I’d rather Bunn not touch too much and just write the tie in. Let Cates do his thing.
I’d rather Bunn not touch too much and just write the tie in. Let Cates do his thing.
Wow! Cates is crafting a wonderful story. I’ve never cared much for Venom outside of Spider-Man, but I’m all in on this series. His back story was heart breaking!
AKA FlashFreak
Favorite Characters:
DC: The Flash (Jay & Wally), Starman- Jack Knight, Stargirl, & Shazam!.
MARVEL: Daredevil, Spider-Man (Peter Parker), & Doctor Strange.
Current Pulls: Not a thing!
I feel bad for Dylan. Eddie is cool and all, but he's so pathetic.
Venom/Brock has always been a favorite of mine and I'm glad to see his current series being received so well. I definitely have some catching up to do.
We are the Dora Milaje. We are the daughters of the 18 tribes of Wakanda. We are the teeth of the Panther God. Out of 10,000 years of sweat and bloodshed and battle are we born. We are the women of this ancient land. Deadliest of the species. And our time has come!
So, my usual question: How much background reading does a Venom virgin need to do, in order to follow the story and grock the characters in the Cates run?
Honestly, if you know the basics of his origins, Carnage and bits and pieces of characters like Agent Venom, you're good to go. If you have the money, you can check out the Spider-Man vs Venom omnibus and the two Venomomnibus collections. If you want more good stuff, check out the two Rick Remender volumes and the Cullen Bunn volumes. But by and large, if you have a basic understanding of his history, you can jump into the series with little effort. If there is any Venom story I would recommend, it would be the Lethal Protector miniseries (the 1993 story, not the newer story with Kraven), as it does give some good background info about Eddie's life and is quite relevant to what's currently going on in the Cates run.
"I should describe my known nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and disassociated groups; a) love of the strange and the fantastic, b) love of abstract truth and scientific logic, c) love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these strains will probably account for my...odd tastes, and eccentricities."
Thanks for the responses, comrades. Honestly, I know almost nothing beyond the basic origins (Spidey's alien suit turns out to be a scary monster, blah blah). But I just succumbed to the hype and have Cates's first TPB sitting right here, checked out from the library. So I guess I'll plunge in and it sounds like I'll be okay. Your recommended reading material is available at the library, so I'll give that a look at some point, probably.
The first TPB of Venom by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman is awesome.
Epic storyline that looks to me to not contratict nothing of the continuity of the symbiote but add´s quite much more nuances going to the ancient past of the Marvel Universe.
Interesting,because Venom stories have been quite different,story wise speaking.
Art wise the illustrations by Ryan Stegman are great as well.
Well, finished the first trade last night, and it was... okay. Stegman's art is stunning, of course, but I found Cates's script competently pedestrian. More tenth-hand H.P. Lovecraft, which has been a commonplace trope in comics for a long time now, mixed with the Hulk, and all presented in a very monotonously humorless way. (Now that I think about it, Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk is in the middle of a story that strikes me as extremely similar, but executed with more tonal variety and psychological depth.)
I enjoyed it enough that I didn't feel my time was wasted (mostly thanks to Stegman), but I don't think I'll start picking up the monthlies. That's a pretty high bar, given how expensive a hobby this is. I'd look out for the next TPB in the library. I'd be happy to be persuaded otherwise and give it a pull-list trial run, though, if somebody were to tell me the subsequent issues take a different direction and have something interesting-sounding going on.
"I should describe my known nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and disassociated groups; a) love of the strange and the fantastic, b) love of abstract truth and scientific logic, c) love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these strains will probably account for my...odd tastes, and eccentricities."