Venom vol. 5: Venom Beyond

Eddie Brock did the right thing at the end of the previous volume and told the Avengers about the impending threat of Knull.  While they (specifically Iron Man) weren’t happy about it, Eddie’s actions gave them time to figure out a gameplan and for him to take Dylan to someone who can tell them what’s going on with his powers.  The problem here is twofold:  The person they’re going to see isn’t all that cooperative or trustworthy, and the Brock family is now being chased by a new villain, Virus, who has a bunch of recycled Marvel tech at his disposal.  All of this leads to Eddie and Dylan being flung into an alternate universe.  One of the bad ones where the world has become a symbiote-run fascist dystopia led by the mysterious individual known as Codex.  On their own, the two of them stand no chance against the Avengers of this world.  Which means that they have to team up with the local resistance, who happen to be led by the one person neither of them thought they would see again.

A good alternate timeline in the Marvel Universe will have both a good reason for existing and do things with the characters we know that couldn’t be done in the 616 proper.  “Venom Beyond” fulfills both of these requirements as the reason it exists plays upon a key moment from the title character’s origin and also acts as a “What if…?” in regards to Dylan’s fateful choice about letting Knull out of his prison in “Absolute Carnage.”  The end result gives us some good family drama, something that is a specialty of writer Donny Cates, that does a good job of driving the story alongside its many action scenes.

Said action scenes are capably handled by Iban Coello, Juan Gedon, and Luke Ross.  All of them do good work,  even as I wished for a bit more stylistic consistency between the three of them.  There’s also the fact that Virus is more of an interesting idea than as a proper villain, but he ultimately winds up being more of a distraction than the heart of the story.  Which is something that I genuinely liked along with the mega-happy ending it provided.  Of course, that mega-happy ending can’t last as this is the last volume of the series before “King in Black” and we get an appropriately bleak final page to lead into it.  Naturally I’m on board with this, as the Brock family drama should provide a solid emotional core for the event before everyone gets symbiote-d.