Donny Cates' Venom

How influential do you think Donny Cates' run on Venom will be in the long term?

I think it's done a great job at establishing the "Venom-Verse", in giving Venom and the Symbiotes themselves their own place in Marvel, as opposed to just being part of the Spider-Man mythos. He really did a great job at expanding on the Symbiote lore, so they actually fit in the modern landscape as opposed to being a '90s holdover. Knull was such a great villain and entity, and natural addition, that despite being just recently introduced he feels like he's always been there.

As someone who was never that big on Venom as a Spider-Man villain (I prefer many of the more classic villains), I think his worldbuilding was essential to making him his own. I barely consider Venom a Spider-Man property as much as he is an independent entity, similar to Deadpool's relationship with the X-Men. Legally speaking, of course, he'll always be tied to Spider-Man, but in a matter of storytelling he's come to his own. It helps that he's better tied Venom into the Cosmic Marvel scape, with both Asgard and the Silver Surfer, and Absolute Carnage was a Marvel-wide event rather than a Spider-crossover.

So this brings me back to the main question, do you think this will be highly influential going forward? I feel this mark will be very important in the comics landscape, but I also wonder how much it'll impact Marvel Media outside of it. It's hard to tell because it's all new, but I feel Donny Cates' run will be an important source to adapt going forward for future animated series and video games, and if Venom were ever introduced to the MCU rather than being stuck in Sony's Marvel-Verse, I think this would be the basis to adapt.

What do you think?

Very important. Cates has created Knull, which I imagine will be very influential on all different interpretations of the symbiotes (films/games/etc)

It seems to be doing the difficult trick of splitting the Venom mythos from Spider-Man. That's pretty damn important going forward.

I hope very influential. First time I’ve ever enjoyed a Venom series.