David Micheline & Todd McFarlane, "Spider-Man vs. Venom"
Yeah, it�s a little early to do another graphic novel, but I wanted to hit the 160 mark so I could buy another book when I go to work tomorrow.
I really don�t know why I picked this up. I don�t read Spider-Man, and in fact the character kind of annoys me. Marvel comics just has this whole Spider-Man juggernaut that just bleeds the life out of anything interesting that could potentially happen from the series. I mean really, how many monthly titles does this character have? Four? Five?
That�s another reason I�m glad I don�t really care for the character, as there�s no way I could keep up financially. My old roommate Brandi is obsessed with the Venom character. I guess that�s why I picked this up. I wanted to see what the big deal was.
So Venom�s human character turns out to be a reporter who had an exclusive interview contact who was supposed to be on deep background, and he caved to government pressure to reveal the identity of his contact.
Automatically, he�s not going to get any sympathy from me.
This, by the way, is another reason I don�t like this series: I�ve never seen a less realistic representation of a newspaper, with the exception of Superman, whom I also dislike. Even "Transmetropolitan" is a more accurate portrayal of journalists, simply because every reporter I�ve met swears and smokes a lot.
The "Daredevil" series (which I love) has a recurring journalist character named Ben Urich who apparently shows up in this series a lot, and his character is a lot more believable. I know, it�s a fucking comic book filled with people that have super powers so it�s not supposed to be really believable, but c�mon ....
And I�m going to stop talking about it, since it�s a comic book, for god�s sake! My geek warning is flashing pretty strongly at this point.
One last thing. McFarlane is a genius for this business. After slaving away for Marvel for Christ knows how long, he decided to start his own publishing company so he would get the royalties from the characters he created. And since then they�ve started a great side business making figurines from movies. I have figures from Strange Brew the Hanson Brothers from the film, Slapshot, and I just got an 18-inch Ash figure from Evil Dead that has a motion sensor. Every time I walk in the door, it greets me by saying, �All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK!�
Shit, there�s that geek siren again.
