The Amazing Venom #1: Another Fred Myers Banger

The Amazing Venom #1 is the first Venom comic that doesn’t feature Venom… how exciting! Views on Marvel’s handling of almost everyone’s favorite symbiote are far from divided. The wide consensus is that recent Venom storylines have been some of the worst Marvel’s ever put out. That said, this new and highly derivative symbiote storyline is surprisingly “amazing.”

Fred Myers, formerly known as Boomerang, is one of Spider-Man’s most forgettable enemies. During the equivalent of a supervillain training workshop, Fred knocked over a jar containing a symbiote, and together they became the anti-hero known as “Comeback.”

Fred’s symbiote, the horrifically named “Passenger,” has the taste for adventure that Fred lost when his best friend and fellow B-league villain Shocker was killed by Torment back in Amazing Spider-Man #23 during the Death Spiral event. Passenger is a colorful character, and his bond with Fred is similar to the bromance shared by Tom Hardy’s version of Eddie Brock and Venom during the Venom film trilogy.

The story of The Amazing Venom #1 has a rather boring foundation. Fred wants a quiet life while his literal Passenger yearns for adventure. This is grounds for the kind of stories that use a tug-of-war between two characters’ personalities, but Amazing Venom avoids that completely. Fred spends most of his time enjoying his pedestrian life in suburbia while Passenger gets to take over during the occasional crisis. There is zero tension between them and little to no room for character growth at all.

The dialogue between Fred and Venom is incredibly supportive. While both characters want completely different things, they acknowledge each other and understand the other’s motivations. Their occasional antics, such as attending a birthday party in Spider-Man’s place, are lighthearted and make for the simple kind of fun found in a comic from the Silver Age (roughly 1960s-70s).

Luke Ross uses a simplistic formula of recognizable panel layouts filled to the brim with small details such as Fred’s garden or the view of New York’s streets. David Curiel’s colors bring a shiny texture to those scenes, making symbiotes actually look like alien goo for once.