At the end of the last arc, Peter was pretty beat up but had been rescued by Black Cat. Felicia, in turn, was secretly working for Owl, who kidnapped the guys who beat Peter up (Vulture and Electro) and was in the process of torturing them. Meanwhile, the mysterious person who kidnapped Aunt May is still at large—and May is still missing.
In this story, Mark Millar gets to tell a Venom story. When we last saw Venom, Eddie Brock had permanently bonded with the symbiote but was dying of cancer. As this story starts, he seems perfectly fine and is taking money from a mysterious source to do a mysterious job.
As a reader, I’m assuming that he’s being hired by the same guy who took Aunt may, and that he’s fine because Mark Millar didn’t read the arc where Venom and Brock were fused together by Eddie’s cancer.
Anyway, that’s all we get of Venom in issue #5. The rest of the issue has Doctor Octopus breaking out of a prison transport and Spider-Man recapturing him. Honestly, it feels like filler. Or maybe Millar thought we just needed a breather after the complexity of the first four issues of this series.
The “Venomous” tale continues to take a back seat in issue #6. We learn that Brock is in town and Black Cat concludes that he’s the one who took May (he’s not). Other than that, no real Venom developments until the very last pages, where we learn what’s really going on…
Brock is in town to sell Venom at an auction.
The auction has a little bit of a “spot the cameo” fun to it. I haven’t tagged all the people or dug too hard into who appears in these pages.
But can someone tell me what Captain America is doing at a criminal auction?
Weird. I think the artist was just having fun here.
Meanwhile, Pete revisits Osborn in jail to see if he’ll tell him who kidnapped May. Yes, this is all borrowing heavily from Silence of the Lambs.
When he gets no help he asks the X-Men for help, but Rachel Summers concludes that May is dead.
Rachel Summers?!? WTF? Is she back now? Or are we in an alternate universe? Is this canon? I’m very confused. But at least we’re moving the storyline forward.
Okay, we’re more than halfway done with this arc and issue #7 starts with a quick fight against Lizard. I’m catching on here. So many name-brand villains are making single-issue appearances, and they’re all trying to get him to unmask. This has to be building to something.
Even the cops try to unmask him!
I like the theme here. It works.
Felicia and her giant hooters tell Spidey that a local mobster won the symbiote auction.
We learn later in this story that after Venom leaves Eddie, he kills himself.
It’s bizarre that this is almost an afterthought–a single panel told as part of Peter Parker’s own internal narrative. It’s not his first suicide attempt, though. He’s done it before. And of course it doesn’t work.
But Millar’s characterizations are often different from what’s going on in the main 616 books. Like Peter is definitely not a pushover in this series.
I’ve noted my irritation at the disconnects, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. Internal narrative consistency matters to me a lot more than consistency with the other writers who “play with Marvel’s toys.” If everyone wrote the same, after all, then reading Marvel books would be pretty damn boring.
So: Mobster buys Venom. Mobster can’t control Venom, but does learn from the symbiote that Peter Parker is really Spider-Man. Venom attacks and we finally get the big battle, with the mobster wearing the symbiote. The fight is great, with Venom revealing that Spider-Man is Peter Parker but then killing the witness, and a prolonged knock down drag out.
It even involves a water tower!
In the end, the symbiote decides that the mobster host is lame and jumps off him in mid air. The mobster falls to his death, thus eliminating another person who knew Peter’s secret identity. How convenient!
At the very end of the issue, the actual kidnapper calls Peter to set up a meet. That will be the final arc for this series.
Oh, and remember the cliffhanger to issue #4, where Jonah had source to reveal Spidey’s identity? Well, that was a red herring. It turns out, that happens every week.
Seems like everyone is doing it, everywhere.
Again, this is all in keeping with the “unmasking” theme.
For some, that might be a cop-out but I think it’s funny that Millar gave us a big cliffhanger for #4, didn’t mention it in issue #5, and then deflated it in #6. There’s a little more fun stuff on this theme, but I won’t spoil it for you.
Another nice bit: Spidey goes to the bathroom.
Note the name of the diner: Millar’s. Apparently, Mark Millar is now in continuity.
The pacing of this series is breakneck, and the story is very different while remaining true to core characteristics of the Spiderverse. Well done.