Venom #24 Review

Venom #24 Review

Written by Cullen Bunn

Pencils by Thony Silas

Inks by Nelson Decastro

Colours by Chris Sotomayor

Story

Flash has lost control of the symbiote and it's hungry. After eating a cultist, Flash reasserts control and flees Hellstrom into the woods where he promptly throw up. Flash hunts down Katy Kiernan and asks her for help to get the demon out of him. Luckily, Katy knows a former priest that could help. Turns out that the demon wants out of Flash as much as Flash wants it gone. Problem is that the symbiote isn't letting it go. Flash heads to the Bronx zoo where he disguises himself as a robed monk in Hellstrom's party and goes on the offensive. He is then introduced to The Monsters Of Evil – a huge bull with a scorpion tail, a three-headed sphinx beast, a fire breating King Kong-esque beast, a lizard beast, and a giant pygmy with little pygmies jumping out of his head.

Review

A winged, horned, hungry, toothy symbiote – what could go wrong? Well, not a lot really. In my opinion, there should have been more than three-and-a-half pages of Venom being more than his badass former self, as opposed to the lobotomised symbiote we have been getting recently. That said, though, this title isn't about the symbiote; it's about Flash and his struggles with his past, his daddy issues, and his alcoholism, and, in that respect, it succeeds. However, there wasn't much of the Flash's inner voice in this issue than we have become used to.

The exorcism scene was fun, and a nice break from the heavy occult themes that the current story is exploring and the idea of the demon wanting to leave Flash as much as Flash wants him gone is interesting to me. My only complaint with the scene, though, is the art. On the whole it's fantastic, but I'm not too keen on the out of proportion-ness when the head goes all toothy and attacks Reggie the former priest.

My complaints about the art are quickly evaporated in the next section of the issue when Agent Venom hunts down Hellstrom at the zoo. The reveal of the Flash being one of the monks really impressed me and I loved the panel where Flash has Hellstrom and two monks subdued with his tendrils and is walking forward with his guns by his sides. It reminds me of a movie but I can't think of which one right now.

Now my major issue with this...um...issue: The Monsters themselves. Don't get me wrong, I like the way they were drawn and, indeed, the concept of them as a whole, but I didn't like the way they were introduced. It was a bit cheesey. When I turned the page and saw them with the huge speech bubble, and the red writing that says “...THE MONSTERS OF EVIL!” reminded me of a Judge Dredd comic from the 80s that I read when I had swine flu a couple years ago. In that story there was a scene with two criminals in a building discussing their plans, when they suddenly hear a crashing from outside. One says to the other “Oh no! It can't be! It's...” move to the next panel, Dredd's standing in the doorway, hands on his hips: “JUDGE DREDD!!!”.

Despite the cheesiness, I enjoyed this issue, and this story arc as a whole. I loved the Circle of Four arc from earlier this year, and the ties to that story are really promising. I've enjoyed everything else that Bunn has written that I've read, so I'm really hoping he won't let me down.