VENOM: THE END #1: It’s the End of the World as We Know It…and Venom Feels Fine

Venom: The End was an entertaining one-shot joy ride that felt right at home with Venom’s continuity, but deviating just enough to make it interesting. The creative team of Warren and Chamba do a hell of a job packaging this up for a book that even for me caught me off guard on how good it turned out.

Right out of the gate, Adam Warren swings for the fences and takes a play out of Donny Cate’s playbook and intertwines the symbiote codices. Warren tells a story of the symbiote being a limitless “entity” who traverses time and space, which poses the question…what happens when there is no one left to be a host? Going back to Amazing Spider-Man #252 when we were first introduced to the symbiote, and for many years to come, the symbiotes have been a constant icon in comics, but what happens when a host dies?

This is where Adam Warren puts his own comical spin on the classic Venom story but still stays true to the character we have come to know and love. Warren’s writing is a dense roller-coaster of a ride that takes us so far into the future that this one-shot is easily telling a better story in one issue that most fail to do in a few issues. Not to be outdone by words alone, the way that Jeffery Cruz’s art completely compliments every single panel on every single page, and brings out creepy Venom, goofy Venom, and crazy Venom that jump out and grab ahold of you for the entire book.

Seeing Venom fight with traits from the likes of Storm, Quicksilver, and Wolverine just adds to the symbiote goodness that is Venom: The End.