War of the Realms: Venom #13: He is Venom

A WOTR interlude for Donny Cates’ Venom, Cullen Bunn does a decent enough job tying it into recent events with Venom with one problem, Rex Strickland was in NYC, the latest Venom arc took place in San Francisco. Obviously it isn’t impossible that Rex would have a safe house in another city 3000 miles from home, but it is a pretty gigantic stretch of logic. Secondly, Eddie POWERFULLY split with the Venom suit last issue in a very emotional story, only to have it undone one issue later to tag in to an event. Why does Spider-man and his 5 ongoing titles get to ignore this but Venom gets sucked of an interesting cerebral story only to take 3 steps back character development wise. None of this is any fault of the creative team though, Bunn does a good job. You’d just think Marvel would treat a top 10 selling book just a little better. There were a couple interesting moments like Eddie killing a Dark Elf in front of Dylan and Eddie defining himself in the singular, hopefully those elements get explored later.

The art by Iban Coello provides a reasonable facsimile of Ryan Stegman, with the most 90’s Venom design I’ve seen since Venom inc.! Some of the action was a bit hard to follow due to some odd camera angle choices, otherwise it was fine.