Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Cover Artist: Cafu
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99
Reviewer: StoryBabbler
Venom and Dylan have been through a lot of turmoil as of late, but Carnage stalking them and luring them into a trap that nearly killed Dylan. That’ll do it. After the nearly fatal encounter, Dylan awoke to find the Venom symbiote has left him, for his own good. However, this has come at the worst time as Vampires around the world have started attacking every one else. Oh, and Lee Price returns from the dead. Read Venom #33 to see how all of this bloody chaos transpires.
Review:
Okay, it’s a Blood Hunt tie-in, not even the Venom series can escape connecting to a big company line-wide event. And this story brings in two characters who may or may not be Venom fans most disliked characters in recent memory. There will be some SPOILERS in this review.
Alright, we last saw Dylan and the Venom symbiote getting hunted by Carnage and nearly dying from the fight. And now the Venom symbiote has left Dylan so that he wouldn’t be caught in harm’s way. All while a global Vampire takeover has begun, and some of them have decided to hunt Venom down. For food? For sport? For revenge? All of the above. Oh, and Lee Price comes back from the dead.
Okay, so right off the bat, the issue’s premise was a hard one to sell with the “return of Lee Price”. I’ll be real, I don’t like Lee Price, and I know I’m far from the minority on this one. He’s essentially a failed attempt to recreate a 1990s comic boom anti-hero without solid cool factor and/or an emotional core to him. However, in the hands of better writers like Al Ewing, there’s always a chance to give him just that. But what’s worse is that you don’t really get the return of Lee Price, it’s just his zombified corpse that’s reanimated not truly the man himself.
In fact, the comic seems to want to build up another character who, I’ll be honest, I’m not that familiar with at all, called “The Captive”. When I first saw him I thought, “Wait, is that Bullseye or Black Bolt?” But upon learning a bit about him in the beginning and seeing what his powers are, I just figured, “Okay, he exists.” However, since the comic implies multiple things about his existence and dealing with a species who hunts Symbiotes, I think there’s some potential with this character as a villain, even a short-lived one.
Final Thoughts:
Venom #33 begins the first part of its tie-in to the current Blood Hunt event. The art change to Juan Ferreyra was nice since their style adds a visual sense of horror and surrealism that lends itself well to not only Venom stories but a story with Vampires attacking. The story is chock full of narration from the Venom symbiote who takes the lead in this comic while Dylan finds a safe spot to sleep during the event. While, yes, Lee Price does show up, it’s not in a significant manner, but there’s another vampiric villain who brings more menace and danger for Venom to face in this story.