artist. His figures are done in a simple, clear style. His action storytelling is dynamic, and there’s nothing particularly offputting here. With that said, there’s also nothing particularly special. His facial expressions are pretty static – when Captain America is told that Venom, who just kicked his ass, escaped, his face looks like he’s being told that tomorrow’s weather will also be temperate. However, the general visual storytelling is easy to follow and generally uncomplicated, which is good. The only out-and-out complaint I have is that Medina seems to rely on Photoshop’s blur filter to imply action a little too much. The art here might not queue up a line to Medina’s table at Artists’ Alley, but it’s good and competent enough to not need distracting gimmicks to punch it up.

Venom #10 is an early part to what is going to wind up being a larger, Marvel Universe-spanning story for Venom, so it’s probably not all that prudent to dismiss what is obviously a rampup to something more epic. However, on the basis of just this issue, it feels like a whole bunch of stuff that we’ve just flat-out seen before. Remender’s done a good enough job on this book up until now for me to hang in there – hell, he’s even beat his own historical seven-issue curse. But where his Punisher went gloriously daffy and out of its comfort zone (Albeit arguably failing in the attempt), here it feels like he’s just grabbing Marvel tropes off the shelf to play it safe.

And frankly, I’m tired of seeing these same old plot points in Marvel books. Maybe every twenty years, we can have a book where Spider-Man fights Captain America to save Aunt May while Hank Pym gets depressed and beats on The Wasp while Tony Stark gets shitfaced and Thor dies, and we can get all these old chestnuts out of everyone’s system in one shot. But until that glorious day, I’d say maybe skip this issue of Venom. Trust me: if you’re a Marvel comics reader, you’ve already read it.