Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Venom | Tagged: alchemax, devil dinosuar, eddie brock, Gerardo Sandoval, HRL, liz allen, Marvel Comics, mike costa, moon girl, spider-man, stegron, venom

Venom #152 Review: A Fun Diversion From Secret Empire's Dreariness

Having discovered an underground kingdom of dinosaur people led by Stegron, the Dinosaur Man, Venom is put against the wall struggling against the hordes of dinosaur-human hybrids created by the creature.

Luckily, he gets a little help from a source you've probably guessed at already.

When Eddie returns to Alchemax after the first battle, he learns some disturbing information about what's going wrong with his connection to the Venom symbiote.

He has to put that aside, though, as he must return to Stegron's keep and shut down the monstrous transformations he's causing among the local human and animal population.

In times like these, when every other Marvel book is tying into an underwhelming and overall depressing crossover story, books like Venom become a welcome breath of fresh air.

There's no prerequisite reading outside the title itself. There's no depressing fascist state. It's just the anti-hero, the villain, and a lot of fighting.

The book isn't particularly smart. However, it has one goal in mind, have Venom beat up a bunch of dinosaur monsters. It does that, pretty fabulously, really.

The (spoiler) aforementioned help comes in the form of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. That really is a weird pairing, given Moon Girl's youth and innocence and the fact that Eddie and Venom have probably been the cause of enough deaths to fill a town. But, you know, dinosaurs.

The storytelling itself gets a bit confusing. It keeps bouncing back and forth between Alchemax and the caves wherein Stegron is hiding out. It doesn't tell everything in chronological order, so it does get a little hard to tell what happened when.

Stegron is never a bad villain choice. He's a dinosaur-man. That's just awesome. He turns people into dinosaurs for some reason. Makes enough sense to me. He's also a bulky bruiser, so he's a decent antagonist choice for Venom.

Gerardo Sandoval's artwork is a great choice for Venom. He already has an affinity for warping figures to seem bigger than they are, as well as fluidity and kinetic motion. Those line up with Venom's motif perfectly. However, there are some scenes where human Eddie Brock has arms that are way too long for his body, and the faces can look pretty off sometimes. The color work of Dono Sanchez-Almara compliments it all pretty well, aiming for darker shades to match the inky black protagonist of the book.

If you're in need of a fun diversion from all of this Secret Empire stuff, Venom is a great choice out of Marvel's offering. It's not brilliant, but it's fun and fast-paced. Oddly enough, the comic about a vicious, murderous man with an alien attached to him is one of the less depressing comics on the stands right now. Give it a try.

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