#venom analysis

[mushroomsandteeth]

One criticism of the Costa run that I find head scratching is the complaint that the "Land Before Crime" arc was too silly for Venom.

But the thing about the Costa run is that the entire series was a love letter to the 90s Venom, and that includes fun, over the top, cheesy storylines. When you think about it how is "Venom thinks he is sent back in time only to find a secret society of homeless people living in a pre industrial revolution city under San Francisco" or "Venom becomes a secret agent for the FBI to fight terrorist with a bomb implanted in his chest" any less goofy than "Venom fights dinosaurs in a sewer that were created by an establish Spider-man villain"?

A lot of people have this strange notion that Venom is nothing but pure dark, edgy storytelling. He really isn't. Yes he was dark and scary when he was a villain but that was because, well, he was a villain. And even then he was goofy. He would sing to himself, said overly dramatic threats and talk in a way that sounds like a frat boy mixed with an English professor. Maybe its because of his looks, maybe it is because they only know him Spider-man 3 or the tv series.

Venom is a silly, silly character. Dinosaurs are not the strangest thing to happen to him.

[mushroomsandteeth]

This first page says so much about this run with just one quote and one sentence after it.

I don't think it's any coincidence that Costa decided to quote Heart of Darkness for this run right at the beginning. Heart of Darkness is a book about the underlying evil of men that is clouded by civilization and a false sense of righteousness. And this is a perfect description of Venom, in particular Eddie. Eddie fell from society and gave into an inner evil when he was presented the chance.

That's one of the reasons I always hate the "the symbiote made him evil" interpretation some stories try to do. The symbiote only gave Eddie the chance to free himself from the shell of society. He was always the morally grey man we have come to love.

Venom is the story two people coming together to separate themselves from society to do great evil under a false sense of righteousness and only later reform themselves into a morally grey character who tries to do good.

This quote in particular is an interesting one because it is asks us to see that Eddie upon seeing his true self revealed to him through the Symbiote, was able to choose to accept this inner darkness and become Venom alongside it. Eddie is loyal to the nightmare of his choice and his nightmare is Venom.

[mushroomsandteeth]

I might lose followers for this one but I'm gonna say it anyway.

Costa rushed way too fast into Eddie and Symby being in love with each other again.

I mean the last time we had scene Eddie before this run was Carnage 2016. In it he was much more symbiote positive again but he still didn't think kindly of his days as Venom. But when we get to Costa he suddenly is super in love with the Symbiote again.

Don't get me wrong I adore their relationship (I mean look at my blog, its my jam) but this was just a ooc change for Eddie. But I don't entirely blame Costa. There most likely was a mandate that said Eddie had to get back with the symbiote immediately for the movie so Costa had to rush their reunion (its my theory too for why Carnage 2016 had such a fucked ending).

Honestly most of my complaints for the Costa run come from Marvel meddling with it. Too many events and rushed story points because of mandates. Honestly Costa had the opposite problem of Cates who has too much freedom to do what he wants.

[mushroomsandteeth]

So few days ago I mentioned that I wanted a re-read through all of Costa and Cates to do an analysis of it and I'm hitting a roadblock and that roadblock is named Lee Price.

Like here's the thing, I don't actually hate him I just find him incredibly boring to read. And he makes a good villain for the Symbiote.

But I think that's why everybody hates him is because they don't understand that he was supposed to be a villain for the Symbiote. I think I've talked about this once before too and I want to skip past this part in the Costa run so that I can get to the juicy bits and keep moving forward. So let's just go over it quickly.

Until this run the Symbiotes had very much been treated like an object for an incredibly long amount of time, basically a little under 5 years. It has been a very long time since it was able to speak or be a character. Bendis tried to make it a character in Space Knight again but Space Knight was such a weird thing and I think so many people skipped it because of it.

Lee is also real big reversal because for the longest time it has been framed that by writers that the Symbiote was the morally dubious one in the whole Venom arrangement (I always will argue Eddie was the true "evil" push for Venom but that's another talk.)

I think because of that audiences weren't ready for Lee. The whole arc with him being kind of long and very crime underworld the slow build didn't help either.

I feel like Lee as a character really was kind of fumbled in every single appearance he ever had. And now that he's dead were never going to get the chance to fix that so in the long run I think he's going to be forgotten in the history of Venom. Right up there with the Mace, Beck and Pyre.