Month: December 2015

Finishing off my symbiote kick, I figured I’d talk about someone that’s not technically a symbiote anymore but is still Eddie Brock aka the original Venom. I mentioned in the Marvel Select Venom review that once Eddie lost the symbiote, he learned he had terminal cancer. The cancer went into remission for a while and Eddie turned over a new leaf and began working at a mission called The F.E.A.S.T. in New York City. F.E.A.S.T. was run by Martin Li, who was also the new crime boss Mr. Negative. As Martin Li, he had healing hands and, as a publicity stunt, secretly used his powers on Eddie Brock to cure him of his cancer. However, the remnants of the symbiote in Venom’s body reacted with Li’s healing touch and manifested itself as a symbiote-like creature and turned Eddie Brock into Anti-Venom. Anti-Venom was obsessed with ridding the world of the scourge of the symbiotes and while he’s technically dead (Short Version: Eddie Brock is still alive but was purged of the Anti-Venom entity to cure a spider-plague in New York City), he’s still a cool looking character and has been translated to action figure form excellently by Diamond Select Toys.

Anti-Venom is a stoutly built figure. Seriously, I think he’s one of the heaviest action figures I own. Since he’s a Marvel Select figure, that means he uses all new, well-detailed molds and that really makes him look impressive. Anti-Venom has hinged ankles, hinged knees, swivels at the top of his hips and balljoints at the hips, a waist swivel, balljointed shoulders, hinged elbows, wrist swivels and a balljointed neck. I’ve had this figure out of his package for over a year now and have noticed one complication with his weight, though. The weight has begun to affect his joints and gives Anti-Venom a pretty substantial lean if I don’t tweak his pose every couple of weeks. I’ve found out that I’ve forgotten to do that before because he’s gotten so leaned he actually fell off the display shelf. That’s some bad engineering. I don’t know if it’s just a problem my Anti-Venom has because I like to have him in a slightly more dynamic pose or if it’s universal, but it’s something to watch out for after you’ve bought the figure. The sculpt itself is quite impressive. I mentioned in my reviews of Venom that the symbiote has been traditionally depicted and sleek and smooth. Anti-Venom takes his “opposite of Venom” motif far enough that even the symbiote-like creature isn’t smooth. When John Romita Jr. first started drawing the character, it looked very desiccated and that continues to the sculpting done on this figure. Anti-Venom had gotten smoother by the time the character ceased to be, but Romita Jr.’s art is just so striking that I love seeing it referenced here. Anti-Venom is also a decidedly adult-oriented collectable because he’s very pointy. All those spikes jutting off the figure are surprisingly sharp. I’m not saying you could hurt yourself with them, but if this had been a toy for children, those definitely would have been blunted. Even Anti-Venom’s big claws are quite pointy. The head sculpt is spot on with Romita’s take and like Marvel Legends Carnage, they went with the mouth being an open element rather than just black over red. It looks much better that way and again adds to the overall pointy-ness of the figure. The teeth look sharp and his spike goatee is surprisingly pointy. What I love about the Marvel Select line is that the figures are often based by a certain artists’ particular version of a character. I grew up on the work of John Romita Jr., and while he may not be everyone’s cup of tea, he’s probably my favorite Spider-Man artist so considering he created Anti-Venom, it’s a great call to make him the artist that this figure’s design is based on.

I’ll admit, the name and design of Anti-Venom is a bit cliché, but it still works. Venom is all black with a large white spider on his chest. Since Anti-Venom is the opposite of Venom, he’s mostly white with a large black spider on his chest. A black and white figure can be kind of boring, but Marvel Select wisely decided to accentuate the dryness of the figure with a light black wash. It’s enough to bring out those details but it doesn’t overwhelm the figure like some less talented paint teams do. Remember, folks, when using washes, less is more. The spider is well painted and there’s no slop on the black paint. Anti-Venom’s face is also black. The face is where Anti-Venom really steps away from Venom. The black takes the place of the white on the eyes, but it also extends down to his mouth. That’s more of a Carnage detail than a Venom detail. Anti-Venom also has some yellow for his eyes and some dark red in his mouth. It’s not a fancy paint job but it’s effectively done and looks sharp.

Marvel Select figures often eschew accessories for elaborate bases. Oddly, this is the first Marvel Select figure I’ve reviewed to actually come with a base. Anti-Venom first appeared after the Thunderbolts attacked The F.E.A.S.T. while hunting Spider-Man. Anti-Venom manifested to protect Eddie Brock and the innocent people from the attack. To reference that, Anti-Venom’s base is a bunch of rubble with Anti-Venom’s creature coming up through the ground like it just protected him from the falling rubble. The base is painted very well, though the wash used on the Anti-Venom pseudopodia is applied a bit too heavily, meaning they look a lot darker than the creature they’re supposedly an extension of. The rubble on the ground looks appropriate weathered and what little of the actual ground we can see is not pristine, so it looks like a building was just severely damaged. It’s a nice piece for Anti-Venom to have and since the figure is so heavily influenced by his first appearance, it’s great that his base is, too.

For a while, Anti-Venom was a bit hard to find. Marvel Select apparently periodically re-releases popular recent figures, so I think this was easily a third-run Anti-Venom, but that’s fine. There were no changes in the different runs of Anti-Venom. The only reason that would matter is for a mint-in-box collector. However, as someone who like to open their toys and pose and play with them, it’s fine if my Anti-Venom isn’t one of the original hard to find ones. It’s a solid figure and as a bit of a symbiote freak, I kind of like seeing Anti-Venom on my shelf. I was surprised it only took a couple years for him to get a figure, especially since the character didn’t last that long. Eddie Brock is currently kicking around the Marvel Universe with another symbiote. I think he might be Toxin’s current host after the government used the same techniques they developed to control the Venom symbiote to control that one, but I’m not totally sure. There are a lot more symbiotes than there used to be and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of them. However, I really enjoyed when Eddie Brock was his own man and became Anti-Venom. Yes, in story, he became Anti-Venom totally by accident, but it was still a fun ride. Plus, Eddie Brock finally got to be the hero as Anti-Venom because he sacrificed his powers to undo the spider-plague. Anti-Venom may have only existed for a couple of years (though he did show up recently during the Axis crossover in a couple of crowd scenes, so I’m thinking it was just a continuity oversight), but it was a cool addition to the Spider-Man universe. Plus, I really liked the idea that Eddie Brock became so anti-symbiote that he used Anti-Venom to help hunt them down and cure the hosts of their sickness. It was an interesting motivation for Eddie Brock and that’s something that’s been lacking with that character for a long time.

Venom may have only been introduced in the early 90s, but the symbiote has had a lot of hosts. In fact, the original idea was that Venom would just float around the Marvel Universe, bonding with anyone it thought could help it get revenge on Spider-Man. That didn’t take off, but lately the symbiote has been a bit more peripatetic. Not every host lasts long, but that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes get action figures. A couple of years ago, Dr. Octopus finally won and beat Spider-Man by taking over his body. Dr. Octopus-in-Peter-Parker declared himself the Superior Spider-Man and Doc Ock’s arrogance led him to screw things up even worse than Peter ever had. At one point, he forced his old villain allies, the Sinister Six, to be his crimefighting partners, which ended about as badly as expected. However, Doc Ock’s dumbest move was thinking he could control the Venom symbiote. Storywise, it’s what led to Peter Parker’s consciousness being able to reassert itself over Doc Ock. While the Superior Venom may have only existed for at most three issues, he just got a Marvel Legends figure, and he’s pretty great.

Superior Venom was designed by Humberto Ramos and while I don’t generally love his art style, the guy knows how to make cool-looking monsters. Ramos’ design transfers surprisingly well to the three-dimensional world. Superior Venom uses the base Spider-Man body with a few new pieces. The feet are monstrous, with exposed toes and sharp claws on the end of each toe and clawed hands. On his back, Superior Venom has a permanent piece attached to the hole in the back. Into that piece, you can plug in Superior Venom’s four tentacles. When Doc Ock was masquerading as Spider-Man, he built in mechanical spider legs into the back of his suit, because of course he did. Why wouldn’t Doc Ock add some extra arms? When the symbiote took over, these became more monstrous. Since he’s using the new Spider-Man body, that means Superior Venom has great articulation. For a full run down of the articulation, check out the Black A.N.T. review. The other new part Superior Venom gets is a new head. I’ll admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of Ramos’ Superior Venom in the comic, but in action figure form, it actually looks really good. It’s still got a Spider-Man feel to it, but the jagged teeth are also present like Venom. Honestly, considering how close Doc Ock got to controlling the Venom symbiote it makes a lot of sense that there aren’t too many Venom references here. As he started losing control of the symbiote, the look got more monstrous, but at the beginning, it was a pretty tame look. This figure moves very well and the arms on the back, while static, do allow you to get it into some great poses that you might not be able to otherwise due to balance issues.

Once again, this is a Venom figure, so you can guess what the colors are going to be. Once again, Superior Venom is black and white. Like every iteration of Venom before him, Superior Venom has the large stylized spider on his chest. However, this time, it carries over to his shoulders and doesn’t tie into a large spider on his back. Above the spider, Superior Venom also keeps the Spidey-style weblines on his costume. I’ll admit, it does leave the head looking a bit too busy for my tastes. At a quick glance, the weblines are more eye catching and obscure the sinister eyes and, more problematically, obscure his teeth. Venom’s always been defined by a fanged maw. That should be the focal point of Venom’s face, but it doesn’t stand out as well here because of all the other white lines up there. Despite the upper body being a bit busy, the paint work is crisply done. The wobbly weblines on the face are true to the art so I understand why Hasbro did it that way. Unlike other Venoms, Superior Venom does have a little splash of color on the figure. The Superior Spider-Man costume had some gauntlets on his wrists and they remained visible after the symbiote took over. To show that, there are red spots on his forearms. They should be raised, sculpted elements rather than just paint, but it’s not a big enough detail that Hasbro should have invested tooling dollars to recreate it. The red spots work well enough.

I’ve already touched on Superior Venom’s accessories, but I still feel I should mention them again. The tentacles are designed very well. They look like a combination of organic and technological elements and that’s a good call to make here. They look jagged and scary and considering how out of control Superior Venom was when he started manifesting these in the comic, it’s a good look. The figure remains well balanced even with them on his back and they assist in getting him in some cool, menacing poses. It’s the best of both worlds.

Superior Venom may have been a thing for all of three issues, but it’s still an interesting take on Venom. It’s the most Spider-Man-like Venom out there and I like that for some reason. It’s a unique look and it’s something a little out of the box, and I have to applaud Hasbro for making that call. I may still hate Humberto Ramos as an artist, but it’s hard for me to deny that he can design and draw monsters very well. Considering how cool Superior Venom looks, it shocks me that it came from the same pencil as the guy who made the absolutely asstastic Green Goblin redesign in the mid-2000s.

I mentioned that I’ve picked up quite a few versions of Venom over the years, but not all of them are the classic Venom. Like I said, the Venom symbiote gets around a lot in the Marvel Universe. After it abandoned Eddie Brock when he got cancer (gee, maybe the symbiotes are somehow biologically related to Newt Gingrich), it floated around the Marvel Universe for a while. It was bonded with a mob boss’s loser son for a while, it bonded with Mac Gargan (another Spider-Man villain known as the Scorpion and man did the symbiote look ridiculous with a scorpion tail), but then the government got their hands on it after Norman Osborn’s Thunderbolts team (with Gargan-Venom) self-destructed fabulously. The military decided it was time to resurrect the super-soldier program and found a way to drug and control the Venom symbiote. The symbiote was then given to Flash Thompson (Peter Parker’s high school nemesis turned adult friend). Thompson had joined the military (though how he did that I’ve never been quite sure—the last Thompson story I remember before he showed up fine was one where Norman Osborn got him drunk, forced him to crash a truck into the school Peter was teaching at and resulted him being left in a permanent vegetative state, but hey, who cares about continuity when it’s a bad story with god-awful art by Humberto Ramos) and then lost his legs. The symbiote gave Thompson the ability to walk again and he became Agent Venom. His tenure as a superhero hasn’t been great, but he’s definitely a popular enough character to warrant some attention from the Marvel Legends line. Like Black ANT (who he served with on a Secret Avengers team), Agent Venom was a Walgreens exclusive, in fact the first Marvel Legends to be released that way. He’s an excellent representation of a so-far underutilized Marvel character and I really do like having him in my collection.

Flash Thompson was always a pretty big guy. After all, he played high school and collegiate football for a long time and even after he lost his legs while serving in the military, he made sure to stay in shape. Agent Venom uses the same molds as the Marvel Legends Bucky Captain America Hasbro did after they revamped the line a few years ago. However, Agent Venom gets a lot of add on parts to separate him from the first super soldier. The lower legs and lower arms are new pieces to reproduce the symbiote armor that he had plus there’s a piece to cover his torso to further distance the look from Bucky Cap and recreate the symbiotic flak vest Agent Venom wore. The great thing about dealing with the symbiotes is that it allows artists a great deal of freedom in their design. Since Flash Thompson was a former soldier, it makes sense that the symbiote would manifest itself in a very military fashion. There’s a lot of detail packed into these pieces and it really helps make the character look like he stepped off the page.  Bucky Cap is a great base for Agent Venom because it’s a very poseable mold, though I’m personally not a fan of the balljoint and swivel hips. I’ve just always found them to be a bit more awkward to move than a standard action figure hip joint. As it stands, Agent Venom has joints at the ankles, knees, hips, waist, abs (though that joint is restricted quite a bit by his chest armor), shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck. Up top, Agent Venom also has a new head sculpt. Truthfully, Hasbro probably could have just used a Spider-Man head and called it good. The head looks like Spider-Man’s in the comic so they could have just done it here. The eyes on the mask are a raised element and it adds some nice depth to the figure’s face. This is a very military-styled figure and I love that about Agent Venom’s overall design. There are just enough elements to make him look like an alien (like the crab-like armor on his shins and shoulders) but he doesn’t look that much different than an independent military operator. The original character designers should be credited for that and Hasbro should get some credit for translating that look so well to action figure form.

Because Agent Venom is still using the Venom symbiote, that means he’s got a pretty restricted color scheme. Venom always uses black and white, so that’s what Agent Venom does, too. The figure is black from head to toe with white used for the detailing. There are white stripes on his thighs, though it is missing on his left hip. It seems to be missing on just about every sample of Agent Venom I’ve seen personally and on the ones I’ve seen in reviews. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily an error, but rather due to the fact that the belt hangs low enough on that side of the figure’s body that it doesn’t really matter if it’s not there. Agent Venom has the same large white spider on his chest, though it is a bit more jagged and stylized than even the original Venom had. The paint coverage can be a little weak on the chest and there can be some bleed through, but it’s still solid. White is also used on the shoulder armor, and that’s a detail that varies from artist to artist. Finally, the outside of Agent Venom’s eyes are outlined in white. This can be a hard area to work with but the paint team did it well. I never rejected an Agent Venom for bad paint work around the eyes. I passed on a few because of some slightly stronger black bleed through on the chest piece, but paint is generally not an issue for this figure. Working only in black and white can be a bit difficult because stray paint marks will show up very easily. Thankfully, Hasbro made sure their paint team brought their a-game on this figure. The paint work is exceedingly sharp and it make Agent Venom look even better.

I’ve mentioned before than the Marvel Legends line doesn’t generally do a lot with accessories, however, Agent Venom bucks that trend. I honestly wonder if he was slated for a mass market release and got cut from a different wave somewhere along the line just because of all the extra stuff he has. Retailer exclusives generally don’t come better equipped than mass market releases, but Agent Venom is one of the most accessorized Marvel Legends figures I own. Since Agent Venom is a soldier, it makes sense for him to come with quite an impressive arsenal. Agent Venom has three pistols (two of one design and a third with its own look) and a small submachine gun. This is perfectly in line with how Agent Venom operated in the comics. Yes, he had superpowers, but he didn’t rely on them exclusively in the field. Where Agent Venom goes from good to great is that he also has a backpack that can plug into him with four tentacles. Agent Venom can hold the guns either in his hands or the tentacles. When a mission went bad, Agent Venom would use those tentacles just like this, grabbing as many guns that were lying around as he could and really cutting loose with them. Not all the tentacles hold the guns well, but he can still carry all four of his weapons at the same time, and I love when an action figure can carry all his accessories on him so I don’t have to worry about them falling off my desk and disappearing. While Marvel Legends may not be well-known for accessorizing their figures, when they do, they always do an excellent job and Agent Venom is a perfect example of that.

Much like Black ANT, Agent Venom is a fairly recent addition to the Marvel Universe and hasn’t done a whole lot yet. He had his own series that lasted for about 50 issues, which isn’t anything to be sneezed at. However, he’s still not that well known. He did some things during the slightly-too-long Spider-Island crossover event and he’s recently joined up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. That really raised his profile and now he’s got his own series Venom: Space Knight, where he’s finally gained full control of his symbiote after a visit to its species homeworld (this is where we finally learned the symbiote’s species). It will be interesting to see how Venom does as a space knight, but I’m still a big fan of the Agent Venom look and I think it’s impressive at how much attention this look got from Hasbro since retailer exclusives generally don’t get a lot of new parts because they’re, at their core, cost-saving figures. Marvel Select apparently made an Agent Venom, but it was a Disney Store exclusive and therefore is exceedingly hard to get on the secondary market. You’ll have a much easier time finding this version of Agent Venom and I think that’s good enough. At least at Walgreens, he’s much closer to a mass market release and he’s a nice addition to my collection. While I didn’t intend to get so many different versions of Venom, it’s kind of interesting watching the character evolve and change each time it gets a new host.