Waaaay back in the summer, I wrote a little blog about John Romita’s “brand new Spider-Man villain,” Anti-Venom. It sounded like the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. It looked like the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. Recently, I read Amazing Spider-Man 568-570 (haven’t pick up the final couple of issues of the arc) and I’m changing my tune. Anti-Venom turned out to be pretty cool.

 Back in the summer, we only got a couple pieces of info on this guy. We had John Romita’s drawing, which, despite that it’s beautiful art, looked like yet-another generic symbiote. And we had the name, Anti-Venom, a laughable idea that screams “we’re all outta ideas” when it’s read out of context. I wish the press releases had given us just a little more to go on, or not mentioned it at all, because Dan Slott and John Romita really surprised me. And considering how disappointed I’ve been with Marvel lately (though I’m waiting for the trades to read ANY of Secret Invasion, so don’t rake me over the coals if it’s good… I just had major issues with Civil War) that’s really saying something.

 I won’t spoil too much because I want to encourage fans to read this arc, especially those who haven’t been reading Spidey for a long time, and fans of Venom, Carnage, and black costume Spider-Man. In a nutshell, Anti-Venom isn’t just another symbiote. It’s Eddie Brock, who hasn’t been Venom for quite a while. Mac Gargan, the Scorpion, has been merged with the symbiote lately, and since Brock lost it, he’s discovered the symbiote left him with cancer.

Eddie has been working with a mysterious  man who runs a homeless shelter, trying to do some good before the cancer kills him. People keep miraculously getting healed at this shelter, and the same thing happens to Eddie– when this guy touches him, the cancer is eradicated, but it also seems to be placed with something else.

Suddenly, he becomes Anti-Venom, and he’s really more of an anti-body. Eddie now has the ability to eradicate his old symbiote, which he tries to do as soon as it attempts to merge with him again. He also tries to do the same to the traces of the symbiote left inside Peter Parker… the problem is, he might also eradicate the very radioactivity that gives Parker his powers!

I guess I should have known that Romita wouldn’t work on anything as silly as what Anti-Venom originally sounded like to me, but like I said, after Civil War and killing off Captain America, I haven’t been able to put much past Marvel. And this isn’t nearly as brilliant as the original black costume and Venom stories, but it’s certainly well-written and worthy of the team that worked on it. If I had known Anti-Venom was going to be Eddie Brock, I never would have written that other blog. It’s great to see one of my favorite characters doing something intersting again, and thanks to this arc, I’m finally putting Amazing Spider-Man on my pull-list for the forseable future.

Also check out Venom: Dark Origin, a new five-part mini-series that tells Eddie Brock’s past from childhood, and gives us the Venom saga completey from Brock’s perspective.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Paramount has already leaked some promotional photos for JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. I figured (and kinda hoped) this wouldn’t happen until a little closer to the release– we’re still more than seven months away and we already have a good idea what the bridge looks like! This is about the time I thought we’d get promotional pictures when the movie was still supposed to happen in December, but just as I thought Chris Nolan allowed spoiler Joker pictures too early for Dark Knight, I think these are a little early too. I don’t want to make any judgement calls before I see the movie, so I’d rather be completely in the dark than get pictures out of context.

 That being said, they look really fantastic, for the most part. I can see now why Quinto was chosen to play Spock… he looks a little scary. And I hope we’re just seeing that picture out of context, because Spock’s looking a little too much like Syler.

The cast looks really great. But where’s Kirk’s uniform?

I’m glad they’re still being hush-hush about exactly what the ship’s going to look like, but I wsh we hadn’t seen the bridge at all yet. It looks neat, but I’m not sure it looks very Star Trek. This is like TOS if Enterprise had actually happened– if Starfleet really did have technology 100 more advanced than what we saw in that show. I do like that it’s bright and eye-catching, but there’s something about it that seems too Power Rangers command center for me. I hope this ends up being like the Tumbler in Batman Begins– I hated it when I saw it out of context, but once I watched the film, it was amazing.

Nero looks like your average wicked-evil Romulan, only a little more liberal. What’s with the tattoos? It might be cool if he really is a rebel Romulan who runs off on his own agenda rather than just working for the Romulan government– that’s certainly what he looks like. Hope he’s got a better motive than Shinzon in Nemesis.

Also, a little side-note: I know this is going to be kind of a reboot, but Chekov really shouldn’t even be in this movie, if it’s pre-TOS. He doesn’t even appear in the series until season 2.

But I am breathing a little sigh of relief. Despite my tiny qualms, this does really look like Star Trek. I hope it is.

LLAP

 -Cap’n Logan