My Wife: Doesn't Understand That Never Letting Go Of High School Is Peter Parker's Most Defining Character Trait

Venom # 1
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Tony Moore, Danny Miki & John Rauch
Published by Marvel Comics 

Now that I've got this new thing where my husband picks the comic he'd like me to read, I've started to get curious as to his motives. Did he pick this one because he loves it? Because he hates it? Is it because there's something wildly sexist he wants me to pick up on?  I'm always a little nervous about what his expectations might be.

This time around, I've been given Venom. I have very little knowledge about Venom--I associate him with Spider-man, but not in a specific way. I just register the name and appearance as having something to do with Spider-man. So thank goodness for the first page of "Classified" information! It caught me up on our main characters. (Well, I thought it did, but we'll get into that later.) But before we jump into the story, I have to comment on something. In the "notes" section about Eugene "Flash" Thompson it says,"High school bully turned war hero, Flash Thompson has always been brave. As a teenager...." I had to laugh at that. Those are the two hallmarks of this guy's entire life - High school bully and war hero? Isn't that a little simplistic? (Unless it's a joke, in which case it's very funny.) I wish it were that easy to sum us all up. I also think I never want to meet someone who still defines themselves as an adult by something they might have done or been when they were in high school, because--wow, you have to be the most boring person on the planet if you're still thinking about high school. Also, "what Spider-Man would have done" might have a shot at meaning something if it didn't sound so similar to "What Would Jesus Do".

Anyhow, let's move on. After reading this section, I feel sufficiently ready to proceed into the story knowing about our main characters. Unfortunately, those two characters (Venom and the Flash) do not appear until six very wordy, very dense pages have occurred.

Yeah, the story is a little convoluted. I mean, on the one hand, I'm glad that everything was spelled out for me so that I could keep up. ON the other hand, maybe some things are better left for the artists to depict? It's like pictures & words & pictures & words all over the place, but both are "illustrating" the same thing. And in the first six pages they are illustrating a really weird flow chart of action, which I totally meant to draw, and really wish I had the time to do so now. 

First up: I see that some sort of "bad guys" are shooting innocent people with, like, fireball type bullets. They are soon opposed by these giant, titanium-or-some-strong-metal-shit robots. And we think, "Ah! The Good Guys!" But they turn out not be invincible (so that makes them vincible?). And who's there shooting similar fire balls? No no no - NOT Venom! I know. I thought this comic was called Venom and that he would be the ultimate bad guy, but apparently a Jack o' Lantern with his head on fire, riding a broom stick, is the actual antagonist. But wait: maybe he's the antagonist to the antagonists? Yeah, really wonky, I know. If you've lost track we've got:

1. Elderly couple running for their lives - Protagonists?
 

2. The things that are shooting fireballs - Antagonists?

3. Very vincible-ish robots - Protagonists #2?

4. Fiery Jack O'Lantern Head - Antagonist #2?

So it turns out that Antagonist # 2 is the after Antagonist # 1. Clearly one of them is the protagonist in their own storyline, but who can keep up?!?) 

And wait...The Flash appears!! Dressed as Venom! Phew! Finally!

So who do we want him to get? Who's the real bad guy? Well, it turns out that Venom is supposed to bring the mad scientist/doctor in charge of the fireballs (that's number 2 above, or Antagonist # 1) back to his superiors - but that's exactly what fire-pumpkin-head is supposed to do as well, except for someone else whose name I think I missed. And so, voila! ANOTHER CONFLICT. Flash/Venom is the protagonist?

But wait wait wait wait wait. There's even MORE conflict. You know it and you love it. It's the conflict between the Flash and Venom. The conflict within the Flash of whether he can stay calm so that Venom won't take over and meld him the venom suit. (Meaning that, when he loses control, there's now a new conflict: can he take control back?)

And then, after all that, the Flash accidentally (on purpose) kills the doctor he is supposed to bring back alive. So after all that bouncing around of story lines, the story just peters out and stops.

And now I'm back to my original worry - does my husband expect me to love this or hate it? Did I miss something that I was supposed to pick up on? I don't know. You can't say that this was boring, but I don't think I'd really say that it was exciting either. It was just a lot of work. I'm pretty sure that isn't the intended result.

-Nina Stone, 2011

Comments

[Sharif]

Looking at that cover, I think you're being prompted to hate it.

[Lugh]

Your husband made you read it as part of his ongoing crusade against Rick Remender.

[seth hurley]

"Gas Lamping My Wife" has a ring to it.

[Prickle]

The new Jack O' Lantern has the most overwritten dialogue of any character I've ever read.

[Abhay]

"High school bully turned war hero, Flash Thompson has always been brave." That really is a weird sentence. It implies that high school bullies are brave. If he's always been brave AND he was a high school bully, then he therefore must have been brave contemporaneous with being a high school bully.

Which... what??? "Nothing says bravery more than a teenage boy burying his homosexual panic under terrorizing weaker, more sensitive children!" My favorite chapter in Profiles in Courage concerned wedgies. I thought Biff Tanner was the bravest character in Back to the Future-- when he tries to rape Lea Thompson, that's like the Iwo Jima statue of 80's science-fantasy movies. Marvel should do a comic about that lady who used Myspace to make a teenage girl kill herself-- Myspace Suicide Mom was the Wolverine of the 00's, if you think about it...

So, I haven't read the comic or anything, but I think that's a bad sentence.