All-New Venom #1 Review: Marvel’s New Symbiote Lacks Bite

To best assess the merits of an all-new Venom, it may help to look back on what defined the entirely old Venom and the somewhat newish Venom. The former was the answer to “What if Spider-Man was a violent vigilante in the mode of the antiheroes growing in popularity in the early 1990s?” After bonding with Spider-Man’s used laundry, Eddie Brock began protecting people using lethal force until he learned that was wrong and started to walk on a slightly less crooked but not entirely straight and narrow path toward heroism. This ultimately made him boring enough for Marvel to strip him of the Venom symbiote and pass it off to more morally dubious characters like career criminals Lee Pace and Mac Gargan before more memorably falling to Flash Thompson, facilitating the transformative arc of Peter Parker’s high school bully into a dark reflection on the meaning of heroism in the post-9/11 era, eventually becoming a shining Spaceknight in black-and-white armor.

But then Sony announced they’d be making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy playing Eddie Brock, thus synergy demanded Venom rebond with his best-known host. In 2018, Marvel launched a new Venom #1 that kicked off a saga involving Eddie Brock’s son, Dylan, his symbiote archnemesis, Carnage, and the God of all Symbiotes, Knull. Six years and multiple symbiote-themed Marvel comics events later, that story only wrapped up last week in the final issue of the Venom War event, paving the way for the All-New Venom era to follow.

And what does this All-New Venom era have to offer? From its debut issue, that’s a little unclear. The issue isn’t told from this new Venom’s perspective as this first arc is built around the mystery of the new Venom host’s identity. Instead, readers only see the new Venom, with his black and gleaming gold symbiote suit, in action as he stops an AIM attack on a courthouse where Madame Masque is on trial.

Masque is one of four suspected new Venom hosts who happen to escape the courthouse before Venom arrives, the others being Luke Cage, Rick Jones, and Robbie Robertson. The issue spends most of its time attempting to establish them as credible host possibilities but doesn’t achieve much beyond the introductions. All-New Venom #1 doesn’t lay out the types of clues that would allow readers to participate in unraveling the mystery, outside of Robertson being conveniently interrupted before he can spill some secret he’s carrying, which feels too obvious to be anything but a red herring. Since the suspects are all given the same set of circumstances, they’re all equally suspicious, which leaves the reader without much to think about.

[Related Link: Marvel’s All-New Venom: How Eddie Brock Became Carnage]

The new Venom quells the attack without taking any lives while bantering like he’s one of the Spider-Men, which makes his first appearance somewhat forgettable, painting them as a generic any-superhero. Venom, at its best, is a character concept that puts a gruesome twist on Spider-Man’s “with great power comes great responsibility” mantra by replacing the great responsibility part with “tremendously violent urges” and then adding, “I mean, it’s the alien that wants to eat people, so do I have any responsibility at all?” If Venom isn’t someone struggling to constrain their dark side — or otherwise reveling in indulging it — then what is the point of them?

All-New Venom #1 doesn’t supply an answer. That lack of a strong theme or direction for this new Venom makes for a debut that feels shallow — not a word typically used when describing work by Al Ewing, who managed to plumb new depths out of the man-monster dichotomy of the Hulk for 50+ issues of The Immortal Hulk and continues to do similarly impressive work on Thor in The Immortal Thor, both of which began with knockout first issues that laid out their premises with a narrative force that could not be ignored. Ewing has expressed in press releases about All-New Venom the desire to do something a bit simpler, more straightforward than what he’s already done on Venom — his run up until now involved a cosmic symbiote pantheon, time travel, and the like, which may understandably seem like a lot for the character who, up until now, has been “scary Spider-Man.” However, All-New Venom swings too far in the streamlining direction, offering something that feels like a “back to basics” relaunch but without the basics to fall back on.

When Ewing first took over Venom, Marvel paired him with Bryan Hitch, a supremely talented artist whose style, nonetheless, is synonymous with the height of the “widescreen comics” movement some two decades past. That’s a choice that hardly screams “all-new.” Here, Ewing is instead teamed with Carlos Gómez, an artist well-suited to the more straightforward approach of this new era. It’s not that Gómez necessarily bucks the overbearing, conservative house style that Marvel Comics has adopted over the past few years — readers aren’t going to open All-New Venom and think, “Wow, I haven’t seen this from Marvel recently” — but he elevates that style in a way that few of his peers can match. His layouts are clean and flow with more dynamism, his characters have more energy and expression, and there’s a sharper polish to the whole reading experience (the coloring is mostly serviceable, but gives everything an odd, artificial sheen). It isn’t Gómez’s best work — that remains X-Terminators, where the grindhouse vibes allowed both he and writer Leah Williams to cut loose and have more fun than mainstream superhero comics typically allow — but it does add the visual equivalent of a new-car smell to an otherwise unremarkable midsized sedan of a first issue. 

All-New Venom lacks the strong thesis statement that Ewing typically makes when beginning something new. Venom has always been a character and concept that survives more on looking cool than being about anything, but All-New Venom #1 abandons what substance had existed and finds nothing to replace it. It’s hard to be excited about a first-arc secret identity mystery when the hero hiding that identity doesn’t make much of a first impression. Alas, that is the all-new problem that All-New Venom has bonded itself to. 

Published by Marvel Comics

On December 4, 2024

Written by Al Ewing

Art by Carlos Gómez

Colors by Frank D’Armata

Letters by Clayton Cowles