SoraRabbit Short Hop 002: That Time Venom Went Crazy

Welcome back everyone. This Short Hop is all about the Marvel Comics character Venom. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Venom is an alien symbiote who once bonded to Spider-Man and then became a villain for a time before becoming an anti-hero. The human the alien is usually bonded to is a disgraced reporter named Eddie Brock. Venom has been a character since 1984 and recently got his own movie. Without Spider-Man. Figure that one out.

I've always liked Venom. That said, I have only periodically read his comic and currently have no pressing urge to see the movie. But still, some interesting things have been happening Venom-wise in his comic book lore and so I felt the need to go back along his history and read up on his old 90's-era adventures. Some of these I read years ago, some I'm seeing for the first time. See, in the 90's the ongoing Venom comic series was a string of limited runs, ranging from 3 to 6 issues. There were eighteen of these series in a row between 1993 and 1998, consisting of 60 issues.

In the beginning these limited series told a somewhat coherent story, and all throughout there was a kind of loose continuity. Mainly, though, each short series was a self-contained adventure. I noticed something running through them, though... as the years went on, the stories became more and more bizarre. I rolled with the strangeness until I came to a story that can only be described as completely bonkers. And that's the series I'm going to talk about today.

Venom: Tooth and Claw, a three issue story that started in 1996, was written by Larry Hama. The Hama Venom stories were all very odd, with weird surreal moments and horrible dialog. A good example of this was in an earlier Hama-penned story, Venom: The Hunted. Venom is being stalked by a symbiote-eating alien called the Phage. He's also being hunted by the authorities. His idea to escape? Become a totally cool skateboarding kid named... you ready? "Rad Eddie".

Oops, wrong picture.

Um, yeah. That's the right one. (Credit: Marvel Comics, Art: Duncan Rouleau and John Stageland)

So Larry Hama did some odd things with a traditionally dark character. Hama himself isn’t bad... I actually like his writing in other comics. He's co-creator of Spider-Ham, so he always has that going for him. (Spider-Ham rules!) But the things he did with Venom were pretty much inexplicable. (Another of his stories involved Venom and Carnage travelling through phone lines to battle in an online video game.)

Anyway, enough of that. This is meant to be short, so let's focus on what is, as far as I know, Hama's strangest Venom story, Tooth and Claw. (I still have a few left to read, so I could be wrong…) The comic starts out, as comics do, with Eddie Brock following a talking rat into an alley. The rat, Dirt Nap, swallows Venom whole, taking his form and powers. It just gets crazier from there.

This all seems reasonable. (Credit: Marvel Comics, Art: Josh Hood and Derek Fisher)

Two of Rad Eddie's slang-talking and radically cool skateboarding friends wander into the sewer and find the Phage's spaceship, which can shrink to the size of a football. They, along with another symbiote named Scream, get trapped inside it and fly off. Meanwhile Dirt Nap comes across Wolverine and Wolvie's friend, the heavily-armed and weirdly-accented Emmett. Dirt Nap pukes up Venom then takes the form of a kid that Wolverine wants to save for some reason. The football spaceship hits Venom on the head, allowing Dirt Nap to escape through a warp portal. Wolverine follows on a motorcycle.

In the other dimension (or wherever they ended up... the comic doesn't say) a fight breaks out between all the characters. A fight which is interrupted by a leather-clad villain named Chimera. She has unclear powers, talks to her hand and can summon leather-clad plasma wraiths.

Lordy, this dialog. (Credit: Marvel Comics, Art: Josh Hood and Derek Fisher)

After a lot more fighting, Wolverine and Venom declare a truce. They fist bump and end up in a drug-trip version of outer space. Chimera puts a force field around the ship (again, not explained), creates a black hole, and sets a trap for the heroes. After even more pages of tedious fighting, Dirt Nap vomits up everyone he's eaten, showing that he's actually a horribly drawn old man.

Yeah, this all makes sense. (Credit: Marvel Comics, Art: Joe St Pierre and Al Milgrom)

The kids get control of the football-ship, Chimera tries to blow them all up, and the bad guys fall into a black hole. The others fly off heading for home while arguing. And that's it. It's a classic case of "a bunch of stuff happens and then stops happening."

So, my review? It was awful, and not even in an entertaining way. It felt slapped together. I'm not sure what the point of any of it was besides getting Wolverine and Venom into a crossover. The writing was bizarre and clumsy. I'm pretty sure Wolverine doesn't know words like "regurgitate" and "recriminations". Venom’s verbosity I can understand... it seemed like everyone who wrote Venom in the 90’s wanted to pack as many obscure fancy words into his dialog as possible while still making him dumb. Emmett keeps referring to women as "frails", which is wildly offensive no matter what dimension you're from. The cool kids were only there to throw hip slang and were written like an aging uncool guy watched an afternoon of Nickelodeon as research. (Which is likely what happened.) The motivations are confusing. Wolverine wants to save the kid (his name is Algernon, by the way because, well, of course it is) and once he does, he doesn't care anymore. Venom just seems confused about all of this and wants to fight with everyone. I guess he's grown used to inexplicable adventures at this point in his career.

So there you have it... a very odd three issues of 90’s wackiness. My review is 1 star out of three smiley faces. This is due to the many brain cells I lost reading these three issues. And now I’m officially changing my name to “Rad Sora”. My only takeaway from this experience is never follow talking rats into alleys. Great advice for us all. I hope you enjoyed the latest SoraRabbit Short Hop. See you soon for more unexpected treasures!