Oozing With Awesome — Reviewing ‘All-New Venom’ #8

Ever read a comic book that comic booked so hard that it was like pure joy to turn every page? Just perfectly hitting that spot where campiness, fun, and serious stakes all rock out together in harmony.

Say hello to All-New Venom #8, the latest in a series of true comic books that really hit the eleven on the scale of comic bookness. It’s all orchestrated by Al Ewing, Carlos Gómez, Frank D’Armata, and Clayton Cowles.

Open those pages and just let the smiles begin to flow. This creative team just knows what they are doing.

Fun, wonder, and charm are blaring from every page as much as the more serious and dangerous vibes can be felt. Gómez hits every single correct note, and then some, when building up this dynamic world. Characters have so much energy and presence on the page, no matter what they are doing or how they are presented. There is no lack of depth or detail, allowing the setting spaces to feel authentic and truly lived in.

Plenty of fighting is going down with this story. All of it is right there in the most fluid and dynamic way. Just a glance at any page and there is the feeling that characters are genuinely in motion. Ready to burst off the page and continue their action in our world.

Another element to really hitting the overall dynamic is of course the colors. A slight slickness exists that gives things a sort of glowing smoothness. D’Armata chooses a palette that rests upon more natural softer colors to establish the settings. Over this comes the more over-the-top, more vibrant tones. It creates the true Marvel ideal of the world outside or window with flashier fantasy beings running around.

Together the art and colors make sure that whimsy and realism meet in the middle, creating a hybrid that delivers the best of both worlds with no real cons to be seen.

We feel all of that in the writing as well. Emotional depth is felt at every turn as Ewing wrings every bit out of the characters as possible. It’s fun watching the supporting cast dancing around what they know and don’t know while the hero tries to do their thing. It’s such a classic feeling that was missing from so many books. It allows us to feel invested in every single character that comes into the book, even the antagonists like Ripcord and Doctor Octopus.

Truly, this might be some of the best Otto stuff we’ve gotten in a bit. I love the way that Ewing deals with the whole “villain wanting to know a hero’s identity” here. Generally, villains have that info erased, whether they know or not, and want to find out. Not our guy Otto. A villain realizing that he’s known Spider-Man’s identity twice and lost it twice (at his own hand) has that man going “No thanks” to ever knowing a hero secret identity.

In the end, he’s right, it doesn’t matter since he wants them dead (or as a dissecting project) anyway.

How MJ and Venom Symbiote interact is still the core of this series. Watching MJ really get to do the big hero thing has been a long time coming. The idea that she is bringing ideas to the symbiote that it never considered, when their pairing is not by choice, is an intriguing one.

Adding the bow to this amazing present is the glorious lettering work. It’s never a surprise to get such lively and perfectly fitting work from Cowles. Words drip with personality and emotion in such large amounts that it would be hard to miss it. He creates voices that easily import themselves into our minds as we read so that we hear all of it. Just love how much the fonts and bubbles shift to really set the overall tone and volume every single time there might be a vocal shift.

All-New Venom #8 is now available from Marvel Comics.