Venom Space Knight #1
VENOM SPACE KNIGHT #1
Capsule Review
There are two types of comic readers in my audience — the kind that will greet with a yawn the news that a double-amputee Flash Thompson inherited Spider-Man’s old Venom suit and then joined the Guardians of the Galaxy, and those that will wonder how Marvel has so thoroughly jumped the tracks. I actually think there’s a pretty good book here for both camps. This Flash Thompson is a distant (DISTANT!) echo of the Steve Ditko original, and he may not be OUR Flash, but he is A Flash … a jock with a soft spot in way over his head and afraid to show it. This Venom suit was purged of its worst impulses in a previous Guardians of the Galaxy run, so there aren’t any evil overtones in this book — just a Flash Thompson well past his bully phase, determined to do good, thrust into outer space adventures and making it up as he goes along. Writer Robbie Thompson’s plot is similar to the adventure we saw in Drax #1, but the quips are better here, and there is more meat on the bone, with Venom meeting grouchy aliens and picking up a robot companion that can “… speak three million languages, and (is) fluent in 217 forms of torture.” Artist Ariel Olivetti’s digitally painted interiors class the book up quite a bit. This is a frothy book and it won’t make you think too hard, but it provided some space opera fun.
Approachability For New Readers
OK. The text slug at the beginning helps and the flashback image showing our hero playing football will assure old vets that, yes, this really is THAT Flash Thompson. Readers who don’t care about Marvel ancient history can just buckle in for a fast-paced and pulpy adventure that tells us everything we need to know as we go.
Read #2?
Sure.
Sales Rank
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Posted on January 12, 2016, in Reviews and tagged All-New All-Different Marvel, Ariel Olivetti, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Comics, Robbie Thompson. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
dangvozden
Paul O'Connor
Kris (not Chris)
markginocchio
miloapama
Dean Compton
Moya
ryanmcswain
Longbox Graveyard 
So I’ve been a semi-loyal Guardians follower since the post-Annihilation reboot ten years ago, and I only just thought of this now. Maybe this is a little too tin foil hatty, but given the current climate of Marvel, what are the odds that Venom being thrust into space is partly dictated by Hollywood contracts? You know, the same ones that say Kang belongs to Fantastic Four/Fox franchise/not to the Avengers, and Quicksilver belongs to everyone.
Flash/Venom was put into Guardians before the Sony/MCU team-up, so I just wonder if these decisions are as cinema-driven as they are story-driven. Maybe it sets some sort of precedent like, “See? This guy isn’t a Spider-Man character! He’s a Marvel character!”
(As an aside, I’ll be the first to admit that putting a recognizable alien symbiote into outer space with formerly C-listers is a stroke of genius and not that farfetched to being with, so maybe there’s nothing to see here.)
On a related note, there is no way in hell Sam/Nova is anything other than a character created to build a movie property around without 75 years of backstory bogging him down, although I do like him.
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Venom already appeared in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, so I expect that horse is out of the barn, but none of us can know without seeing the contract, and even then, it seems there’s always a lot of wriggle room in these things. Why else would we wind up with two different Quicksilvers with two different actors in two different films last summer? But maybe you are right — adding Venom to the Guardians adds a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt to his provenance. The same might even be said of Ben Grimm’s presence in the relaunched Guardians book.
Now … I think the title of this book may well owe something to nailing down that “Space Knight” trademark now that ROM has left Marvel and is appearing at a different publisher. Not that I expect the Space Knight trademark is so very valuable, but still.
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Oh wow. I didn’t even pick up on the Space Knight thing, and apparently, I repressed my memories of Spider-Man 3.
The disbanding of the FF and the cancellation of their book is just so bizarre to me. I don’t know how anyone at Marvel can come out with a straight face and say it’s not a direct reaction to the brutal handling of the property by FOX.
Is Torch with the Inhumans now?
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Yeah, Torch is with the Inhumans, and Ben is with the Guardians, and Ben & Sue … I have no idea. Maybe they got toasted in Secret Wars, dunno.
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Yea what he said
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The NFL give you your bill for that performance against the Steelers yet, Pac Man? Enjoy the golf course!
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