By Dante' Maddox

Lately there has been a lot of talk on the site about comic book based movies. While the theaters have been saturated with them within the past half decade especially, the amount of actual good ones doesn’t seem to justify the number of new films that are continually green lit. For every Spider-Man or Batman Begins there is a Ghost Rider, Daredevil, or (cringe) Punisher flick.

Nowadays hearing about a new comic book movie is tantamount to receiving a threat from Marvel comics. Of course when news of a hopefully good movie hits our ears something strange takes place: we hope. Wanted, The Watchmen and a Sin City sequel all look promising, and because of that we all let our guards down, thinking that the dark times of Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four are behind us. And just when you thought it was safe to consider going to the show, Marvel unveils that impending doom is still very much upon us, for the House of Ideas plans to bring Venom back to the big screen, woe to us all.

As a huge Spider-Man fan I’d like to go on record as saying not only was Venom a bad idea in the last film, but Venom was a bad idea for the comic in general. The guys who took up the Spider-Man book after Secret Wars decided to work the new black costume into an alien invasion story where his brand new costume was in fact an alien symbiote that was evil of course. Stories like this make movie making difficult. An integral part of Venom’s origin is rooted deeply in a mainstream Marvel storyline that existed very much outside of the regular Spider-Man books. When exactly was Tobey Maguire supposed to look over at Kirsten Dunst and say, “Oh the suit? Me and the rest of the super heroes were in this alternate dimension fighting against this guy named The Beyonder, he had this lame jump suit, and my costume got really messed up. Thor, you know Thor! He came over for beers last week, put his hands in this machine and got a new costume, so you know, I did it too!” Hard to imagine isn’t? But that is Venom's origin to some degree; all the Eddie Brock stuff was created later. The sad fact is the colossal failure that was Venom was a team effort though artist and writers actually argue over who actually created this trainwreck!

Enter Eddie Brock, after the alien suit saga had begun, first seen as a mysterious villain who could attack Peter without triggering his Spider-Senses. After a few more mystery appearances Venom made his splash in 1988. Not long after that he went on to make the 1990’s one of the most difficult decades in comics history (for Spidey). Even though I really liked Spider-Man in those years, I always hated Venom. The Venom character is tantamount to creating a villain for Superman that was made entirely of kryptonite (oh wait, they did that crap too), a villain that can counter all of Spider-Mans abilities, knows his secret identity, and is running around free. Are you kidding? What use do I have for a character that can easily kill the hero at a moment’s notice? Let me get this straight, Eddie Brock is so powerful that Spider-Man can’t even hurt him, and he really, really hates Spider-Man, add to that he knows exactly where to find Spider-Man at all times, so why doesn’t he just go kill Peter again? And on top of that, you’re going to drag this impossible dynamic on for more than a decade? Really? That’s what you’re gonna do, huh? Wow. Because of this, every time Spider-Man managed to ‘defeat’ Venom it was in the lamest way possible. In other words, a character like Venom is supposed to show up and present the greatest threat that Spider-Man ever faced, it’s supposed to be a colossal story, and in the end Venom dies. Venom was a one trick pony at best, and instead Marvel let their ‘one night stand’ with Venom get awkward, for a really long time.


Yeah, lets compound one bad idea with a worse one: Carnage!

All Marvel got out of Venom was a character that looked really cool, but was near impossible to have exist as a recurring character. Proof of this was when they decided to try Venom out as a good guy. That’s right, bloodthirsty psycho killer Venom who wants nothing more than to literally eat Spider-Man suddenly has a change of heart and decides to head to San Francisco in order to be a hero. They called the book Venom: Lethal Protector (yes they were serious) with the hi-light that Venom licked his victims clean if they were hurt. Because of how terribly ill-conceived the Venom character has been, it took almost 20 years to get the mess he created sorted out. Because of Venom, we had to suffer through Carnage, the Howard Mackie years, and who knows what else. And now, after suffering through the abysmal Spider-Man 3, Marvel has the nerve, the gall, the audacity to threaten us with Venom the movie.

Does Marvel really think that there was enough Venom crap in Spider-Man 3 to facilitate a spin off? Maybe they have a movies worth of material that will cover the period in the movie that falls between Venoms creation, and his death? Hell, if that’s the case, then half of Topher Graces scenes are in the can, all they have left to shoot is forty five minutes of uncontrollable sobbing. I swear this had better be some kind of joke. Who will the villains be? The Silver Surfer was cool looking, they should use him, and instead of a hero story, they should make a stoner buddy comedy, where Venom and the Surfer go on a comedic journey to find the cosmic cube that just happens to be hidden in the basement of a college dorm full of hot co-eds. See how easy it is to do this? What the hell is Marvels problem, when great ideas like that just come from out of nowhere? I say let them waste their money on making it, and for first time ever I caution fellow fans to just pass.