It was inevitable. As mentioned in the previous block from this era, Venom’s first series began running even before he and Spider-Man’s rushed truce in ASM 375. But, that alone wouldn’t warrant covering it here. As it happens, all 6 issues of this series include Spider-Man in some capacity. You’d think you’d want Venom to really strike out on his own, but then again, he has absolutely nothing going for him as a character. The creative team here is awfully familiar. It’s David Michelinie and Mark Bagley. Bagley can really crank ‘em out when he needs to. Sam De La Rosa and Al Milgrom ink and Marie Javins colors. All this and a shiny foil cardstock cover. I assumed this was just to jack up the price, but every issue of this series is $2.95. At a time when the average comic was $1.25, making you pay that much for the inevitably overhyped solo debut of Venom was pretty lame. No extra pages or anything, but it does have glossier paper that makes it harder to photograph, so that’s nice. I can assure you, lil teenage me did not care about paper stock. Well, anyway, we find ourselves in sunny San Francisco, with traditional comic book alleyway mugging in progress, until Venom descends on the assailant.
Lethal Protector, indeed. Eddie goes on to explain Venom’s deal to his alien counterpart like he doesn’t know it for the reader’s benefit, which is just pretty lazy exposition, before having the alien turn into regular clothes and start walking down the street… where he’s spotted by a ridiculously eagle-eyed cop and recognized as an escaped fugitive. I could maybe buy a NY cop immediately recognizing Eddie Brock at a distance since he’s caused so much havok there, but in California? Eddie’s gone into a hotel to book a room when the cop and his partner rush in after him.
So that guy’s photo goes in the paper, and soon, Peter Parker finds out Venom is in San Francisco. This gives him a great chance to flashback to their history for even more exposition, including spoiling the end of ASM 375, which wasn’t even on sale yet. Nice! Despite their recently-called truce, Peter immediately thinks he has no choice but to go to CA and capture Venom. What? Why? You literally just let him go! But he’s made his mind up, so he’s on his way. Meanwhile, Eddie is telling the symbiote he grew up in San Francisco, and feels strangely alien here now. The alien suggests Eddie go see his dad, but we learn he hates his dad, so that’s a no. Eddie says the quiet part out loud, wondering what he’ll do with no job and no Spider-Man to bother. It’s why Venom was so boring despite his rapid ascent to fan favorite character, all he wanted to do was kill Spider-Man. He had all the depth and nuance of The Scorpion (And won’t that be ironic later). So now they have to desperately try to turn this one-note evil twin into an actual character. And the next step in that is him seeing some nicely dressed goons beating up homeless people and decides to step in.
Spidey dives into the goons while Venom leaps over to protect the homeless folks. It doesn’t take our man long to subdue the goons, but then Venom has escaped. He laments how he flew all the way out here looking for a needle in a haystack and actually found it, only to oose him again. Meanwhile, in Portland, OR, a retired army general sees Venom on TV, thinks he’ll have revenge for the death of his son at last, and calls his squad leader. As we have seen in the later, terrible Arachnis Project miniseries, this means The Jury are on their way to debuting in this title.
Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, the book he set up at Image after leaving Marvel, lives in NY alleys with homeless people. It seems kind of on-the-nose for Venom, of all characters, to be hitting this beat. Eddie and his new friends are attacked by Diggers, the big machines we also saw in Arachnis Project, who work for this Treece guy, searching the tunnels for the homeless folks. Eddie lets one of them catch him, then becomes Venom and gets to wrecking the machines.
The machine punches him so hard they both fall through the floor, onto a cobblestone street. The goon is focused on killing Venom, but Venom tells him to look around…
Yes, I’m sure that’s what’s happened. Totally.