“Yesterday’s” Comic> Venom Super Special

“This is the last time I let you pick the vacation spot, Brock!”

Venom Super Special

Marvel (August, 1995)

For this one I’m going to treat each story like a separate review. There are two on one side involving Venom, one while the symbiote was pretending to be just an alien costume. Then the book flips over for a Scarlet Spider story that has nothing to do with symbiotes. Which makes no sense to me.

[continued from Spider-Man Super Special #1]

Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, and Eddie end up on a world taken over by the symbiotes as we learn the history of the symbiotes and the one that became Venom–which Eddie is forced to rejoin with if they ever want to get home. I’ll let Linkara go over the entire “Planet Of The Symbiotes” storyline, but I wasn’t bothered too much by the backstory since Marvel tries so hard to make him a good guy when even as an anti-hero he’s still pretty bad at this stage. The art was decent and the symbiotes, at least in this story, finally have a history. This part at least I thought was decent. [continued in Spectacular Spider-Man Super Special]

A flashback story as the symbiote, still masquerading as a simple costume, does one of his late night “take over Peter’s body and fight crime as Spider-Man” routines, and makes a connection with Jean DeWolff…just not the one it learned from Black Cat. It’s also a good, if short, story although one panel with Mary Jane as Peter and MJ leave flowers at Aunt May’s grave, missing Jean’s, has our Mrs. Parker with horrible hair.

“I really need a plumber right now!”

Ben is invited to a party, but must leave his date, Gabrielle, when Curt Connor’s wife is also at the party, as Ben has to hide due to looking like Peter. Unfortunately, that’s when a further mutated (or someone just changed the character model) Curt “Lizard” Connors shows up. As a stand-alone not much of anything happens. Just the Lizard killing people or Scarlet Spider rescuing people from a fire. Not enough to recommend this on it’s own and I don’t know how the rest of the story goes.

Overall, a good comic but not a great one and Linkara notes the flaws in the “Planet of the Symbiotes” storyline. May be worth getting if you stumble across it but not a must-have.