The lighting on this cover is incomprehensible. This issue opens with what I can only describe as a post-Bendis page:
I mean, it really is.
This page had me thinking Garrett must have appeared in previous Jenkins issues and I’d just forgotten both him and a story about a giant blob, but no, he was introduced in the first issue of this series.
Why does he do this? What is the reasoning for Garrett’s weird eyes? What does that add to the book? Ugh. Well, cut to Eddie Brock seeing on the news that a warrant has been issued for him in relation to the vampire, then yelling out the window “Why don’t you want me anymore!?” Eddie don’t talk no good in this book, which is very out of character, but I guess Jenkins didn’t care. Then we’re at Aunt May’s, where Peter is helping her paint the ceiling by being up there on it, and running a mile a minute recapping his fight with Venom until she points out she doesn’t really want to hear all the violent details. Instead, she recaps Flash’s situation at him like he doesn’t already know it before revealing what she’s done… but before we see it, we cut to Eddie Brock lying on the floor of the bathroom as the symbiote returns.
“They know who we are now?” The guy’s been arrested a zillion times, has been put on trial, how would his identity only now become publicly known? Lazy.
I am so lost. I thought the obviously telegraphed thing last issue would be May moving Flash into her place to recuperate. How did she get him the apartment below Peter? How does Liz think Peter did it? I am pretty sure Peter doesn’t even live here anymore! Uggggh. Eventually, everyone leaves, even the dumb stereotype nurse (“to go shopping for steaks”), leaving Peter and Flash alone, even though Peter and MJ are back together. He thinks in the quiet, he’s realized “This is one of those days that defines you, that you never forget.” Uh, why? So he deserts his friend and goes looking for Venom, who, we see, is actually following him. Classic Venom.
This is one crappy looking Venom, but I mean, of course. Also this “psychic link” crap is driving me crazy, and that poop joke was terrible. I did not miss this creative team. A page of typically unclear action, which somehow ends in Venom falling off a roof and through the skylight of a neighboring building. He coulda just webbed away, but that would have made sense, this is not the comic for that. Spider-Man goes down to investigate and finds only Eddie lying in a pile of debris.
The spider symbol moving like a real spider would be kinda clever in a better composed page. There’s 2 more issues of this. Man. I am not thrilled about buying them…