Review by Ian Keogh

Ryan Stegman has been the artist of note on this Venom run, but it’s largely left to Iban Coello to finish matters on this final volume, and he’s not a man who’ll knowingly deliver an understated page of art. However, understatement would be the wrong route to take with Knull, the god of the symbiotes invading Earth and reshaping it to his liking. It’s a crisis seeping into all Marvel superhero titles and requires its own separate graphic novel drawn by Stegman. Coello heads over the top to deliver a world dripping with ever-shifting black goop as Eddie Brock comes to terms with some truths about himself and symbiotes in general. As drawn by Coello, it requires plentiful gurning and grimacing.

As the core King in Black graphic novel deals with the bigger picture of Earth being invaded, Donny Cates keeps the focus here tight on Eddie as Venom trapped in the Hive. It’s a sort of netherworld hosting the human consciousness of anyone who’s been possessed by a symbiote, including those presumed dead. It enables a return for Rex Strickland as advisor and mentor, and a couple of surprises.

Over previous volumes the purpose of Dylan Brock has sometimes been puzzling, serving as an emotional tie for Eddie, but also sometimes a deadweight in story terms. King in Black is where he comes into his own, but, again, primarily in the core story. What Dylan achieves, though, impacts on Eddie, and Cates uses that to set up a desperate final battle between Eddie and Knull. Disappointingly, though, it’s not included here, but in the King in Black graphic novel, although everything is included in the King in Black Omnibus. As Cates developed the entire story in Venom’s title couldn’t a few pages have been included here?

Instead the story jumps forward a few months for a prolonged epilogue. There’s another major transformation, and it’s a really thoughtful extrapolation of what a well intentioned man might accomplish if accompanied by a symbiote and with access to the Hive. A priceless scene with Spider-Man pouring out his guilt is sympathetically illustrated by Kev Walker, who’s the artist when Cates establishes what Eddie now is.

Other artists work on characters associated with Venom and his world, with Gerado Sandoval on the Anti-Venom sequence really grim, but Cates extrapolating on the troubles Dylan has reining in his anger hit the spot.

The epilogue begins with Stegman’s nicely drawn spread recapping how far Venom has travelled and changed since Cates began writing the series, and it underlines a considerable achievement. Everything depends on where Eddie is taken from here, but Cates has set some fascinating possibilities. The ‘King in Black’ chapters drag a little for their stalling pattern being required as the serialised issues were released alongside the main story, so this isn’t the best of Cates’ run, but where he ends up is great.

All Venom material by Cates is collected, naturally enough, in the Venom by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman Omnibus.