As everything Dylan Brock has come to know and love unravels around him, he is beginning to realize a terrible truth: The VENOM SYMBIOTE is not a harmless pet, no matter how much it pretends to be one. It’s an alien. A dangerous, violent, often bloodthirsty alien. Whatever bond it had with Dylan’s father, Eddie Brock, special as it may have been…is gone. And Dylan might be soon too in VENOM #3

Written by Ram V, with art by Bryan Hitch, colors by Alex Sinclair, and letters by Clayton Cowles

Vishal Gullapalli: Forrest, how do you feel about continuing generically foreboding exposition monologues from villains? Because we sure signed up for that here.

Forrest Hollingsworth: Vishal, that sounds exactly like how I would describe literally any Eminem lyrics, so I’ll go, of course, with “that sounds right for Venom, but I don’t have to like it.” Let’s play the hits.

What’s Symbiotes Got to Do with It?

Vishal: So yeah, we start this issue off with some extremely heavy-handed exposition – Ram V literally defines the word “Symbiote.” All of this on top of some more Bryan Hitch stale bread that I don’t think we can keep dedicating a whole section of our coverage to, so I’m gonna get that complaint out of the way.

Forrest: I’ll echo your complaint, with the kindness that I thought there were some genuinely interesting visual ideas in this — specifically the Symbiote cocoon — but ultimately it’s so one dimensional and flat that I find myself kind of nonplussed by even the novel moments. Which, actually, is a perfect way to describe how I feel about the exposition dump here as well.

Not unlike the kind of visual dissection that the Symbiote is going through in this issue, V takes us painstakingly through each building block of the story so far (and to come?) in short succession: Eddie is gone, Dylan is unprepared, The Life Foundation is poised to strike, and the Symbiote is … weird. It’s something that I always expect for a reboot like this, the essential work of establishing what is canon or significant to the story being told, but I was also stunned by how painfully transparent that machination was here. I said it in our previous column but: who talks like this?

Vishal: There’s also the painfully wink-wink line in our little excerpt for this section – “Our endeavor is to poke as many holes as we can into the damn thing so we can see what it changes into.” Look, I get it – the writer has to be clever and make things different from before. But so much of this book so far has been promising change down the line rather than delivering anything meaningful. Even Eddie Brock’s “death” is muddled in some time travel shenanigans that get compounded further in this issue.

There’s not enough action – and I don’t mean fight scenes – for all of this “let’s do a thought experiment” narration to be anything but tedious. I had to reread the first 4 pages of the issue like half a dozen times to actually figure out what their purpose was, and I came away realizing I didn’t gain anything from that.

Forrest: We’re three issues in and it feels like the story is in virtually the same place it was before, preoccupied with establishing things instead of just doing them.

Eminem is supposed to be “get up and go” music.

What Have I Become, My Sweetest Eddie Brock?

Vishal: And in classic Vishal fashion, immediately after complaining pretty aggressively about an issue, I have to talk about the part that I really liked. Forrest, you mentioned that the symbiote was “weird” and that’s exactly the word to describe it. We get some weird scenes of the symbiote trying to pull its face apart, and specifically to my tastes, we get a very long monologue about how it feels incomplete without Eddie, yet is still drawn toward Dylan by the last lingering trace of Eddie’s fatherly instincts. It’s sorrowful and melancholy on top of basically being a further exploration of “Daddy Issues”, so I’m obviously going to be a mark for it. I get the impression you felt differently though, Forrest.

Forrest: I did, unfortunately (look, I want to like this book). I more or less think this entire sequence, while at least more visually interesting than lab and corporate office interiors, is nothing more than the flip side of the same clumsy narrative machnication. There’s First Host and King in Black references piled throughout to give the impression of narrative momentum, but I don’t really see any taking place. Where that would be, Ewing’s part, has been absent since the first issue (we all assumed he might’ve been too busy to actually work on this book when it was announced and I don’t see much evidence to the contrary).

I like the idea that Dylan’s general animosity and emotional unevenness is seeping into the Symbiote in theory, but that’s in a dramatic recession of the character dynamics in the previous run which established Dylan and the Symbiote assuming the mantle of “Venom” pretty willingly, and it’s also work that we as readers have to do, rather than just being the central point of the narrative to-date which is mostly, again, just recollections and table dressing.

My criticisms sound repetitive here because, almost as if by design, the book itself is.

Vishal: Yeah, that’s a very good point – it’s bizarre after Cates’ run ended with “Kids Love Chains” (get it????) that Dylan wants nothing to do with the symbiote and was even told to never bond with it by Eddie. I think we get a better justification for it later in the issue, though, as Dylan does specifically bring up that his feelings changed after Eddie’s death – the symbiote was a connection to his father, and now only serves as a reminder that he’s not coming back (ha ha). It still doesn’t really explain the portrayal in the first issue, but it’s definitely working a lot better for me now.

I said I was leaving art complaints above, but I just need to point out that the way Hitch draws the symbiote trying to emote is so unintentionally funny to me I almost can’t take any of this scene seriously. I crack up laughing every time.

At the end of the day, a melancholy soliloquy on the pains of fatherhood is gonna work for me – that doesn’t mean it’s good, it means it’s a specific type of attack that I’m weak to.

Forrest: Sure, bad dad stories have to work some of the time or Eminem wouldn’t keep rapping them. It’s just not cohering in a way I personally find interesting outside of wanting to know what’s going on inside that dang cocoon yet. #1 weird cocoon fan here.

This Ain’t A Scene It’s A Symbiote Arms Race

Vishal: And then there’s the rest of the issue.

Forrest: Haha, that’s a good way to put it.

Vishal: Unsurprisingly, it’s more exposition. Dylan meets a reporter lady who to my knowledge did not exist before this series?

Forrest: This series is introducing the character, Archer Lyle, after she saved Dylan (seemingly by taking over the Sleeper Symbiote somehow) at the end of the preceding issue. It doesn’t make sense and she’s not important, so proceed.

Vishal: Lyle knew Eddie before he was Venom, back when she was a war correspondent – I don’t exactly see how she would have met Eddie then, considering he was a beat reporter who had to fabricate a story about Spider-Man, but fine. And because she’s a reporter, she obviously has a Pepe Silvia-esque conspiracy board to exposit to the reader just how complicated this “Absent Throne” plot is. But the problem with the Absent Throne is that the writer who is presumably going to be writing about the Eddie stuff is also absent! And then, before any of this can feel meaningful, Lyle betrays Dylan to (surprise!) Alchemax. We’re just doing the hits, huh?

Forrest:

1. You think Eminem has ever played the same song multiple times on a set? Seems like he probably has. Seems it’s totally in-line for this kind of thing. It’s like playing a single and then putting it in the encore too — we get it, I’m leaving the venue early to beat the traffic home.

2. I laughed out loud at the name “Absent Throne.” Did they intentionally choose that name because they plan to empty Eddie’s throne? Is it because they’re hard to find? Did…did they stumble across the perfect, albeit equally narratively confusing, name for their plot by accident? It’s like so stupidly serendipitous that I can almost muster nothing but respect for it. Sure, okay!

Anyways, I was going to dig into the corporate bodies and the story beats here but I just can’t gather any enthusiasm for it. Vishal, I don’t think I liked this comic very much.

Vishal: Yeah, I get it. I enjoyed the symbiote soliloquy (Eminem hire me as your ghost writer) but I can’t really muster up anything beyond that. It’s frustrating, because I want to love this comic – I love both writers involved and I really like Venom (I’ll reserve the love there for you, Forrest) but they’re just not delivering.

Forrest: You are absolutely correct, despite all my disappointment to date, I love Venom … and that’s exactly why we’ll be back next issue to talk about it again! Sheesh, Symbiosis is right.