With the end of the Venom-focused King in black Event Eddie Brock and his symbiote have a brand new status quo: Eddie is the new king in black, the guy the whole symbiote species looks up to as a leader. In this week Poison # 200, one final issue for Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s run on the character, we’ve figured out exactly what that means.
With his new ability to see through eyes and direct the actions of billions of symbiotes across the galaxy, Eddie battles bad guys and does good on a much, much larger scale. But all that crush awareness time takes its toll, aging it into solid Old Man Venom territory overnight.
So it’s good that there is young blood that allies itself with its original symbiote and battles the bad guys in New York City.
What else happens on the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books our comics editor liked over the past week. It’s partly society pages about the lives of superheroes, partly reading recommendations, partly “Check out this cool art”. There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics. (And if you missed the last issue, read this.)
Cates and Stegman introduced the world to Dylan Brock, the son Eddie never knew had, who has his own strange symbiotic powers, and now Dylan Brock, angry high school student with a good heart, joins them his father’s symbiote together to fight crime – with his father, who observes and advises through psychic connection. It is Batman Beyond, but with Venom, and that’s a great formula.
Static is back in comics for a new generation of readers, and I think one of my favorite things about it is the clear anime and manga influence in Chrischross’ battle choreography. It goes great with the character.
The X-Men bought a zoo terraformed Mars in a single evening this week, and I like to think Magneto was humming “Mars, Bringer of War” the whole time while dragging iron-rich asteroids from the Kuiper Belt to the Martian core, just like he did the little in The Venture Bros.
I just thought you’d like to know that there is now a comic where the Magical Girls are secretly evil and the monsters they fight are people who gain power through human touch – like queer smooching – and that power use them to transform into things like large pink axolotl dragons. That seems relevant to at least some of you.
Supergirl: woman of tomorrow started this week with a daring adventure when Supergirl gets embroiled in an alien teen’s vengeance on a planet with a red sun, but what will really make me come back for more is Bilquis Evely’s art, as always.
The only thing I can say for sure when I get an output from Ultramega is that it will do something that I absolutely could not predict. Like the severed head of the giant heroic father of a child who falls back to earth after a decade, still alive. I know practically nothing about the Kyodai hero genre it plays with, but I have no doubts about it.
Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondos Night wing is basically “What if Nightwing was / Aja Hawkeye” and I’m not complaining. I would also like to know where in the DC Universe Barbara got this T-shirt.