![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Instead of a guy who always does good in spite of being a habitual fuckup, he’s a guy whose habitual fuckups are habitually insurmountable. And Ewing brings it around to the core idea of Venom as Spider-Man’s opposite number. After all, the Venom symbiote was originally found inside a Beyonder device. This is all pretty far from the character’s Lethal Protector days on the streets of San Francisco, but not that far. The Beyonders are beyond matter, beyond physical existence, beyond the body, while the King in Black is nothing but embodiment at the most fundamental level, matter at its most simple and versatile - a vast psychic network of goo that can become anything. And the King in Black, a cosmic role Eddie stepped into shortly before the series began, is actually the opposite of one of Marvel’s most detached and powerful group cosmic muckety mucks, the Beyonders. It turns out Meridus isn’t Eddie’s ultimate incarnation - this floating hand is. Venom, co-written by Al Ewing and Ram V, with this issue drawn by Cafu, has made that a central theme for Eddie, who is on a dark Everything Everywhere All at Once-style time-travel adventure meeting his future selves, realizing he’s already become a few of them, and earning the ire of the implacable Meridus, who claims to be his own ultimate incarnation. In this week’s Venom, Eddie Brock had a conversation with a cosmic being - in the form of a severed floating hand that could answer one question for each of its fingers - about who he is. Venom #18 Image: Al Ewing, Cafu/Marvel Comics (And if you missed the last edition, read this.) It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. What else is happening in the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. and I’m gonna kick my own ass!” followed by the caption “TO BE PUNCHTINUED!” ![]() Or a deep, issue-length conversation about personal growth, doubt, the nature of good and evil, the pitfalls of detachment and attachment - capped off by a character growling, “I’m going back in. Like the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” and a teenager who dresses in no way like a spider to fight crime. The jealous, holier-than-though Meridius is clearly loving the pain he is causing both of the Brocks. Finally, in Venom #5 - written by Al Ewing with gorgeous art by Bryan Hitch - it is revealed the Meridius has been behind all of these traumatizing events, as he uses his immense time-traveling power, ability to mimic other beings, and the terrifying symbiote Bedlam to ruin the Brocks' lives and gain control of Venom for himself.The superhero genre contains many moods, but as I have written extensively before, one of its great joys is the unselfconscious juxtaposition of the sublimely meaningful and the totally ridiculous. Related: Carnage's New Most Disturbing Kill Makes Venom Look Like a PushoverĪll of the hardships that Eddie and Dylan have gone through, especially Dylan witnessing his father's body being destroyed in front of him, have made this run of Venom one of the character's most emotional storylines. But the most recent issue definitively shows that Meridius is very evil, and potentially even worse than Knull. By the end of Venom #1 it is unclear if Meridius is a new friend or a deadly new foe to the reawakened Eddie. His young son Dylan has donned the Venom symbiote, becoming Earth's newest Venom. Eventually Eddie Brock's Venom was able to defeat him with the help of his son Dylan Brock, before becoming the next King in Black himself. The first four issues of the new Al Ewing-penned Venom series have seen Eddie allowing the Life Foundation to destroy his physical body, while his mind and consciousness continue to survive within the symbiote hive-mind. The recent run of Venom follows the line-wide crossover event King in Black, which saw the cosmic symbiote god Knull take over Earth and almost kill a number of major heroes. ![]()
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