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

We can’t completely blame– I mean credit– John Romita Jr. for this. After all, he’s the artist and Dan Slott is writing the thing. Who knows what exactly their creative process is for inventing new characters. But even if Slott invented the guy all by himself… Romita’s visual design isn’t helping matters much.

It’s Venom. But it’s not. Well, it’s a symbiote. But it’s different. Whatever.

Anti-Venom will make his comic book debut this summer in Amazing Spider-Man #568, as just reported a few hours ago on ew.com. Yep, this isn’t a joke– he’s really called Anti-Venom. Why do they call him Anti-Venom, you ask?? Um… because they’ve completely run out of ideas? Honestly, I don’t know. You’ll have to read it to find out. But even after you get past all the fan arguments (who seem mostly to be in agreement) that this is rehashing and just milking an old character (and yes, I too would agree) you have to wonder about practical application. What exactly is anti about him? He’s another alien symbiote with a spider on his chest and a giant, monster mouth. Maybe he’s anti in the sense that he’s nowhere near as cool-looking as Venom. He’s the opposite because he’s ugly and pathetic, rather than actually being Venom’s true opposite. Venom’s real opposite is Spider-Man… or maybe even Carnage. I guess the name works if the point is to have a really crappy looking Venom… not sure it’ll sell comics, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s Marvel’s biggest goal these days. In Civil War, Spider-Man revealed his identity, Iron Man got completely out of character rounding up anti-registry superheroes , and they killed Captain America… seems like Marvel’s made a lot of bad moves. Maybe after all of that we should be expecting silly things like an Anti-Venom.

I would probably have to read the book to be sure of this, but it doesn’t even look clever in a campy, comic kind of way. Anybody remember Anti-Spawn? In the early Spawn comics, there was a character sent by Heaven to eradicate spawn called the Anti-Spawn (he was actually Jason Wynn if I remember correctly). He had an awesome blue, armored costume that was completely different from Spawn’s, but what I loved about it was his belt. He actually had a logo of Spawn’s head with a slash through it. He was literally Anti-Spawn. Later they changed his name to Redeemer, which I admit sounds less-hokey. Maybe I just liked seeing a little camp in the middle of this very dark, graphic and brooding comic. Also the reason I loved psycho-plasm, which they later also changed to necro-plasm. But again, this guy doesn’t look like an anti-Venom… he just looks like a badly drawn Venom with  a different logo. I guess his costume is white and that’s the opposite of black… but that’s about it.

Carnage was an off-shoot of Venom and though you could argue they were just milking the symbiote idea, he was an entirely new and interesting character. Carnage was the one person Venom hated more than Spider-Man and he was fascinating because he was a serial killer who killed entirely for sport. He was a psycho almost in the vein of a Batman villain. He also had a MUCH different look and a his symbiote behaved differently. So I’m not saying you can’t get new, fresh ideas from old sources. I am saying that the Venom source is pretty well spent. If anything, Anti-Venom needs to be a new villain for VENOM, not Spider-Man, and unfortunately there’s no longer a monthly Venom series. If there were, I don’t think any of us would complain so much.

Oh, and to answer Peter’s thought at slashfilm.com… Anti-Venom in the new Spidey film? No chance. Anti-Venom won’t sell comics, much less a movie. He’ll be forgotten about long before it goes into production.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan