Allegiances and emotions deepen as Eddie and Dylan explore the new world they’ve found themselves in while Codex makes a discovery about the nature of the beast in Venom #28 by Donny Cates, Juan Gedeon, Jesus Aburtov, and VC’s Clayton Cowles.
Content Warning: This article contains discussions of self-harm and suicide.
Justin Partridge: Donny Cates has less than five moves. And somehow he uses them all in Venom #28. We got a new boatload of Venomized Marvel staples. We got a brand new branching AU thanks to his “What If” riffing on the canon of Venom. And we have not one, but TWO “characters that are one thing, but are secretly someone else”! *Lindsay Ellis Voice* Thanks! I HATE it!
Forrest Hollingsworth: Hey folks! We’re back with another dose of your doctor recommended goop, grime, and gunk for this edition of the Goop Troupe. I’m pleased to join Justin in saying that if you have worried in the past that this comic about an emo jock and the alien space suit that sucks him off was too serious for the past year and change, it just got a lot stupider! That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to talk about though, cause, oh boy. Let’s dig in!
“Tell. Me. Everything.”
JP: So, we open #28 roughly a few minutes after we left #27. Virus has been captured and cannibalized by the New Codex Order of the land and under the streets of the city, Eddie Brock comes face to face with a name from his past; Annie Weying.
But more than that, this new Agent Venom leads a whole SQUAD of Venoms! Who are, y’all guessed it, random other Spider-adjacent characters who have made a life for themselves after the death of THEIR EDDIEEEE. did I miss anything, Forrest? I am so, very tired.
FH: We get a bit more of Codex’s view of the world in #28’s intro, as well as some confirmation of some things you might’ve assumed after the previous issue here. Namely, that Codex, our Knull-adjacent edge lord with TWO chain wallets is the de facto ruler of this alternate universe and the lord of the Symbiote hive, and that pretty much everyone, including Otto Octavius (here as Dr. Ock and not Superior Spider-Man) is under his control either voluntarily or not. The most important development, of course, is that Codex has a seemingly very vested interest in knowing who Virus is, and what he knows about Eddie and Dylan Brock.
JP: And again, this kinda seems like a whole song and dance Cates has done before, right? While the idea of a whole Earth that has become Venomized has some strong tendril legs, #28 just reads like more goopy fanfic, bending the whole of the 616 around Cates’ favorite characters.
We’ve also seen this whole “Eddie enters a new space where others have a better understanding of the “rules” and has to deal with it” before. Like…a FEW times now with little to no variations to the themes and moves. What say you, Forrest?
FH: I feel the whole establishment of this alternate universe is like Cliff Notes worldbuilding. Meaning, that nothing is really earned or actually embedded in the story, so much as the rules are established in a quick, successive and distanced manner that undermines their viability for narrative purposes.
JP: NO TOTALLY. We slapped at it before in the previous column, but #28 especially feels and reads like he started with the idea of “Venom Future” and then worked backward from there. The “Big Reveal” about Codex speaks to this intention too but Cates has WILDLY overestimated just how much we would and do care about this future and just how Venomy everything has gotten. And making Eddie like the “cornerstone” of this reality too also WILDLY overestimates REALLY how important Eddie is overall to the tapestry of the 616.
Like I know Donny loves him, but I feel like it’s a BIT of stretch to ask us to run with the concept of a world that just FELL to pieces after Eddie Brock followed through with his grim intentions for suicide in a church all those years ago.
FH: I would counter that Venom: The End establishes Eddie as perhaps the single most important character in The 616 but that’s a discussion for another time!
“This is because of you”
JP: So, like I said above, #28 reveals that this future was built on the back of THIS WORLD’s Eddie dying, having taken his life like he intended to back before the introduction of the Symbiote. Cates then doubled down, giving ANNIE Eddie’s origins and exploits as this world’s Venom.
It’s…a lot. Especially to dump on the reader in the middle of an issue, despite the art team doing their damndest to make it shine, but it just…doesn’t connect in the way that Cates intends it to. Either due to the aforementioned overestimation of us really caring or the speed in which the exposition is delivered. I trust you were also NOT super into this, Forrest?
FH: I have major, major concerns about the info dump and its implications here.
First of all, I would like to say that as someone who struggles with sucidial ideation frequently, I vehemently dislike the use of Eddie Brock’s attempted (and actual, in this universe) suicide for narrative shock value. In a world and time where people are struggling with mental health, despair, and a need for validation and compassion more than ever, I am opposed to the use of suicide or self harm in narratives without appropriate weight and care – and this idea that Annie assumed the Venom role because Eddie actually committed suicide in this world misses the mark completey. I challenge Donny Cates to recognize that he is in control of all of the variables here, and that he simply could’ve written Eddie dying upon contact with the Symbiote, or any other permutation of that idea, instead. There’s an inkling of romanticism in Annie becoming a hero in the wake of Eddie’s death, but it is not explored effectively or given proper import and I cannot in good conscience abide by that. There’s probably a more effective time and place to discuss this than this column, but I really needed to state that first, and I welcome a more significant and earnest conversation about those things whenever.
Second, much as in the first third of the book, none of this is conveyed in an interesting way! As we discussed last column, the idea of a kind of transuniversal recursion can be interesting: there’s always a Knull, there’s always a Venom, a Carnage, even a Deadpool etc. but simply subverting their roles in the other universe — like making Cletus a good guy — is minimal effort, the likes of which we’ll see with a THIRD Reed Richards later in the same issue.
Furthermore, the way that these roles quickly dissolve into a visually incomprehensible no-stakes fight aping the worst of Spider- and Venom-verse is not particularly effective. What’s at stake? What’s to gain or lose? Annie and Eddie’s relationship, I suppose? What’s even happening here?
JP: ABSOLUTELY. There is little to no emotional bedrock to any of this. And granted I’m not the most “well read” of Venom people, but I struggle to think that even the most hardcore Venom fans would really care about this stuff either. Beyond like the base level of “Oh, EVERYONE is a venom now, okay.”
But like you said, when you’ve had THREE Reeds in under two years and a whole goop-load of other characters popping back up and out of the title, it’s hard to find the novelty of seeing this happen AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. The only difference here being it’s in the future now, which…eh.
But specifically for you, Forrest, why do think this issue fails in these feints?
FH: Eddie knows this isn’t his Annie, emotional baggage aside, the reinvention of her character as the primary Venom here serves in a groan-inducing capacity. Annie and Eddie’s relationship such as it is before this issue was already defined by male tragedy, compounded here by Eddie’s suicide, it seems too much. Annie is forced to exist in the shadow of Eddie even in an alternate reality? She’s the mother of Symbiote, a former (and now current) host, and a character in her own right but all of her motivations, where every other character is subverted, is still defined by Eddie? It feels narratively bereft of meaning, resonance, weight.
While the introspective nature of Cates approach to toxic masculinity and the suppression of emotional expression and intimacy between Eddie and Venom throughout this run is interesting, I personally feel that Annie’s inclusion serves to weaken her character even more.
There’s, for example, a very real possibility that these alternate universe characters are being introduced so they can “save” Eddie and Dylan in King in Black. A narrative beat which I maintain, can be interesting, but I’m not sure that I trust the creative team here to not set up a death for this Annie too in order to maintain the status quo for Eddie’s misery and spiraling. Cates isn’t particularly good at writing female characters, at best, and I think actively avoids it at worst – I don’t think there’s a lot of reason to believe this reintroduction will stick, and the mere possibility of a fridging of that magnitude being present is enough to, I think justifiably, turn off a lot of readers. Cool muscles, though! Look at that megaton level thigh!
JP: No, I absolutely agree. And listen. I am ALL FOR a slime-lady. Doubly so it said slime-lady has some sort of real connection with the lead cast, which she SHOULD very much have with Eddie and Dylan. But there is just…nothing really there.
And honestly, I hadn’t even thought about how they might factor into King in Black but now that you say that, I totally see it. Which is SUPER cheap and a very nakedly systemic way to use this character that I’m not crazy about.
“Swear your allegiance to me”
JP: But moving on from Annie, Cates brings back ANOTHER face from Spider’s past, Mac Gargan.
Which, again, COOL, I guess.
This kinda stuff speaks to the neat “toy box” aspects of monthly comics. That any one creative can and usually do just dig their hands into this deep bucket of character and history and pull up a random assortment of elements and then scatter them throughout their narrative. I will always love that sort of stuff about monthly comics.
But at the same time, it’s just…more of the same, right? Yet another character we might not have expected has popped up to play a significant role into this “grand game” that seems to only make sense to Donny and Donny alone. What did you think about this stuff, Forrest? Are we being too mean?
FH: So! Two big reveals back-to-back! First, Virus is Mac Gargan, a Symbiote-hating former host who is now re-Symbioted (proper nouns are fun!). Quick info dump on Gargan who most fans probably know as the Spider-Man villain Scorpion: Mac is, canonically, the fourth Venom host.
Re-introduced as Venom in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, Gargan primarily used the Symbiote to become the “A-list” villain he always felt he was destined to be, while unwittingly being used as a pawn in Norman Osborn’s protracted psychological war with Peter Parker, as one does. Gargan lost the goop relatively quickly, and the most interesting development for the character Symbiote-wise since then has been his appearance in Absolute Carnage where Dark Carnage \m/ did some certifiably uncool things to Gargan’s spleen, and Gargan lost control of his legs.
It’s a good pick, in relation to some other mid-tier villains we’ve had, and I find the reveal to be probably the single redeeming bit from an otherwise very middling and uninspired issue. I hope we get more of him in the primary storyline, or in King in Black, as this arc feels entirely auxiliary.
JP: Well I’m glad SOMEONE here was into it. I think armed with that sort of context, it’s a more powerful reveal for sure.
Less good however is the reveal of the identity of Codex. I’ll give y’all three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
Of course DYLAN is revealed to be the future despot Codex which gets a big *Foghorn Noise* from me. Like…I said it in the last column, it’s VERY funny and endearing that Cates is doing The Most to try and deeply establish all his OOCs into the fabric of the title. But at the same time, how much more can we be expected to take before calling this for what it is. Pretty freaking self-indulgent. What about you, Forrest?
FH: Two things re: Codex. One is that if you didn’t guess this reveal after the previous issue, I think you probably had a better idea in mind. Two is that “Get back on your knees and swear your allegiance to me” is an excessively horny line even by Venom standards. I’m pro horny – given that this run of the series is following a book where Eddie and Venom literally made eachother pregnant. More of that! More horny…more goo…more form fitting suits! Oh, the ushers are here to show me the way out.
JP: They can’t take us ALL! There are DOZENS OF US! DOOOOZENNNSSSS!
Marvelous Musings
- The fight in the middle of the issue is essentially everything that happened in Venomverse, so if you missed that you’re caught up now!
- There’s currently three Reed Richards in play: Main universe Reed, The Maker, and this new kooky AU Reed. One is already one too many!
- How come it’s always a scorpion with a garish tail? Let’s get some handsy Amblypygi up in here.
- Marvel’s current Fortnite crossover establishes Venom’s canonicity in the Fortnite universe. Thus, Venom’s inclusion of Sleeper, a child of Venom created by former writer Mike Costa, establishes the canonicity of Eddie and Venom’s pregnancy in Fortnite. More like ESRB rated “M” for MPREG
- I wanna read THIS fucking comic.
Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.
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.
