Thunderbolts #1 Cover Features Black Widow’s New Venom Symbiote

Black Widow and her new Venom symbiote get the spotlight on Derrick Chew’s variant cover of Thunderbolts #1. The new volume of Thunderbolts will see The Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) assemble an elite team consisting of the Marvel Universe’s greatest assassins, spies, and black ops agents. Winter Soldier’s Thunderbolts are chasing down the world’s most corrupt villains, and they’ll have a symbiote on their side to help out. Black Widow picked up this new symbiote in the pages of the Venom ongoing series, and now fans can get a closer look at it on Derrick Chew’s variant cover of Thunderbolts #1.

The Thunderbolts cover features Black Widow and her deadly symbiote leaping into action. Natasha Romanoff is covered from head to toe, minus her long red hair sticking out in a ponytail. Her Black Widow emblem is front and center on her chest, similar to the spider symbols on Spider-Man and Venom’s costumes.

Black Widow’s new Venom symbiote revealed

Venom #26 comes from the creative team of Torunn Grønbekk, Julius Ohta, Frank D’Armata, and VC’s Clayton Cowles. It’s the first issue that readers get to fully see Black Widow’s Venom transformation. The issue finds Black Widow on the hunt for a terrorist group called Noname, which is behind attacks at various Alchemax sites. While interrogating a former friend named Keith Walken, we get our first glimpse at the symbiote that has bonded with Black Widow. Another young kid named Bren Waters is the new host to the Toxin symbiote, and he and Venom run into Black Widow inside Venom’s hivemind. Natasha Romanoff’s symbiote takes the shape of tiny black widow spiders, making it seem like they are everywhere at once.

Marvel launches new volume of Thunderbolts

The official description of Thunderbolts reads, “Bucky Barnes, the Revolution, just inherited a mountain of covert intel and he has one objective: justice… like lightning! He’s going after the establishment, the people no one else is willing or able to take down, and he’ll do whatever it takes to win. Teaming with the mysterious Contessa Valentina Allegra De Fontaine, Bucky assembles a team of black-ops heavy hitters to pursue high-profile targets like the Red Skull, Kingpin and even Doctor Doom himself. No one is safe from the Thunderbolts!” 

“Welcome to Operation: Worldstrike! The Hivemind is wildly excited to continue the saga we began with Carmen Carnero in Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty – while also starting anew with a dangerous and unpredictable cast from across the Marvel Universe,” writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing said in a press release. “The call has gone out to all those who call the shadows their home; every spy, assassin, and renegade has a part to play in Bucky Barnes’ all-encompassing and uncompromising hit on the singular, monstrous living symbol of fascism: the Red Skull. Alongside our old friend Geraldo Borges, we’re taking this opportunity to tell a very different kind of team book. This is a whole new era for the Thunderbolts and it starts with a four-part espionage epic, an ever-shifting cast and a single overarching goal: to tear down a century of Nazi evil with justice like lightning.”