However, the second arc IS the highlight despite it being the place where all this is revealed because it actually has some really great and powerful character work for Venom that is immediately tossed out the window in time for Absolute Carnage, wherein after a separation (because of the aforementioned abuse, y'know) Venom is reformed because.well, it's time for Absolute Carnage, and what follows is an event that is fun enough, I guess, on a head-empty-no-thoughts level, but basically sweeps all the abuse under the rug, and from there the comic is just a too-fast but still undeveloped buildup to the aforementioned King in Black event, which as we have established, sucks. That, at least, is the only way I can square in my head the first 12 or so issues, which use the relationship between Eddie Brock and his symbiote 'other' as a metaphor for an abusive relationship, replete with lying, gaslighting, emotional abuse and trauma, even going so far as to depict the symbiote as raping someone (though again this is never brought up so I'm going to assume that Cates is a dumbass who doesn't know what he's written here).

I don't usually make these kinds of assertions on writers but I truly think Donny Cates is a dumbass who does not really understand the implications of much of what he has written here. King in Black, in particular, is so lame, I know the standards of event comics are pretty low and Marvel events are particularly uniformly crap but this isn't even making a passing grade by those standards.Īnd what about the relationship dynamics stuff? Well. Dude is the void alright, a void of personality who just shows up to go 'MUAH HA HA HA!' in King in Black before chumping out at the hands of a literal Deus Ex Machina. In the former case, Knull is just such a lame boring character and the book spends an obscene amount of time hyping him up, telling us that HE IS COMING every other panel and constantly going on and on about how he is the darkness and the void and the night and no one can stop him and blah blah blah. It's a shame because aspects of this run, like treating 90s edgelord characters and concepts with a degree of earnestness, or the concept of using Venom to explore relationship dynamics, really do resonate with me, but Venom by Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman falls flat on its face in both aspects. Don't want to be too mean about this comic because two of my friends really love it but I thought this shit was really quite bad, for the most part.

Ryan stegman carnage