Click the image to see.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m not doing an article about Captain America today. Uh huh! Eat it! And eat a delicious, grilled hotdog. And maybe a burger. With a cold one. And fireworks.

Happy 4th from the guys (and girl) at 4th.

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I’m definitely a fan of Dwayne McDuffie. I’ve spoken at length about how disappointed I was that DC hamstrung his run on JLA, leading to an uneven pace, choppy character work, and a general feeling of unease. I was actually surprised when I saw this post on his website:

Here’s a preview of my final issue of Justice League of America, featuring the JLA teaming with Icon and Hardware in battle with Starbreaker. Don’t miss the secret of how the Milestone heroes ended up in DC Comics’ continuity.

I also suggest you take a look at some of the comments from your fellow comic book fans. Every once in awhile, I’m reminded how racially backwards a portion of our audience is and how important it is to… You know what? I’ll let them speak for themselves:

“…how many blacks did McDuffie manage to sneak onto the team this time–five? (I bet DC editorial gave him the same order as Burger King in that lawsuit–to “lighten things up around here.”)”

“Why don’t they call this the “Minority League”? ”

“I don’t think anyone will support an original black “mainstream” character. I know I won’t.”

“Couldn’t they get Static, Black Lightning, or one of his daughters instead of Dr. Light on the cover of BET League of America? Ha!”

“Maybe they should establish a separate league for all the negro superheroes. I’m not saying kick them ALL off. One would be okay. (Doesn’t Hollywood have some kind of law that says every movie has to have at least one black in it?) I just think they’re going overboard with all this diversity stuff. I mean, how many comics do minorities read anyway?”

Dwayne again. Welcome to my world. You know, the one where race doesn’t matter…

The comments come from Newsarama’s preview of JLA #34. It’s fair to say that I got a little pissed over it. I took a break, wrote a review, and decided to come back and write about it some, because I still think it’s ridiculous.

Newsarama is basically one of the three biggest comic sites on the internet. It’s only competitors are Comic Book Resources and IGN’s comics section. When people look for comics news, they go to CBR or Newsarama. It’s one of the outlets for mainstream comics.

So, why does it suck?

I like some of it. Jimmy Palmiotti’s column on Blog@, Brandon Thomas’s Ambidextrous, Chris Arrant, and Vaneta Rogers’s interviews are all great. I generally enjoy all of those. The rest of it, though, seems to be a pit of low standards and fluff pieces.

A bunch of smart people consider Newsarama’s forums among the lowest of the low. They’ve got a rep for being terrible. Honestly? It’s true. The boards are filled with mouth breathing bottom feeding neckbeard douchebags who have nothing better to do than put their illiteracy on display for every to see.

The comments I quoted above appear below a preview of Justice League of America, a book that has been consistently in the top 10 of comics sold and is written by a man who is the highest profile black writer in comics and a well-respected one in animation. This isn’t exactly Johnny Noname shopping around his Spawn ripoff. Many of the comments are clearly racist in nature, which is in direct violation of Imaginova’s TOS, but the commenters have yet to be banned or even have their comments deleted. A few of them are regulars. What am I missing?

Basically, judging by this, a lot of comic fans deserve the mouth-breathing manchild reputation that fanboys get. This sort of thing is pathetic, and for Newsarama to allow it on their servers, when they are one of the gatekeepers of comics news and culture, is ridiculous. It makes me not even want to interact with these people or read the same books they do, just so that I’m not guilty of being stupid by association.

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I love the covers, I love the idea, I love the title.

And now?

There’s no way in hell I’m not reading this.

It’s stuff like Adventure Comics, the kids books, Superman/Batman silliness, and the possibly awesome new Batgirl series that makes me feel like comics are going my way again after some sad, grim years. 

Here’s to hope!

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Recently there was a post on spoilers on io9, and a little dust-up over them at the new scans_daily, and it got me thinking about the popularity of spoilers in general.  The io9 post dealt with someone who asserted that spoilers were a status symbol among fans, and that’s why people love them so.  This concept is alien to me.  I don’t doubt that there are a few big men out there, bragging about their inside information, but fans can turn anything into a status symbol, from bagging and boarding to camping out outside a movie theater in order to ensure that you are the first person to get tickets to a movie that anyone can see two hours later.  Plus, the few people I’ve met who have legitimate spoilers just seemed happy to be able to share the information.

The scans_daily scuffle was more understandable to me.  Fans posted the last page of the latest Wonder Woman comic, in which a big change is made.  This change was what the last eight issues had been leading up to.  Creator Gail Simone showed up in the comments, annoyed that the point of eight months worth of comics was revealed abruptly online instead of at the end of the book, as she had intended.

I’ve tried my hand at creative work, and I can understand the frustration that creators must feel.  Working on a narrative is about building an specific experience.  You want your audience to have moments of enjoyment, frustration, suspense and revelation.  So have someone sum it all up with ‘the butler did it’ renders the whole experience, and your work, meaningless.

At the same time, I can understand very well why fans clamor for spoilers.  Most of the time, I prefer them.  Not all kinds of suspense are pleasant.  I can’t enjoy a story all that well if I spend the whole time wondering if I’m going to get stuck with continuity that I hate at the end of it.  The pacing of comics often compounds this.  Story lines are stretching longer and longer, meaning that a story can pose a question one year that won’t be answered until two years later.  I don’t want to pick up a story and think, “Wow.  The Christmas after next, when I figure out what the hell is going on, is going to be gooood.”  I want to know where I’m going so I can stretch out and enjoy the trip.

I guess who you think is  right depends on who you think has rights to a story.  Is it the creator’s to give out as they wish?  Or do fans have the final say in how they want to enjoy the stories they buy?

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For the hell of it, 4th Letter is now on Facebook! Yeah! If you’re on Facebook, give us a little love.

I’ll mess around with it later, but I figured it might be a cool thing to have around. Maybe. Hopefully. I don’t know.

Crap, this post is too short. I’m going to need something to beef it up…

Blame Suben for making me aware of this. It’s his fault.

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In only a few weeks, DC will release Blackest Night, the big summer event and culmination of Geoff Johns’ fantastic run on Green Lantern. Willpower, fear, love, hate, compassion, greed and hope will be duking it out as Black Hand and that Cosmic Harvey Dent Smurf resurrect all sorts of heroes and villains to join their side. We’ve been given notice about some who would return and others who might. Earth 2 Superman, Martian Manhunter, Terra and the Flying Graysons will be there for sure. Perhaps we’ll see Elongated Man, Alexander Luthor, or General Glory rise from the grave.

But you know what? It’s a bit cheap. All these black rings are flying around and the only major resurrections go to those who are superheroes, supervillains or acquaintances thereof? That’s no fun! Okay, that’s a lie, since this is going to rock, but that’s not as fun as it could be!

By focusing on the fictional, think of all those we’re missing out on. What about the real corpses out there? We could not only have Heath Ledger back, but also Cesar Romero as the icing on the cake. David Carradine could return to get revenge on those murdering ninjas. Jack Kirby could engulf Jim Starlin in a bubble construct and toss him into the deep recesses of space out of revenge for Death of the New Gods. Elvis Presley could return to Graceland and… oops. Disregard that. I forgot that Elvis never actually died.

After much deliberation, I have put together the Top Ten Real Life Black Lanterns I Want to See.

10) Bruce Lee

The Game of Death outfit redone Black Lantern style. Think about how great that would be.

There’s controversy surrounding Bruce Lee’s death. Doctors claim his body was overly sensitive to painkillers and that did him in. The biographical movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story showed that he was killed by a Shredder-looking demon that haunts your daydreams. Only Bruce killed that demon and died several months later, so what’s the deal with that? Horror movie “he’s not really dead!” shocker? Or something else?

Perhaps like Abin Sur, Bruce Lee also knew about the coming Blackest Night and what it would entail. Having just defeated a young Richard Dragon and having depleted his entire list of challengers, Bruce decides to go dormant so that he can reawaken during the coming of Black Hand and take on that generation’s best. Sadly, thanks to Final Crisis and Darkseid being a Batman-killing douchebag, this means we’re cheated out of the epic Battle of the Bruces. Save that for another summer event, I suppose.

Bruce Lee would rarely use his power ring, as it would only slow him down.

9) Mitch Hedburg

“I was dead. Then I woke up and they said, ‘Here, Mitch. Have a ring. You are now a Black Lantern.’ And I said, ‘SHIT! I was worthless when I was dead, but now I am a lamp that does not work!’

“It is hard to get laid when you are undead. It is not the rotting skin or any of that, but all the women see you wearing a ring and get the wrong idea about you… Heheh. That joke was dumb.

“I would not want to be a Green Lantern if I was a professional boxer. Because putting that ring on over your glove would be… fucking hard.

“I think it would suck to be an Oan and have food stuck in your throat because nobody around you would notice!

“How come nobody realized that a guy named Sinestro would turn out to be evil? His name is Sinestro! He is giving you a clue! His name means ‘bad guy’… and ‘estro’! I think we should be on the look out now. Like I think that Hal Jordan is a spaceship computer that’s good at basketball. And Guy Gardner is a dude who makes vegetables and shit.”

8) Abraham Lincoln

If Invincible has taught me anything, it’s that Abraham Lincoln with superpowers is an awesome thing to behold. Unless you live in the distant future, where his own immortality has driven him to madness and such desperation that he’s become a power-mad monster in hopes that his subjects would assassinate him. We don’t, so that’s a relief.

Plus there’s a full circle feel to having Lincoln emancipated by a black power.

7) Johnny Cash

It’s alpha and omega’s kingdom come.

You can’t bring a bunch of dead guys back under the label Black Lantern without including the Man in Black. It wouldn’t be right. Hell, if Angus Young was dead, you’d need to bring him back too.

Back when he was writing his initial Flash run, Geoff Johns explained that although he could turn everyone from Captain Cold to the Top into some kind of serious threat, there was nothing he could do with the Rainbow Raider. No amount of good writing could make anyone take that joke of a villain seriously. He could never be a badass.

Yet look at the song “Man in Black”. Cash himself admits, “I’d love to wear a rainbow every day.” There it is! Johnny Cash comes back from the dead as a Black Lantern, strays from Black Hand and is reborn as the new Rainbow Raider! Everyone goes home a winner!

6) Moses

What, you thought I was going to say Jesus? Listen, Jesus is already coming back. We don’t have to worry about that guy. I just think that Moses deserves a second run too. He’s someone that both the Christians and the Jews can get behind.

There was this Green Lantern story about an alien that lived on a world where everybody was blind, so he couldn’t understand the concept of light, lanterns and all that. Instead, his ring took the form of a green bell. If they can do that, surely Black Hand could turn Moses’ ring into a kickass staff. His experience as God’s secretary in the Ten Commandments incident could easily net him a position as holder of the “Book of Death” and host of “Tales of the Black Lantern Corps”.

Unfortunately for him, there would be too many characters thinking Black Lantern Moses is the return of the New God Highfather. And heaven help us if Gorilla Grodd puts his filthy hands on him.

5) Andre the Giant

Black Hand has a posse!

I figured I had to choose a wrestler on this list and Andre is easily the best choice. The Green Lanterns have Kilowag and the Yellow Lanterns have Arkillo. Andre would be lead trainer of the Black Lanterns. Which begs the question, what’s French for “poozer”?

It would be totally worth it just to see him recite the Lantern oath in his deep, monstrous voice.

“The Blackest Night falls from the skies…
The darkness grows as all light dies…
We crave your hearts and your demise…
By the Black Hand, the dead shall—“

Then Wallace Shawn appears out of nowhere and screams, “STOP IT! STOP IT! I TOLD YOU! NO RHYMING!”

By choosing Andre, I’m passing over the idea of Black Lantern Chris Benoit, which creeps me out. Then again, Benoit coming back in this situation would leave things open for another “Parallax made him do it!” retcon.

4) Adolf Hitler

Now, now! Wait! I have an explanation for this!

Hitler’s dead and that’s grand, but I never felt like we got enough closure out of it. We don’t know anything too concrete. Just that he probably killed himself. Even then, it just doesn’t seem enough. The guy deserved to get his just desserts more than being pushed into a corner to take the coward’s way out. At least Saddam Hussein got what was coming to him.

Think back to the giant squid in Watchmen or that time Cable helped resurrect Apocalypse. Black Lantern Hitler is just what the world needs to regain solidarity. A zombie Hitler with superpowers? Hells yes, we’d band together to take him down. And if Hal Jordan gets to be the one to take him down? Great! He can finally say goodbye to all that hostility about entering other countries without permission.

3) Wesley Willis

2) Amelia Earhart

If Andre is the corps’ Kilowag, who would be Hal Jordan? What dead person best plays the part of a maverick pilot who routinely turns their back on authority? Earhart is perfect for that.

She’s a strong female character for the comic-reading ladies to get behind, plus she wears a simple old timey flight uniform. Thank God. Because let me tell you, when a heroine or villainess comes back as a zombie and she’s only wearing scant spandex? That’s gross, man.

1) The Rat Pack

Listen, pally. As it is, the event is probably going to end with Hal Jordan turning into some kind of merged White Lantern and using his deus ex machina powers to defeat Black Hand and save the day. That’s been the consensus since Green Lantern #25. I want this to go in another direction.

Black Hand bites off more than he can chew when he resurrects Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. They may be dead, but more than anything, they’re fucking cool. They show that Black Hand cat that he ain’t got no control over them because they’re running the show with their Silver Lantern rings.

In the cosmic color spectrum, silver = cool.

Metron is shown to be the Guardian of the Silver Lanterns, as he’s the only one in the cosmos cool enough to swing with those silver rings made of concentrated suave. After his champions defeat the Black Lanterns and bring peace to the universe, they pull off a couple musical numbers, maybe an improv comedy skit, hit a bar, smoke up and pick up a couple prostitutes.

I love a happy ending.

As an extra, here are some Black Lantern depictions as done by my good buddy Andrew Bachor.

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I’m not a fan of the later Bourne movies.  I think they skimp on the clever details of spy stuff and instead just show Bourne magically appearing places without explaining how he managed to be there.  I think the plots are shaky.  (Well, they were shaky to begin with.  He breaks into the ultra-top-secret headquarters in Paris, grabs all the guns and . . . gives them a good talking-to?  And that solves the problem?  Really?)  I think the camera is even shakier.  Shaky to the point where I couldn’t tell whether the struggles were between highly trained assassins or old ladies in a slap fight.

I have a friend who really likes the later movies, though.  And says so.  Usually to bait me into responding.  Which I do.  Vehemently.

During one argument, when I was getting particularly overheated about the idea that they were going to yet another Bourne movie, presumably called The Bourne Epilepsy, when he said, “You know, you don’t have to see it.”

And I realized that no, no I don’t.  I don’t particularly care about Jason Bourne or the movies in the first place.  Why was I even madly talking about how crappy the later movies were?

Because someone had said that they were good.  And I disagreed.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon in many areas  and the best term I can come up with to describe it is Irritation Inflation.  If you hit a message board in which there is a uniform opinion about something, the few people who disagree are often rabid with anger by the end.  (Of course, there is always the opposite case, in which a bunch of like-minded people egg each other on to greater and greater heights of outrage.)

Irritation Inflation pops up a lot in comics.  I’ve noticed it applied (both by myself and others) to creators.  Many creators seem to have an extremely militant fanbase, swearing up and down that everything they do is genius.  They also seem to have a group of people who sincerely believe that they are the anti-christ.  I wonder if the hatred of the antis sparked the devoted love of the pros, or the other way around, or if they just evolved together.

I have also seen it applied to individual works.  One person’s pillar of continuity is another person’s travesty.

What I’ve noticed, though, at least when it comes to my own reactions, is that Irritation Inflation is most devastating when it applies to characters.  When I disagree with a creator, I can get over it.  When I disagree with the way a character is portrayed, my blood starts boiling.

Personally, I think Batman’s a jerk.  Making various sidekicks’ lives a living hell?  Jerk.  Launching a spy satellite into outer space?  Jerk.  Oh, and the latest issue of Batman?  Where he left a secret message for Alfred, and the first part asked if Alfred would accept a hard, ongoing secret mission, and only when he accepted it did Bruce go on to say what a good father he was and thank him for raising and serving Bruce all of his life?  OH what a jerk.

The characters and the story, however, seem to think that he isn’t a jerk.  He’s misunderstood.  He’s tortured.  He’s acting for the greater good.  His way is the only way that works - that trains people properly and keeps them on their toes and provides a safety net.  I don’t know if this is genuinely the opinion of the comics creators or if they are attempting to protect the character, to give him false failings to create drama while re-affirming his status as heroic ubermensch.  All I know is it makes me so angry that sometimes I have to breathe into a paper bag and pretend that certain bits of continuity never happened.

Meanwhile, the Secret Six, whom I adore, are genuinely despicable people and it doesn’t bother me a bit.  Why?  Because for most of their issues, they are frank about their failings, and no character, no circumstance, no contrived bit of continuity tries to make them seem any better than they are.

I think I could greatly admire of a Batman who is both an incredible, selfless hero and a fearful, controlling man who makes life unnecessarily difficult (and sometimes impossible) for all of those around him because of his own mental problems.  What I can’t take is the extreme Irritation Inflation I experience when I read a story in which he’s an insufferable ass, but when every other element of the story is twisted in order to show him as a noble and flawless hero.

I suppose, at the end of this long and jumbled entry, I’d like some feedback from readers.  Do you experience this as well?  If so, does it manifest itself most in real-life or in-story elements?  Do you think that it’s justified or simply the tantrum of someone who doesn’t like being disagreed with?

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What’s on tap for Fourcast! #5?

-A special conversation about how Jack Kirby would’ve done the Transformers
-Our theme music is still 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental
-Special guest podcaster, Jeff Lester of Savage Critic(s)
-We debut a new segment called You Made Me Read This! I got Esther to read the first hardcover of Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s Fantastic Four. Esther didn’t like it for what, in hindsight, is a very good reason.
-Our conversation about FF leads into a conversation about the different approaches DC and Marvel take.
-And… scene.

This one was a lot of fun, and I’m actually a little scared of which book I’m going to have to read. I’m pretty sure she mentioned this book… and goodness, have mercy! :(

Some Fourcast! notes–
-We’ve got one more podcast next week (07/06), also guest-starring Jeff Lester, and then we’re taking off the week of 07/13 off. We should be back in business the week of 07/20 with a pre-San Diego Comic-con show.
-Fans of the Character Continuity Clash Comics/Continuity Off/Comics Are Seriously Dumb/whatever will really like the 07/06 cast, I’m, betting. Tell your friends.
-Esther and I are both planning on attending SDCC, and we may end up doing a show from the show, so to speak.
-We’ve got real microphones! You won’t hear them on this podcast, or next week’s, but we’ll be using them going forward. I’ve got high hopes, as it’ll make everything from recording to editing much easier.
-We hit 1000 listens the other day. You guys rule.

The usual podcast stuff:
You can subscribe via podcast-specific RSS feed, site-wide RSS feed, or iTunes. Review us if you like us, review us if you hate us, and call us dumb down in the comments.

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The badness that stapled to the 90’s is well-documented, but it’s interesting to see the stages that followed it. In the present, we’re in the phase where failed 90’s ideas are being brought back. Onslaught got his own miniseries and an appearance in Ultimate X-Men. Bendis wrote the Ultimate Clone Saga and now Ben Reilly is set to make some kind of comeback. Azrael is back in the Bat-universe. The latest Superman/Batman arc was a one-sided version of Amalgam. Carnage is slated to make a return. Some of these come off as a writer deciding that maybe he could do justice to the idea this time. More often than not, it’s just another bad example of comics cannibalizing its past.

But during the late-90’s/early-00’s, Marvel was in the middle of its great purge. Seeing something like Ben Reilly or Onslaught namedropped was rare. They were trying to wash their hands of every concept that went wrong during that decade. Because of that, Venom downright vanished. After Howard Mackie’s questionable use of the character, Venom wouldn’t appear for a couple years. Unfortunately, he returned in a very bad way.

The 18-issue run of the series began in June of 2003, under Marvel’s Tsunami imprint. The imprint was supposed to be more geared manga readers, whatever that means. The comic series was written by Daniel Way. Now, let me get my thoughts on Daniel Way out of the, er, way.

It’s easy to hold a grudge on a comic writer if you hate a comic they wrote. Lord knows I do it with Jeph Loeb. Way has certainly written some comics I didn’t like outside of this. For instance, if you’ve ever read through Agent X, you might recall that one issue late in the series which is meant to be the anti-climactic finale until Marvel later decided to bring back Gail Simone and UDON to tie up loose ends. That was Way’s issue. Ouch. Adding to that, I’m not much of a fan of “Wolverine uncovers secrets over secrets over secrets”, otherwise known as Wolverine Origins.

That being said, the guy has written some good-to-great stuff. His two Bullseye miniseries were fun. His Nighthawk miniseries was pretty rocking too. Dark Wolverine is already off to a great start. Of course, how could I not mention is stellar run on Deadpool? It’s a comic that gets better by the issue.

But while Daniel Way has certainly grown as a writer, there’s still this mess.

The series begins with a 5-issue storyline called Shiver, otherwise known as that Venom comic that completely rips off John Carpenter’s The Thing. Hey, if anything, that gave me a good enough excuse to finally watch that movie, so I get something out of this article. On art is Francisco Herrera, who is like a bad parody of everything you’ve ever disliked about Humberto Ramos’ work.

That would be our main character, Patricia Robertson. Being that she’s a female protagonist in a comic with this art style about an exploitative creature, you can bet that the series will be filled with some unintentionally unappealing nude scenes.

Patricia is a communications expert for the army. She’s a bit peeved that despite her intentions to be all she can be, she spends all her time sitting around with headphones on. She wants to prove herself, which means working at an outpost in northern Canada and volunteering to visit the nearby laboratory building to borrow DVDs. That building belongs to Ararat Corporation.

Patricia hears no response from them at first, but then hears a voice on the intercom begging for her to help. With her snow dogs spooked behind her, Patricia braves into the building to find a whole bunch of dead, mangled bodies. She sees traces of a mysterious black goop and prepares to get the hell out of there until hearing a man beg for help. Patricia finds a man locked in the kitchen, shivering and asking, “Is it… gone?”

Unsure what the guy is talking about, Patricia drags the survivor back to her sleigh. The dogs seem unnerved and growl at the poor guy, but Patricia commands them to mush. As they leave, we see a lone figure standing behind them in the distance.

She makes it back to her outpost, where her commander Colonel Malone is waiting with others. They deal with the survivor, who is in too much shock to explain anything. Malone comforts Patricia with some liquor, figuring that based on her description, there must have been a polar bear attack. That almost puts Patricia on ease, until they realize that if this guy – who we eventually learn is named Perry – was locked away in the kitchen, then who was answering the intercom?

Perry goes into a seizure and Patricia comes to realize that she may have made a big mistake.

All of that? That’s the first issue. Other than a couple drips of black ooze and the front cover, we didn’t even get a taste of Venom. Imagine if your favorite comic character hadn’t made a single appearance in years and when promised his or her own storyline, it started like this. A slow burn can be a great thing, but this isn’t one of those times.

Although the beginning of issue #2 doesn’t give us any real Venom action, we do get the next best thing. Way introduces the most redeeming part of these 18-issues: The Suit.

Shown investigating the site of the earlier slaughter, the Suit pulls out his cell phone and calls up a mysterious ally to explain the situation. Reading him years later, he seems cool enough, but back when this came out, it was obvious that he was there to capitalize on Agent Smith from the Matrix’s popularity. Plus a little Agent K from Men in Black.

Back to the army guys. They have a hard time holding down Perry, as he seems to have some kind of superhuman strength. Then they go outside to find that one of Patricia’s dogs is all messed up and leaking black goo. The other dogs, scared for their lives, run off. Exposition, exposition, Patricia shower scene, and Colonel Malone gets a strange visitor that night.

The next day, Malone is acting like a complete asshole. Patricia finds that her injured dog has a human finger in its mouth. Then Perry comes to and starts screaming. He says some cryptic stuff about containing an experiment until being interrupted.

Took you long enough!

From the plot, you can probably figure out that that isn’t Eddie Brock under the second skin. Nope, that’s just Colonel Malone. See, let me spoil something. Eddie Brock isn’t going to be showing up in this series for a long time. Long enough that he won’t pop up at all in this update.

That’s right, Eddie fucking Brock doesn’t even appear in the first two story arcs for a series called Venom. What in the hell?

This so-called Venom lunges at Robertson, but his hand is shot off by an energy blast. He’s stopped by the Suit, who then hits Venom with a more direct blast. You might be wondering what caused the shot. Does the Suit have a MiB knockoff laser gun? Does he just shoot energy out of his hands or out of his covered eyes? Nah. We get something way cooler.

He shoots energy blasts out of his CELL PHONE!

Sweet.

Suit hits Venom again and tells Patricia that he only has enough juice for one more shot, so she better leave or else she will die. Patricia refuses, as she wants to save her friends, who are unconscious for reasons I can’t recall. As Suit gets ready to finish Venom off – and the symbiote has been damaged enough to reveal that Colonel Malone is in fact underneath – another soldier by the name of Jackson opens fire and puts a couple bullets through the Suit’s torso. It allows Venom to escape and Suit turns around to chastise Jackson.

“It is a parasitic life-form from another planet. I am here to isolate and destroy it. Unchecked, it will move on to larger population centers, growing both more powerful and more difficult to isolate.”

Yet another soldier Delacroix shows up with a shotgun, aiming it at Suit. Suit wonders if Delacroix is a symbiote host and aims his cell at him. Jackson shoots Suit in the head at point blank range, causing him to slump over against the wall. Perry, the freaked-out scientist, makes a run for it. As the soldiers get ready to chase after him, Patricia first makes a stop to try and steal Suit’s badass cell phone.

Suit calmly informs her that the cell phone is an energy conductor. He stands up and electrocutes everyone in the room, knocking them all out. He then gives chase and makes an attempt to fight Venom again, though – as he warns his benefactor on the other end of the phone – he’s lost the element of surprise.

Truth be told, the banter between Suit and Venom is awesome, while at the same time, cryptic enough that you’re interested in where the story is going.

“Why have you come for me?”

“I have come to destroy you. I know what you are.”

“Yeah… and we know all about you. You’re no better than we are.”

“That is arguable.”

“Heh-heh… Wanna argue?”

“No.”

Suit fires at Venom, but only hits Colonel Malone’s decoy corpse. The symbiote grabs onto the Suit and tears him to pieces. With the Suit’s sunglasses coming off in the commotion, we see that he has completely empty eye-sockets.

Patricia and Jackson come to in one room, tied together. Jackson figures that the Suit put them there as bait for Venom. Patricia accepts that their only chance of getting out alive is the Suit, which is very unfortunate, considering he’s lying motionless under the Venom symbiote in the form of several torn-up pieces at the moment.

Soon after, Venom takes over Jackson.

Venom gives Patricia the chance to run away, but then grabs onto her leg and trips her. As he goes to kill her, Delacroix pops in with a shotgun. It distracts Venom for a second, as he lets go of Jackson and takes over Delacroix’s body. Patricia runs for it and arms herself, for all the good that will do. She uncovers a room filled with all the supporting characters, dead and tied up in black webbing. This includes Jackson, meaning that Venom works REALLY fast.

Venom no-sells a gunshot to the chest, as he’s wont to do, and gives chase. Then the shell explodes, stunning Venom and killing Delacroix. Patricia runs some more and finds Perry. It’s there that he finally explains what the deal is with Venom and what he’s doing in the arctic. Patricia is shocked and angry, holding a gun to Perry’s head and screaming at him for being irresponsible.

Oh, what’s that? You want me to tell you what he told her? Ha! Wouldn’t you know it, we don’t get to read that conversation. All we know is that they talked about it. After all, they want to keep the mystery running as long as possible, don’t they?

Outside, the Suit is stitched back together by little metal spiders. Once finished, they crawl up into Suit’s eyesockets. He sits up, puts his shades on and ponders, “Now, where were we…”

I notice that of this issue, Herrera’s art has improved. Patricia looks more like a female human being.

Patricia continues to bitch out Perry for being a coward and an asshole, but comes up with the idea of driving off in one of the trucks and torching the rest of the place so that Venom has nobody to devour.

I should note that Perry, despite being a scientist involved with studying the creature, has no idea how to destroy it. I can understand not thinking about the sonics, but come on. Even in The Thing they were smart enough to know that a flamethrower is the go-to weapon against shape-shifting alien parasites.

There’s a huge explosion that busts down the wall and knocks the two out for a moment. Patricia realizes that somebody blew up the trucks to trap them there. That would be the Suit, who doesn’t want Venom leaving. The Suit tells Patricia that he is from another planet and if he fails to stop Venom, all of humanity will die. As for why she should trust him, other than him saving her life an hour ago, Suit points out that Perry is yet another Venom host.

Suit explains that Venom has devoured Perry enough that he’s going to be looking for a new host soon. Suit gets ready to zap Patricia with his cell phone, asking her to trust him, but instead she knocks the phone out of his hand. Suit insists that she go and kill something, but before he can spell it out, he’s attacked by Venom. Patricia is chased down by Venom for a bit, but then he decides to leave her alone. She hears the sounds of dogs barking and howling and realizes what the Suit wanted her to kill. Venom has escaped by taking over her snow dogs.

The Suit zaps Patricia unconscious again and answers his phone to tell whoever it is that he has failed, but he’ll continue to give chase.

Jesus, 2003! It was bad enough you gave us Hulk poodles! Now we get Venom dogs too?

So ends Shiver. As a Venom fan, I was more confused than anything else. I still don’t know why Venom is in the arctic. I’m unsure why the symbiote has become a sinister monster that goes through hosts like Garfield goes through lasagna. And of course, I’m still wondering where Eddie Brock is during all of this.

It’s not the worst story arc, but it falls into the category of “bowling strike storytelling”. I mentioned that made-up concept back when I reviewed Lethal Protector, fittingly the first arc of Venom’s other series. Shiver can’t best be measured on its own, but in how it relates to the rest of the story. For a second, ignore how it’s a Thing knockoff and how the five issues could have easily been condensed to four, or even three. If the rest of Daniel Way’s Venom was good, these five issues could be considered good as well. That isn’t the case.

We move along to Venom #6, which begins a new story arc Run. Art duties are taken over by Paco Medina.

The Suit treks forward with an unconscious Patricia on his back. She comes to and screams. He explains the situation and hands her a can of tuna so she can eat. She refuses and goes on a rant about how Venom killed all her friends.

I think he’s starting to enjoy this.

The Suit carries Patricia into the woods, where he finds the dogs dead and tied up in black webbing. While the Suit easily fends off against a bear, a crow flies off, carrying the symbiote within. This is all being watched by a pair of near-identical spy chicks in a hovering purple ship. The Suit sees the ship, calls up his unknown boss and explains that there are others searching for Venom. That’s okay, though, because as he looks at the unconscious Patricia, he notes that he has a contingency plan.

The Venom crow crash lands near a shack, where it proceeds to devour a handful of guys playing poker. Taking over the last victim Clem, he rides off in search of more food.

The issue ends with our two spy girls entering a bar, getting the attention of all the men. One such man sits at a table, noting that they aren’t from around there. When they ask how he knows, Wolverine turns around and smirks. “I just know these things.”

Yep! You guessed it. Run is none other than part three in the Wolverine vs. Venom Holy Shit This is Awful Trilogy. If you remember, the first chapter of that trilogy came in the form of the Howard Mackie/Sam Kieth story in Marvel Comics Presents. It’s fitting, as Sam Kieth draws the covers for the next few issues. See?

Just a quick aside, one of the storytelling problems in this comic is that rather than have the characters’ names revealed within the story, Way mostly relies on the recap page for the following issue. For instance, that guy Perry from the first story? They never say his name ever. By this point they haven’t referred to the Suit as the Suit yet. So far, the only reason I know the spy girls’ names are Vic and Frankie is because the recap page of Venom #7 tells me.

Also, I’m not sure if there’s wisdom in naming a character the Suit when “the suit” is what plenty of people use to term the Venom symbiote. It’s needlessly confusing.

Anyway, the story. Clem reveals himself as Venom at a diner. Everyone takes off running, only to get gunned down by Vic and Frankie. Frankie gets ready to shoot down the fat waitress trying to make a getaway, only for Wolverine to jump out and tackle Frankie. As he interrogates her, the symbiote catches up to the waitress and takes over. Venom pounces on Wolverine, allowing Frankie to run off.

Despite being a living pile of goo covering a large, obese woman, Venom still appears as a 10-foot-tall mountain of muscle. Go figure.

Frankie and Vic talk back and forth about how they’ve trained their whole lives to fight Venom. Frankie still runs off, as her “collar” is broken. Then the Suit pops in to knock out Vic.

With the Wolverine vs. Venom fight, we see why the idea of them fighting in the 21st century doesn’t work. In the 80’s and a lot of the 90’s, Venom mostly appeared as being a bigger, stronger Spider-Man. He’s got the liquid costume, but he’s still a man underneath, so him fighting Wolverine is still an exciting concept. These days, Venom isn’t even so much muscular as he’s a big blob of black ooze. It’s less about a guy with claws fighting a man in a special suit than it is a guy with claws fighting the T-1000 with teeth.

The symbiote doesn’t want to kill Wolverine, but to take him over. Wolverine’s healing factor makes him the perfect host; one that the symbiote could use to live off of forever. The Suit also realizes this and takes steps to make sure it doesn’t happen. He aims his cell phone and fries Wolverine.

Logan is now a skeleton with clothes and hair. That phone packs quite a punch. I want one.

I want you to pay attention to that panel for a second. His skin is completely gone. He’s just bones. THAT is what kind of damage a cell phone gun does. Remember this.

With all this commotion, I forgot about Patricia. She wakes up in the woods and sees a panicked Frankie running by. For no good reason, Patricia confronts her and tells her to get on the ground, which doesn’t go over well. The two get in a physical altercation, where Patricia knocks off Frankie’s wig. Frankie, bald as a cue ball, chases her down.

Patricia Robertson really sucks as a hero.

Back to Suit, Venom and Wolverine. Suit explains that by taking out Wolverine, even momentarily, it prevents Venom from using him as a host. For some reason, Venom has to wait for Wolverine to heal up first. Vic shoots the phone out of Suit’s hand and makes herself known by removing her own wig. Venom feels drawn to her.

The Suit explains that she’s genetically enhanced to appeal to Venom and that her special collar will allow her full control if Venom makes her its host. An old man stumbles upon the meeting and tries to get away, but just by being there, he makes things even more complicated. Vic fires at the man so that Venom can’t make him his host, only for the symbiote to latch onto the bullet and use it as a means of travel. With a new host and farther away from the fight, Venom gets away.

The Suit and Vic begin to fight, only for Frankie to blast down the Suit from her ship. Vic joins her in the cockpit and they go over how this guy with the shades somehow knows who they are and what they’re about. They send this information to their boss, while in the background, Patricia is tied up.

Wolverine is finally healed up and he sees the little robot spiders putting the Suit back together.

No, don’t worry. That guy the Suit is always talking to is not Reed Richards.

Welp. As you may have noticed, things haven’t been too stupid yet. At least not for this storyline. Right now we’re going to get into the big pile of retarded that everyone remembers this series for.

Vic and Frankie are given orders to drop a nuke onto this area of Canada. Yes, a nuke. That’s bad enough. Then you have this exchange between the two of them.

“Do you think the Canadian government is… really gonna let us do this?”

“Heh… D’you really think they’d say no… to him?”

Oookay. Listen, guys, you need to stop doing this. I’ve seen this in Tamora Pierce’s awful White Tiger mini and the infinitely bad Identity Disc mini. If you’re going to be writing for Marvel or DC and you’re a new guy writing a C-list title, stop it with all the “bad guy controlling EVERYTHING who is such a secret that not even the smartest of the smart government agencies have even heard of them” crap. It’s cheap. Jeph Loeb came up with Romulus during his Wolverine run and Way is currently continuing on it, but at least it works on a level because Loeb is high profile, Way has become high profile and Wolverine Origins is a high profile comic.

I’m just sick of reading that crap in a comic that five people will remember in two years starring someone with the star power of Cloak’s second-cousin.

As for that nuke, it lands directly onto Wolverine’s head. Looking up, he mutters, “This just ain’t my day…”

Once the dust is cleared, we see what’s left of Wolverine. Remember an issue earler. The Suit was able to reduce Wolverine into a skeleton with a blast from his phone. So what do you think a nuke is going to do to him?

It blows off most of his shirt, while his flesh, pants and shoes are totally untouched.

Thanks! I missed you guys.

Up in the air, the blast caused enough shock to rock the ship around. This allows Patricia to loosen her binds.

As for why Vic and Frankie nuked Canada, they have left the Venom symbiote with no hosts. Now it has no choice but to merge with one of them for survival. All this time, everyone’s focused on Wolverine surviving when it’s about as silly that the symbiote would live through the explosion as well.

They dress up in bulky armor outfits and go off to hunt down Venom. They notice that on their radar, the symbiote’s movement is strange, but blame it on its hunger. They find him held up in a cellar, but once they open the door, they find out that Venom isn’t as hostless as they thought. Living off the bodies of thousands of cockroaches, Venom lunges out and slaughters Frankie. Venom escapes, leaving Vic to be killed by the Suit.

Her death is really weird, actually. The Suit swings an axe across Frankie’s armor and there’s a big “SHLUKK!” sound effect, but there’s no sign of any damage whatsoever to Frankie and her armor afterwards. The Suit removes her gauntlet and copies her fingerprints so that he can enter the ship. To his surprise, Patricia is both alive and free from captivity. The Suit goes back to Frankie’s corpse, raids her armor, returns to the ship and knocks Patricia out yet again.

Elsewhere, Wolverine notices a bunch of dead cockroaches, which is odd, as they should have survived the blast. Behind him, the symbiote reaches out and grabs him. Say what you will about this comic, but at least it tends to give us nice panels like this.

Patricia wakes up, now bald, wearing a metal collar and with a metal tube going into the back of her skull. I was going to make a joke based on Bane and how that tube in his head feeds him venom, but it came off as way too forced. Do me a favor and laugh anyway.

The collar is there to let Patricia control the symbiote if it ends up taking her over. Patricia doesn’t care, as she’s now a freak. This scream-filled moment is made even more scream-filled when the Suit is cut in pieces by adamantium claws.

“Hello, Patricia… Love your new look…”

SHIIIIIIT!

In one instant, you can feel the fist-pumps of several thousand 12-year-olds.

If things didn’t look bad enough for Patricia, it gets even worse with the cliffhanger! An identical ship appears in the distance, watching Wolvenom in action. In the cockpit? Another set of Vic and Frankie, still with their wigs on!

What does all this mean? How is Wolvenom going to be stopped? Who is the Suit? Who are Vic and Frankie working for? Where in God’s name is Eddie Brock?!

That’ll be for another time. That was the end of issue #9 and being the halfway point, that seems like a good place to stop.

Heck, I’m not even going to pick up from here next time. Around this point, Venom was making appearances in more notable titles. Titles that made a little more sense. I’ll finish off Daniel Way’s Venom another time, but first, I’m going to talk about Marvel finishing off Eddie himself.

On a more positive note, I highly suggest checking out the Brian Reed miniseries Sinister Spider-Man. Mac Gargan and “Symby” have their own letters column. That’s how awesome it is.

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