The Venom movie did a better job with Eddie Brock than Donny Cates.
I think he's a threat. A menace. A no-good layabout. He is a shallow two-dimensional flesh-meat who has no valid motivation, no reason to be Spider-Man's enemy, hit paydirt in an era of bad comics, has barely any bop stories (I can't think of one), is carried by iconography, and was easily replaced by other hosts with little issue. Even Cates' attempts to make him a real character boiled down to making him a generic handsome troubled beefcake, his real history and character brushed over so he can shake hands with Steve, be pitied by Tony, be begrudging pals with Peter, be lusted over by Carol, and be an equally generic protective dad to Gohan-- I mean, Kevin. Because Cates grew up on bad Venom content, all style, no substance. So it was easy to basically create a new character wearing that suit. Society has moved past Eddie Brock. He peaked in the Spectacular cartoon (his only good media adaptation), Anti-Venom was good, and Mike Costa was fine, too. Otherwise he's a flop.
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
Cates' Brock has grown on me but I'm the type who prefers Venom trying to kill Spider-Man so I'm probably too biased to be able to properly appreciate his current characterization.
"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
I've been a huge fan of Cates' Venom run but I will say KiB wasn't exactly the greatest ending. Too cliche feeling. Although at least it was better than Empyre, in terms of Marvel events.
"Anyone can win a fight when the odds are easy! It's when the going's tough - when there seems to be no chance - that's when it counts!" - Spider-Man
I liked Empyre more. At least Empyre had great tie-ins (the X-Men ones, better than the main event). KiB though just uglies up everything (ruining Ewing's SWORD which had such a great first couple of issues) and didn't do anything of interest and Empyre didn't last as long as this one did.
Of course Empyre isn't as good as X OF SWORDS but then what is?
"Anyone can win a fight when the odds are easy! It's when the going's tough - when there seems to be no chance - that's when it counts!" - Spider-Man
The only Empyre tie ins I read where the X-Men ones in the main series. Otherwise, I felt Empyre was just okay.
It really only felt like it was setting up Guardians of the Galaxy and to a lesser extent, King in Black.
Otherwise, King in Black is more of a spectacle. It's the conclusion to 3 years worth of comics.
As Sal from Comicpop said, it's like playing with toys and you use all the marvel characters to face the one character who isn't Marvel because he is the biggest and baddest of them all.
It also helps I've read more tie ins to it, but that's mostly because the comics I've been reading tied into it a lot.
I do agree, Sword didn't need that many issues dedicated to KiB, although Ewing still kills it in my opinion.
You heard wrong. X of Swords crushes it, every issue adds something and contributes to the overall story. It just tells a crossover in a different style, you have deep emotional drama, some bits of flat out hilarious comedy (it's the most hilarious crossover I've read), and then crazy insane feats of action (including a Storm moment for the Ages).
And of course it's all centered around Apocalypse, who's the protagonist of the entire event.
As a general principle, crossovers work best when the villain is the protagonist -- Doctor Doom (Secret Wars'84, Secret Wars 2015), Thanos (The Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity) -- and while Apocalypse isn't really a villain in the crossover, he's still morally ambiguous and tragic and moody through.
X of Swords was great.
It did feel a bit too long however, I could have done with it being a tiny bit shorter.
As it stands, it's my favourite event since Secret Empire.
It still isn't as good as Secret Wars however