Venom Volume 1: Shiver Tpb (Spider-Man)

Rating:
Summary: Uh...Well....
Review: As a fan of Venom, I'm a tad biased, so I don't totally HATE this book... in fact, if a few things were different, I might actually consider it pretty good.

First of all, the art is simply UGLY. It doesn't fit the tone at all. I've heard that Herrarra has done much better work on other titles... here his work looks like Humberto Ramos drew it while riding on a four-wheeler. And while I'm at it, I do NOT like how Venom looks as big as the Hulk. This is why I wasn't 100% satisfied with the art in Paul Jenkin's "The Hunger" storyarc (by Ramos).

And hey, why didn't Marvel collect this in digest form? Haven't they done that with their other Tsunami titles? Ugh. Hell, they could collect all 18 issues of this series that way, and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Oh well. At least Mark Millar is reinventing Venom in his Marvel Knights Spider-Man title. The new costume is pretty cool... I'm out

Rating:
Summary: Oh, Marvel...what have you done?
Review: Venom. The very mention of that word has many different meanings for many different people. But for most of us Spider-man fans, Venom is synonymous with a nightmarish, sadistic monster that nearly ended Spider-man's webslinging career on more than one occasion. But that was the past...unfortunately Marvel's trend of inking and penning less-than-stellar story arcs for its classic characters has hit Venom harder than it ever has.

Many fans thought Venom was ruined when he became the 'Lethal Protector' and received a short run of several limited series...a few of which were quite good, but most of which were rather ridiculous. However, Venom: Shiver certainly takes the cake. The combination of writer Daniel Way and illustrator Francisco Herrera simply do Venom no justice whatsoever.

For starters, the art is horrific. It looks like something out of a cheap Saturday morning cartoon...Venom is apparently a shapeless, amorphous blob that ranges from being about the size of a man to the size of a small elephant. The characters are all blocky and disfigured, with little detail save for the exaggerated bumpy and misshapen faces. Oddly enough, the cover art for each individual part, all included in this TPB, was rather outstanding. Why such great work wasn't applied to the actual comic is beyond me.

As for the story...well, if you've ever seen John Carpenter's 'The Thing'(1982), then you basically don't need to read this comic. To say it was inspired by it would be understating it...to say it blatantly ripped it off would be much more accurate. Everything from the arctic setting, military base with a 'secret project', to the mysterious dog, to the mistrust among the people...everything just seems completely ripped from Carpenter's cult horror classic. And to top it all off, Venom is apparently being chased by the Men in Black...except this lone agent is a robot from another planet. And it now seems that the Venom symbiote must survive by leaping from host to host, draining the host of all of its body fluids and killing it to survive, but also mimicking the host to keep itself disguised(again, a blatant rip off of The Thing)...funny, but that sounds more like a parasite than a symbiote. I guess Eddie Brock's bond with the alien that we've known for the past 2 decades didn't count? Or maybe this just happened over night...who knows what they're trying to do.

Overall this is one of the worst Marvel stories I have read in years. The Clone nonsense with Spider-man turned me off to Marvel back in 1997, and if I wasn't such a fan of the Punisher, Captain America and The Ultimates(Avengers retelling), then this garbage would once again completely turn me off to Marvel Comics. Shame on you Marvel, for ruining another classic character from my era. Bloody, bloody shame!

Rating:
Summary: Oh, Marvel...what have you done?
Review: Venom. The very mention of that word has many different meanings for many different people. But for most of us Spider-man fans, Venom is synonymous with a nightmarish, sadistic monster that nearly ended Spider-man's webslinging career on more than one occasion. But that was the past...unfortunately Marvel's trend of inking and penning less-than-stellar story arcs for its classic characters has hit Venom harder than it ever has.

Many fans thought Venom was ruined when he became the 'Lethal Protector' and received a short run of several limited series...a few of which were quite good, but most of which were rather ridiculous. However, Venom: Shiver certainly takes the cake. The combination of writer Daniel Way and illustrator Francisco Herrera simply do Venom no justice whatsoever.

For starters, the art is horrific. It looks like something out of a cheap Saturday morning cartoon...Venom is apparently a shapeless, amorphous blob that ranges from being about the size of a man to the size of a small elephant. The characters are all blocky and disfigured, with little detail save for the exaggerated bumpy and misshapen faces. Oddly enough, the cover art for each individual part, all included in this TPB, was rather outstanding. Why such great work wasn't applied to the actual comic is beyond me.

As for the story...well, if you've ever seen John Carpenter's 'The Thing'(1982), then you basically don't need to read this comic. To say it was inspired by it would be understating it...to say it blatantly ripped it off would be much more accurate. Everything from the arctic setting, military base with a 'secret project', to the mysterious dog, to the mistrust among the people...everything just seems completely ripped from Carpenter's cult horror classic. And to top it all off, Venom is apparently being chased by the Men in Black...except this lone agent is a robot from another planet. And it now seems that the Venom symbiote must survive by leaping from host to host, draining the host of all of its body fluids and killing it to survive, but also mimicking the host to keep itself disguised(again, a blatant rip off of The Thing)...funny, but that sounds more like a parasite than a symbiote. I guess Eddie Brock's bond with the alien that we've known for the past 2 decades didn't count? Or maybe this just happened over night...who knows what they're trying to do.

Overall this is one of the worst Marvel stories I have read in years. The Clone nonsense with Spider-man turned me off to Marvel back in 1997, and if I wasn't such a fan of the Punisher, Captain America and The Ultimates(Avengers retelling), then this garbage would once again completely turn me off to Marvel Comics. Shame on you Marvel, for ruining another classic character from my era. Bloody, bloody shame!