Amazing Spider-Man: Venom Inc.

There’s one great moment in this crossover between “Amazing Spider-Man” and “Venom” where the villain Maniac gets his hands on a symbiote and starts spreading it around to build his own criminal empire.  It comes after Spider-Man is captured by him at one point and winds up getting mind-controlled by a bit of symbiote to go on a crime spree at Maniac’s bidding. This is noted by the Daily Bugle whose publisher, Robbie Robertson, isn’t about to print a story painting the wall-crawler as a menace after the paper has done it so many times before and been burned by it in the past.  Then Spider-Man shows up at the Bugle to brag about his crime spree at the Bugle itself. At which point Robbie notes the “new mask” and remarks that mind-control is the reason Spidey has been acting out of character all night. Robbie’s observation immediately cut off my fear that the title character was going to take the blame for these crimes, further turning the city against him and predictably re-establishing the status quo.  That he’s self-aware enough to recognize what was really going on just about made my day.

As for the rest of the crossover, it’s almost completely lacking in that kind of self-awareness.  It mainly comes across as an excuse for Spider-Man to mix it up with two of Venom’s hosts, Eddie Brock and Flash Thompson, and to see those two get into it as well.  There’s lots of fighting, thanks to Maniac’s symbiote mind-control gimmick but none of it really comes across as interesting. This is in spite of the best efforts from artists Ryan Stegman and Gerardo Sandoval to invest the proceedings with as much energy as they can.  Yet this energy is sapped by the predictable plot and a boring villain who loves to hear himself talk but rarely has anything interesting to say. There are some notable changes by the end of the volume: Flash Thompson is now Anti-Venom, and the Black Cat is no longer a crimelord.  I would’ve issued a “spoiler warning” before letting you know about these things, but I think saving a potential reader from spending $20 on a crossover that’s mostly filler was more important.