Venom 2

Same team as last issue. Venom’s greatest enemies! And also, only enemies! Gotta start somewhere, I guess. We pick up just where we left off.

I mean, if you like in the Marvel Universe, realistically, you have probably seen something insane. Aliens or something. But this guy being like, “Oh, ok, I DIDN’T go back in time, cool” is just hilarious. His partner drops down into the city, and Venom’s excited to have 2 guys to kill. A “militia” appears to fight all 3 of them. The first digger zaps one of those guys, sending Venom into a rage, and he dispatches both of them with sudden ease, punching one through the glass of his control room and throwing some of that jagged glass at the other.

The people can’t decide what to do with Venom, but that “the council” will. Always gotta have a council in situations like this. The lady who stood up for our “hero,” Elizabeth, is tasked with taking Eddie somewhere he can freshen up. Her son runs by to let us know she has a son, and then Venom asks what, you know, the deal is.

Insane. Totally realistic compared to a certain, somewhat similar future story I’m thinking of, but insane, nonetheless. Meanwhile, Spider-Man swings around, recapping and once against thinking he can’t let a killer like Venom go free despite having done exactly that in ASM 375. He feels extra responsibility for Venom since he brought home the symbiote, which makes sense, but at the same time, it’s not like he dedicated his life to hunting down The Punisher or Solo. He knows several “murderer with their heart in the right place” guys. Anyway, Spider-Man sneaks into a newspaper office to try to dig up more info on Eddie, and turns up the dad he said he hated last issue. He decides to go pay the guy a visit. Back underground, The Council votes Venom out of their city, with a righteously angry preacher and an obvious psychopath no one seems worried about among the dissenters. Venom leaves, but then hits on the idea of going after that Roland Treece guy that’s always hunting them in the first place to get on their good side.

That went well! Venom is busy breaking into Treece’s place. They disable some laser tripwires, and then Bagley does this gross bit…

The guards who show up literally say they followed the trail of slime. This is the most popular thing to happen to Spider-Man since Ditko was drawing the book. Unbelievable, man. Anyway, the guards open fire on Venom, he is fine, obviously, and then he starts taking them apart. Across town, Spider-Man swoops in Carl Brock’s window and tells him they have to talk. Gotta take the direct approach sometimes. Back at the fight, Venom’s more or less taken down his opponents, but more are rushing in, so he just smashes out a window and swings away. But in doing so, he’s spotted by a van full of equipment, and when he stops to talk to himself in an alleyway…