I mean, probably. This month, Ron Lim is still doing breakdowns, but Sam De La Rosa is doing finishes alone. Really wonder about how and why this book was staffed. On the first couple pages, Carlton Drake reiterates that Venom is dead, and Spider-Man, still fighting goons, refuses to take his word for it.
Obviously, Spider-Man should be worried in this situation, but they’re such a lame bunch that it’s hard to get too worked up as a reader. I remember as a kid, even, thinking these guys looked pretty generic. They managed to make Carnage plenty unique from Venom, and even the still-unnamed Scream is different enough from the other two, largely by being female, but look at the rest of these jokers. Meanwhile, at the park, Treece and his guys have shown up with a truck full of explosives, somehow reasoning that if they can’t find the underground city, they’ll just collapse the park on it or something? They idea that they can’t find the way in doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, really. All the money this guy has and he’s never just sent out search parties? What about the big hole in the ground Venom originally fell through, he never found that? Anyway, some of the people from the city see this and one of them thinks maybe they shoulda kept Venom around. Probably! Speaking of whom, Eddie wakes up on a vivisection table in all his be-mulleted glory… I swear his hair is getting bigger every issue… and makes short work of the 2 guards watching him. Especially since they have sonic guns, and they do nothing to a normal human which he briefly is right now.
We cut to Drake recapping that they hope these symbiotes will be guards for their rich people fallout shelters as he watches the fight, Spidey clonks a bunch of their heads together like The Three Stooges and gets some distance. One of the symbiotes shoots acid at him, which he notes is a nasty new trick. But none of them are used to supervillain-ing, so Spidey’s experience is keeping him ahead of them…
That is legit hilarious. Eddie could use some pants and a barber, but it’s the 90s, it’s too late for him. We cut to the underground people arguing about what to do and getting nowhere, then back to the fight. Spidey empties his webshooters to block the doorway Eddie came from, and then the 2 of them arm themselves with the sonic guns his captors had as the symbiotes begin tearing through the web. They manage to zap 4 of them, but one hangs back and keeps after them. Spidey webs it so they can run, but…
Seems so. Forever is a mighty long time, tho. At least 4 other people have bonded with the symbiote since this issue that I know of. Currently it’s hanging out with Eddie’s retconned-in-out-of-nowhere teenage son. Anyway, the one symbiote catches up to them, and Venom tells Spider-Man to activate the cage he was trapped in last issue, but Spider-Man has no idea what button does what, and produces a beam instead.
Venom will be Venom. Drake has been watching all this via a monitor, and gives the order to blow the whole place up. He walks off thinking they might have to do something about Spider-Man for all the times he’s interfered with their plans. However, he doesn’t appear in another comic until The Arachnis Project, so maybe not. However, looking that up informed me he appeared in Al Ewing’s Venom series in 2022. We may recall how he survived the events of Arachnis Project 6 and implied he had big plans or whatever and never appeared again (As of when I read it). Long hibernation period, but I guess no toy stays in the toybox forever. Anyway, the alarms start going off, and Spider-Man knows The Life Foundation well enough to run. He tells Venom they can sneak out the way he snuck in, but Venom disappears on him.
Alrighty. The stage is set for a showdown with Treece and between our heroes. This month’s Bullpen Bulletins page mentions the Trial of Venom special raised more than $500,000 for UNICEF. That’s pretty cool.