Meditation on the depiction of the symbiote without a host
If you don't care about my thoughts, these are also just some sick panels to check out!!
So today I was reading separation anxiety (1994-1995), and I was thinking about how different artists depict the symbiote over time.
In separation anxiety, the symbiote looks super humanoid and thinks in actual words:
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this look--I like it better when he's more amorphous. I could also kind of rationalize it as like trying to emulate personhood having been separated from eddie? And then in terms of how it communicates, I wonder if it's meant to be like "actual words" or more like a representation of how it's feeling?
So then we have the hunger in 1996, of which there are aspects I like better but also less lol:
Like ick what even is this, it's straight out of Alien, and not in a good way. Don't even get me started on the teeth.
Anyway.
I also wanted to point out how Eddie talks to it here, but what it's saying back is only implied. I have more thoughts but this is gonna become like,,, an essay. now this, THIS is what I'm talkin about:
I love this panel in general but specifically, this is the ~amorphousness~ that I dig. It's still a little more angular than is my taste but a gal can't have it all.
If we look forward to the comics of the last like 5-ish years it's totalllllly different. These are from venom 159 (2016) and like. yaaaassss. Not human in the slightest, but also like,,, clearly sentient and verbal!
I think I really like this because it shows how far the symbiote's come but doesn't try to make it a person because it's Not, but it has complicated feelings! It loves! Had to include the nativity, ofc
I have more thoughts, especially on like the current run but I'll leave it here for now since this already feels like a lot.