Free Comic Friday: Spider-Man/Venom (2022)

Free Comic Book Day 2022: Spider-Man/Venom #1
“Lost in the Mail”
Writer: Zeb Wells
Artist: John Romita Jr.
Inker: Scott Hanna
Colorist: Marco Menyz
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Assistant Editors: Lindsey Cohick & Kaeden McGahey
Editor: Nick Lowe

“Seven Seals”
Writers: Ram V & Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Raffaele
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer & Production: VC's Clayton Cowles
Associate Editor: Tom Groneman
Editor: Devin Lewis

Cover: Romita, Hanna & Menyz
Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
Released: May 7, 2022

Somehow, there's another Venom movie in theaters.

OK, that's a bit unfair. When you've got an actor the stature of Tom Hardy who's invested in the character and franchise and it's making money, you're going to have sequels, as many as the actor will do, and probably more after that as long as the money keeps following. And Hardy is great as both Eddie Brock and his symbiotic other. I just wish the rest of the film around his performance(s) matched that level of quality.

I am curious about “Venom: The Last Dance,” even though I should have learned my lesson from the first two. But like the Transformers and Expendables before it, I'm likely to give Venom another chance.

Of course, it's more of a risk if I'm actually buying a ticket versus waiting for it to stream or arrive at the library. There's not nearly so much at stake when, say, picking up an issue on Free Comic Book Day.

Boom – segued.

This year, Spider-Man shared one of Marvel's entries with the rebooted Ultimate Universe, but for at least four years prior, Venom was drooling alongside him. This one's from 2022, and I'm sure I had a good reason for picking it. Unfortunately I did it so long ago that I don't remember what it was. But that still fits as I also didn't remember I had read this one around the time I first got it.

Both tales set up storylines in their respective ongoing series. Up first is Spidey in a brief prelude to “Dark Web,” the crossover with the X-titles that served as more of a sequel to the '80s Inferno story than the 2021 X-Men limited series actually called “Inferno.”

We open on a man named Elroy Huxley as he's attacked by a demonic mailbox. In yet another indictment of my memory, I remembered a malicious mailbox appearing in “Fantastic Four” #322, the only Inferno-branded issue I read when they were actually coming out. But a quick look on Marvel Unlimited showed me the Human Torch and not Graviton, as I had thought, was the one who dispatched the pestilent postal repository.

Elroy is rescued from the previously inanimate object by Spider-Man, who stabs it through the head with a parking meter, much to the dismay of a passing letter carrier. It's reminiscent of his beatdown of a drug-addled gorilla in the 2023 Free Comic Book Day issue, although I'd say he's more justified in this one. As Spidey escapes from the furious federal employee, dialogue from a nearby alley reveals the menaces behind the encounter: Chasm, aka Ben Reilly, aka the Scarlet Spider and sometimes Spider-Man, and the Goblyn Queen, aka Madelyne Pryor.

I can't remember if I knew they were the twin threats of Dark Web before reading this, but I do remember seeing them together made me think what an inspired and overdue combination it was to bring together the clones of Spider-Man and Jean Grey who had been discarded multiple times both by readers and in story. The crossover itself had its moments, particularly the way it wrapped up, righting a wrong so long overdue it had become a Marvel punchline. But I was already following the X-titles regularly as part of the whole Krakoa saga and reading Wells' Spidey work on Unlimited, so it's hard to say if this entry had much impact on my interest in the story. Still, Romita seems to have been born to draw possessed mailboxes.

The Venom portion of the proceedings opens with Eddie Brock walking naked through a field of black, one eye socket bloody and empty. A voice tells Eddie he walks the path of the magician, which sounds a little more resonant since I'm writing this after watching episode 7 of “Agatha All Along.” Eddie walks toward a big metal ring with flames in the center, like something straight out of Nidavellir and tells the voice he needs to know about his son.

Weeks into the future, we see Eddie's son Dylan on a rooftop, where he's met by Normie Osborn, grandson of the Greenest of Goblins. I remember they bonded in the run-up to, or perhaps during, “King in Black.” Wearing his dad's symbiote, Dylan Venoms out and hands Normie a jar with his own symbiote, saying he needs a friend.

They jump off the building in a subsequent splash page, and the voice – which seems to be coming from a disembodied Venom hand with flaming fingers – ask Eddie how far he's willing to go to reach his son and his other. Over a double-page spread of a lot of symbiotes and other characters of whom I recognize very few, Eddie replies, “to the end of the world.”

It's not bad. It does what it needs to do, showing the status quo of Eddie and Dylan, the latter of whom seems to have aged forward at a rate akin to Sammy and Eric on “Days of Our Lives” back in the day** in the wake of “King in Black.” I know Eddie became king of the symbiotes at the end of that story and went off into space, but hadn't felt much of a need to follow up on that, even with Ewing sharing writing duties. Perhaps residual curiosity about the 2023 Free Comic Book Day issue featuring the nightmare fuel that was Flexo and the introduction of so many symbiotes I know little or nothing about on the latest season of Marvel Snap will finally push me to revisit Venom.

The issue also includes an excerpt from an issue of “All-Out Avengers” by Derek Landy, Greg Land, Frank D'Armata and VC's Cory Petit. That series' premise – dropping the reader into the middle of an action-packed story along with the Avengers themselves – spoke to my childhood love of picking up random issues at bookstores or flea markets and diving in. This preview reminds me of how cool that seemed and that I need to go back and read its sequel limited series, “Avengers Beyond,” even if the in-story explanation of what was happening didn't interest me as much as the original concept.

* - About, if nothing else, how much I'm likely to enjoy it

** - If you know, you know.