Venom #254: War In The Streets

When life has both of them up against the ropes, it’s almost therapeutic to see MJ and Venom lay the smack down on Madame Masque. Venom #254 brings that old-school appeal in spades, letting the duel between hero and villain play out unimpeded across its twenty-four pages. Battles breaking out in the boroughs of New York City are a daily occurrence in the Marvel universe, but rarely do they feel this environmental. MJ and Venom make constant use of their surroundings as they’re punched through city streets and public parks, tearing statues from their foundation and using man-made ponds for emergency crash landings.

As if things weren’t difficult enough, there are innocent civilians that need to be kept a hair’s width away from the destruction. The symbiote and host duo have to get creative to keep everyone alive, minimize damage, and outmatch Masque, who has traded her signature assassin stealth for a guns-blazing fury in her bombastic mech suit. Making A.I.M. a respectable threat is her goal as the organization’s new head, and she wants to use Venom as an example to the world. And while those ambitions sound rather serious, Al Ewing doesn’t let that get in the way of his fun, bringing out a campier side of Masque’s stone-cold personality. If her golden face was adorned with a mustache, she would definitely be twirling it as she delivers one haughty one-liner after another.

Safe to say that the art supplements all of this cheesy goodness well, staying stretchy, loose and kinetic throughout the non-stop action. These two behemoths, one organic goop and the other unyielding metal, both have an tangible sense of weight behind their every stomp, yet move, punch and kick with unique flare.

Heroes prevail by the issue’s end, sending A.I.M. packing for now while dropping a surprise reveal which makes their storyline worth following to the pages of Iron Man or wherever else they may show their faces again. MJ and Venom seem to have gotten their groove back, but a hostile encounter with Eddie Brock and Carnage, which seemed inevitable from the very start of this run, is now just around the corner.