Venom #17

Background

Defying the principles of science, the last issue was good! It tied up a number of flying loose ends, and almost made the overly convoluted Infinity War-esque plot make complete sense. Still, the series has a record of 1-15 thus far (good issues to bad issues), making it the comic book version of the Cincinnati Bengals. Wait... the Bengals weren't that bad last season.

Story Details

How about this time, I give you a brief synopsis of events, and you draw your own conclusions?

Frankie: You can't control the symbiote control device anymore, baldy.

Robertson-Venom: Don't kill people!

Frankie: I can control you!

Suit: You must not. You already know why.

Frankie: Then you know why I must.

Suit: Agreed. Robertson, this'll hurt.

Robertson -Venom: I'm melting... melting! Oh, what a world!

Frankie: Do you read the Bible?

Suit: You already know if I do.

Frankie: Then you know that Noah's Ark and the flood was actually Bob?

Suit: You already know this.

Frankie: But it never happened. And it wasn't supposed to be a flood. It was supposed to be us killing everyone! But then it rained so we couldn't do it.

Suit: You know what you must do.

Franikie: Let's cut the power and go from there.

Roberston: w00t! that r0xx0rs!

Elsewhere...

Bob: Everything's good, everything's fine. I just don't know about it.

Elsewhere... later... with no explanation...

Mr. Fantastic: Robertson, you and your creature are being contained by my wife's forcefield. The square of the hypotneuse of an isosceles triangle equals the square of the remaining two sides.

Human Torch: Dude, that's a RIGHT triangle... TO THE EXTREME!

Mr. Fantastic: I stretch my arms to next week! Robot! I demand you report our findings which we have not found to the newsroom downstairs!

Again... we go somewhere else...

Eddie Brock: I kills people and smiles a lot.

Spider-Man: Reed! Open the door!

Mr. Fantastic: You are a pest and a nuisance to society!

Spider-Man: You don't know what's going on!

Mr. Fantastic: I do. You're a stupid-head. Oh, Ben, don't open the skylight, something's about to crash through it anyway.

Thing: What's that, Stretcho?

Mr. Fantastic: Don't open the SHRIEEEEEEEK! Skylight.

Venom: Kill!

Spider-Man: w00t!

(Note: I was on the verge of leaving the Plot field as "None" for my review... but that would hardly be any fun for the readers! So I summarized the verbose explanations for nothing into this neat little follow-along with Venom guide.)

General Comments

You think I'm joking?! Pick this issue up for yourself. You almost have to see it to believe it.

The art is bad, even for Young. The story has gone back to it's convoluted yet meaningless roots. The Fantastic Four's personalities are hyper-exagerrated and scary. Reed doesn't trust Spider-Man. The look of fright on the characters' faces (it's happened at least once per issue thus far, it always looks the same, and that is to say it looks like the individual involved each time got a red-hot poker shoved up their backside) is positively silly. There is one more issue of this book left. Odds of this series pulling a "Shyamalan" and making it good are pretty slim. I don't think there is another series released that has a worse average rating than Venom on Spiderfan. E-Mail me if I'm wrong on that. Otherwise, this issue was even worse than #15. It's quite amazing, I've never seen anything so terrible. But at least I only have to spend another $4.25 on it!

Overall Rating