Venom’s King in Black has a whole new meaning in the Marvel Universe

Although there are many emotions to the superhero genre, I believe one of the greatest joys of it is its unselfconscious juxtaposition between the ridiculously absurd and the truly meaningful. Like the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” and a teenager who dresses in no way like a spider to fight crime.

Or a deep, issue-length conversation about personal growth, doubt, the nature of good and evil, the pitfalls of detachment and attachment — capped off by a character growling, “I’m going back in… and I’m gonna kick my own ass!” followed by the caption “TO BE PUNCHTINUED!”

Is there anything else happening inside our favourite comics’ pages? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. You may not have enough context. However, there will be many great comics. This is the latest edition.

As a floating severed hand... watches? ...Eddie Brock emerges from a pool of black liquid, having altered his human form to have the venom symbol on it in black, as he says “And I’m gonna kick my own ass!” A caption at the bottom of the page says “To be punchtinued!” in Venom #18 (2023).

In this week’s Venom, Eddie Brock had a conversation with a cosmic being — in the form of a severed floating hand that could answer one question for each of its fingers — about who he is. VenomEddie is currently on a darkening tour and has co-written a story with Ram V and Al Ewing. You can have everything at once-style time-travel adventure meeting his future selves, realizing he’s already become a few of them, and earning the ire of the implacable Meridus, who claims to be his own ultimate incarnation.

It turns out Meridus isn’t Eddie’s ultimate incarnation — this floating hand is. And the King in Black, a cosmic role Eddie stepped into shortly before the series began, is actually the opposite of one of Marvel’s most detached and powerful group cosmic muckety mucks, the Beyonders. The Beyonders are beyond matter, beyond physical existence, beyond the body, while the King in Black is nothing but embodiment at the most fundamental level, matter at its most simple and versatile — a vast psychic network of goo That can become anything.

This is all pretty far from the character’s Lethal Protector days on the streets of San Francisco, but not that far. It is true that the original Venom symbiote found in Beyonder devices was actually discovered. And Ewing brings it around to the core idea of Venom as Spider-Man’s opposite number. Instead of a guy who always does good in spite of being a habitual fuckup, he’s a guy whose habitual fuckups are habitually insurmountable. Is that what this guy does with cosmic-level power. Is he going to fuck the universe or his own life?

Or does he reform his body with his superhero symbol on his own flesh chest and snarl that he’s gonna go fight his future self, as even the comic’s narration declares “To be punchtinued”? It’s a fantastic page.

“Why does it take mushrooms for us to be nice to each other?” a woman asks Poison Ivy in a room full of spores. “The scientific answer is that we need a lot more dopamine [...] to be this cooperative. “The poetic answer,” she continues, smiling, “is that we’re so bound up in our own nonsense that we need permission to be this nice,” in Poison Ivy #11 (2023).

I’m running out of ways to say it: Poison Ivy One of the most popular books currently on sale. It’s easy to recommend graphic novels like DucksA long-form serialized series of superhero epics in the form of Inmortal Hulk — but Poison IvyG. Willow Wilson’s comic, drew by Marcio Takara and other guests artists. This is the finest serialized, monthly comic. They weave between short fiction and main plot, with a consistent character and theme.

It is clear that the character and theme are obvious. Fake capitalism. Make human connections. Eat the rich.Delivered softly, but insistently, as an kudzu vine grows.

Standing at the bottom of the ocean with arms akimbo, Iron Man repeatedly tells a somewhat despondent psychic mosasaurus that he’s not trying to kill them in I Am Aron Man #2 (2023).

I don’t need a long explanation for this. In this week’s I Am Iron Man, Iron Man gets stuck at the bottom of the ocean and meets a sardine that’s been irradiated into a huge beast, Godzilla-style. I love Iron Man’s pouty little pose. This sardine is my favorite.

#Venoms #King #Black #meaning #Marvel #Universe