And so it begins. For some reason, Marvel didn’t want to give Venom his own series in 1993, so instead they give him an endless string of miniseries. Seems ahead of its time, given that now Marvel tries to reset to #1 with its ongoing books as often as twice a year. The final panel even says the next #1 arrives in 30 days.
This practice continues for 5 years, starting here and ending with 1998’s The Venom Finale. I’ve group tagged the titles below.
The purpose of this series is to “rebrand” Venom as an antihero/superhero and start to create a new symbiote universe. He even looks cuter:
Awwwwww. Look at those eyes.
He starts off stopping street-level crimes.
A host of new symbiotes are introduced, largely named by their colors, as is a group of supercops in adapted Guardsmen armor called The Jury.
In sum, Eddie Brock moves to San Francisco, Spider-Man hunts him down, so does the Jury, we learn The Jury actually want to kill Spider-Man, Venom and Spidey fight-then-team-up, The Jury create a few other symbiotes…
…The five deadly venoms!
Most of these symbiotes will only appear once more, in another ’90s Venom series, so I’ve just created a “symbiotes (misc)” tag. But one becomes a D-list character with multiple future appearances: Scream…
Unlike Eddie Brock And Cletus Kasaday, though, Scream’s human host never matters. So it’s just Scream that gets the tag.
Venom protects some homeless people fro the monsters, and it ends with him in a heroic role.
As a lethal protector.
You know who else is a lethal protector? Punisher. And he’ll be the focus of Venom’s next mini.