Born Anew and Veiled in Slime. King in Black Wraps and Leaves Us With Some Ghosts

Endings and new beginnings across Venom #34 by Donny Cates, Iban Coello, and Jesus Aburtov and King in Black #5 by Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, and Frank Martin and Jason Keith, letters by Clayton Cowles

Forrest Hollingsworth: It’s here. The months-in-the-making finale of King in Black and the penultimate issue of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s run on Venom. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the goop fails, when we forsake our hosts and break all bonds of symbiosis, but it is not this day. An hour of dragons and shattered shields, when the age of slime comes crashing down, but it is not this day!

This day….we write. 

Justin Partridge: I never thought I would die standing next to a pile of goop. But I now know that I die beside…a friend. 

This column includes detailed spoilers for both Venom and the finale of King in Black.

“Flash Thompson Was”

FH: So, because this is a double sized column we’re going to be covering quite a few things in quick succession (so much goo, so little time). To start, let’s break down Venom #34, the final KiB tie-in. As with the previous issues, this takes place simultaneously with the previous King in Black which editor Charlie Davis and I covered here. I have a lot of smaller nitpicks with this one, but I liked the Flash Thompson stuff quite a bit so let’s start with that! 

Cates opens with a kind of eulogy for Flash – he overcame his rudimentary cruelness and became a man of honor, a soldier, a superhero, a man worthy of the name Venom. He’s kind of the Ur-Eddie Brock, one who chose greatness and sacrifice instead of being forced into it. There’s a really subtle, nice parallelism there to what Eddie is now very clearly struggling through. And for that he’s rewarded! His use of the power of the hive to be reborn in the “real world” feels wholly, organically good to me, especially because I suspect that he’ll be taking that classified spot on Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Extreme Carnage roster.

Justin, how do you feel about Flash and the big character beats here? If you had to choose between Thompson or Brock to be Venom for the rest of time who are we going with?

JP: First off, I just want to say thank you so much to Hive Editor Charlie for covering for me last column. As you might recall, Texas was thrown into a blizzard state at the start of the year and that unfortunately included myself so I appreciate Charlie stepping in and providing such wonderful words.

BUT beyond that, I actually found this to be really solid stuff. Of all the Venoms, I would say I feel the more connection to Flash, because I really liked his personal arc. I also just really found his character so much more interesting than Eddie’s. Both were jocks more or less, but at the very least Flash seemed like a guy trying to be better than the sum of his parts, while Eddie somewhat embraced those parts of himself (until now).

Books like Rick Remender’s Secret Avengers and his time under the pen of Cullen Bunn endeared me to him and allowed him room to grow beyond his “super-jarhead” persona into one of the more engaging members of the Venom/Spider family so I am happy overall to see him poised for a substantial return.

I WILL SAY however, the “critic brain” part of me just wonders if this is just Cates trying to really rush through all the bigger beats he wanted to hit in his run’s endgame (the “solving” of the Enigma Force, Eddie’s “ascension”, Flash’s return, and Dylan’s de-symbioting) but even with my cynicism it is still great to see Flash on his way back.  

FH: Flash…man he’s good. Well, time to jettison all of that and talk about Eddie! Aside from a great moment where the Venom Symbiote stop’s Eddie’s defeatism dead in its tracks, most of my problems here are unfortunately about the titular character. The team has used the same literal and figurative imagery of Brock falling for every tie-in and here — despite the subversion — it just hits a degree of tiredness that I don’t think the story overcomes. Even if there’s something conceptually good about Eddie and the Symbiote reuniting and escaping the Hive on its own merits, I think the relative artificiality of the Enigma Force possessing Eddie kind of undoes anything that would feel organic about it, they have a literal God on their side! Unfortunately, the simplistic monochromatic visuals and setting haven’t really evolved here and don’t elevate what should be a good, monumental issue in its weakest moments either. 

I couldn’t tell what was actually happening in the graveyard segment at all. Do you want to take a shot at it?

(Ed. Note: Don’t ask me.)

JP: Brother, don’t start me to lyin’, but I will give it my best shot.

(Ed. Note: Justin doesn’t know either. It’s best we move on. This is on you Mr. Stegaman)

I think a lot of this run in particular has been shaped around Eddie’s self-actualization, right? Throughout this run we’ve been told and shown that Eddie is part of things that are bigger than himself (Strickland’s war on Knull, the taxonomy of symbiotes, and fatherhood) and making him face the choice to either accept that or reject it. 

Further still, this is also a macro examination of the core dynamic of Venom too. A larger scale take on the push/pull between pure id and the idea of humanity. Cates here seems to be further exploding that out FURTHER, splashing it across the operatic heights and forces available at Marvel.

The trouble is, having a literal freaking god show up (the third of three here, if you count Knull and the Surfer before Captain Universe) to burn Eddie through this realization really undercuts this whole thesis. And starts to draw from a nearly dry well in terms of deus ex machinas that we’ve already gotten thus far from this run. It seems like every time Eddie gets close to a breakthrough, another god-like figure shows up to push him over the threshold and support him without really ever allowing HIM, as a person, to get there himself.

We get really close as Eddie is reunited with his symbiote (a fourth deus ex machina if you really wanna split some hairs which I always will). Wherein he is pushed further into the power vacuum left by Knull to literally become a god as he can now connect with the whole of the Klyntar hive. Also Flash Thompson might be back? I don’t know. Part of me likes that it’s this big goofy exploration of the self and what it means to be “more” than just a man (read: a father, a hero, a figurehead of sorts), but it’s all too muddied up in dieties and the new “rules” of Venom to really make that big of an impression.

FH: Well, King in Black had more going on at least so let’s web swing on over to that.

“This is for Dylan”

FH: This is it! The finale of Cates and Stegman’s big event! It’s…fine? It’s fine. The first half of this final issue mostly consists of action that’s a lot like the previous installments, but I do think it’s a little more worth discussing comprehensively here. 

Silver Surfer and the Avengers stage what feels like a final, probably losing, all out assault on Knull who muses poetically about being triumphant before…Venom returns. Harnessing the power of God, Eddie calls both Mjolnir and Surfer’s board to him and slays Knull’s dragons, his Symbiote Celestial, and the God of Darkness himself in spectacular fashion. Where I think the narrative might falter here, and there’s plenty of pedantic arguments to be had about Thor’s hammer (I think it doesn’t count, Eddie is worthy in the moment because he possesses the light, not inherently) the art does not. Nearly every other panel of this thing is packed full of that gothy, heavy metal crustiness that I think Stegman excels at when he needs to. 

The images of a determined, resilient Surfer hefting a massive blade in the face of death, Eddie decapitating three fearsome dragons in one fell swoop, or the Symbiote stripping, skin melting intensity of Knull and Venom’s final confrontation above the sun are all ones that would lift the issue up on their own but together really make it sing, and make a good reminder as to why this story debuted with Stegman to begin with.

Justin, before we digress into the admittedly messier story, what do you think of the art here?

JP:  I think it does absolutely look tremendous. 

Obviously the time between issues has REALLY harmed this series as well as the constant “re evaluation” of scenes we have already seen in the core book and in the KiB event overall (which we get EVEN AGAIN HERE with Eddie walking us BACK through the opening issues of KiB as he whoops wholesale Knull ass). Like you said, It never really tops out beyond “fine”.

Even THOUGH, also like you said, we have some tremendous visuals here. I am particularly fond of the whole Venomized Celestial scene in which Eddie just instantly dispatches a whole fucking CELESTIAL with a simple swipe of his new hybrid weapon (which is just goofy enough to please the 13-year-old brain still trapped in my stupid skull).

But like NONE of it sticks. STILL. It’s really frustrating to be constantly told throughout this book that everything is changing and nothing will be the same. Yet this event has really only been a collection and recollection of the same six scenes while Eddie keeps getting power upgrades that don’t stick. It’s all noise and no actual substance.

FH: So, amidst all the sick riffage and death defying action, not much happens narratively in the first half of the book. The main takeaway for me is the scene where Knull (finally) dies. Eddie recognizes that the void may still come, that malice, violence, greed, darkness still have their place on a cosmic scale, and that it may eventually consume them. He also, in a nice synergy with the Venom issue above, declines to let that feed his defeatism. He does this for Dylan. He lives in the moment, finally freed from his burdens internally and externally, and does this for his son. It’s nice – it makes Dylan finally feel like the important character they’ve been grasping at and struggling with for some time, even if we only see it through his father’s eyes. I don’t have a kid so I can’t say I would defeat the literal embodiment of darkness for them for sure, but I do have small dogs and sometimes I have to pick them up onto the couch when they’re afraid to jump and this is essentially the same.

JP: Well I DO have a son and I will say there is a fair amount of that too. Jeffery usually just watches too many Goosebumps and then makes me watch something else to help us get un-spooked out.

I actually DO like a lot of this, I will say. I have said a bunch here that Cates is always better when he is working alongside some real deal emotions and it seems like he’s finally found that sweet spot here. At the…very end of his event. Again, the IDEA is really solid and precisely the kind of speed I like this volume of Venom to be operating at.

But I am afraid it might be too little, too late to really hook anybody. It may not even be hooking ME and I’’ve been covering this with you for 80 years.

“You are The King in Black”

FH: The event ends with Eddie removing the Symbiote from Dylan (unclear if that removes all of his powers or just the connection to the hive?) so that his son won’t be subject to the same darkness and torment he was, and assuming his role as the New! King in Black XL. Ultimately, I find the story of Eddie recognizing his place in and his impact on the universe outside of himself to be a good one, but it also feels a little undermined by the thematic straightforwardness of “light always beats darkness”.  Eddie recognized who he was and who he could be and…ended up becoming a symbol for something that is much less nuanced than he as a character inherently is. 

How do these final moments of exposition grab you, Justin? Do you think the finale ended up warranting the event’s overlong existence?

JP: I think yes and no.

Yes, in that, like you, I truly DO love how focused this whole volume has been on Eddie’s state of mine and sense of identity beyond Venom. I think hanging a lot of the new rules and power stratas on both Dylan and Eddie has been a smart move on Cates’ part, allowing us a deeper connection with them both as people first and goopy people second.

BUT, like I said above, having literal gods show up to usher Eddie through all this (and then immediately leave once their use to the plot is done) REALLY does undercut most if not all of this. And also, like you said, REALLY saps away a lot of character building they have done along the way. I am also okay with Dylan being effective “taken from the hive” more or less. I was guessing that Dylan was going to become more of a non-entity once Cates hung up his slime and the turn here supports that theory. I dunno, y’all. It just ALL seems very rushed and a somewhat hurried way to make sure all these toys are back on the shelf for the next creative team.

Obviously some of this stuff has been teased for what seems like decades, but just as a finale, this whole affair has been truly humdrum.

FH: It feels to me like Cates set out to establish a interconnected web of reasons for why and how Venom has been in so many Marvel events, spin-offs, and reboots (aside from how much merch he sells), and succeeded in doing that through giving the character its own mythos and secret history, in revitalizing it as a sci-fi story, but amidst all of the proper nouns, cliffhangers and false starts, it lost sight of humanness of its characters. What’s the tangible takeaway for Eddie here? That Knull existed at some time but now he’s gone? There’s too little to really grasp onto, too much in service to the plain thematics, and too little to feel satisfying for the twilight hours. Hey, Eddie always has been good at letting people down.

Hopefully the final issue will cohere into something impressive, a real mission statement or new beginning, but for right now this is what we have. We’ll see you for one last ride real soon, fellow Slime Scholars and Goop Troopers and thanks for reading!

Marvelous Musings

• Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s run on Venom will end with #35 (legacy #200) on May 12th. We’ll have to think of a proper funeral and rites.
• As they ascend to space, Venom’s skin starts to reflect hundreds of constellations, a nice nod to him accepting his place in the universe.
• Blade briefly, inexplicably becomes the main character for a few pages which all but confirms that he’s next or very close to next on Cates’ list of projects.
• Weird that we don’t get any real solid intel on what becomes of the All-Black now that Knull has been roasted. 

Forrest Hollingsworth

Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.

Justin Partridge

Justin Partridge has loved comics all his life. He hasn't quite gotten them to love him back just yet. But that hasn't stopped him from trying as he has been writing about them now for a little over a decade. With bylines at Newsarama, Shelfdust, PanelXPanel, and more, Justin has been doing the work and putting in the time! Comics have yet to return his calls. Usually he can be found on Twitter screaming about Doctor Who.