Venom #17 – Review

By: Rick Remender & Cullen Bunn (writers), Kev Walker (pencils), Terry Pallot (inks), Chris Sotomayor (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: Flash attempts to kill Crime-Master to extricate himself from his situation once and for all.

The Review:  The first thing to address with this issue are the two big additions to the creative team.  Honestly, co-writer Cullen  Bunn’s impact doesn’t at all change the issue and were it not for the credits page, this issue might as well have been written by Remender alone.  That’s a very good thing, as it means this issue follows the winning formula that’s fueled it for 16 issues or so and Bunn’s input only keeps that going, rather than changing anything up.  The desperate, gritty, and tragic narration by Flash, for instance, is still very much in play and as solid as ever.

The other big addition is Kev Walker on art.  Walker is a natural pick for a series like this, but he actually seems to tone down some of his idiosyncrasies.  For instance, his trademark blocky anatomy only shows up, slightly, in his take on Megatak (which ends up looking really cool).  Otherwise, Walker holds pretty true to the aesthetic and look established for the series by Tony Moore.  Much like Bunn, he doesn’t upset the formula.  As such, what we get is a comic that looks like one of those badass cartoons that played in the wee hours of the night on Cartoon Network (or Teletoon, for my fellow Canadians).  The highest praise I can give Walker’s art,  however, is that he is the only artist to draw an issue of Remender’s Venom that I truly felt did not fall short of Tony Moore’s work on the book.

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Best of the past week: American Vampire #26 – This issue was a real treat.  For one thing, it introduced me to a wonderful fill-in artist in Roger Cruz.  I’d love to see more of his work after this AV stint is finished.  Seriously….how is Vertigo able to continually find guys of this caliber to fill in when most comic series are only able to get a B-lister (at best)?  The story is also really compelling.  Scott Snyder’s story about a black vampire in 1950’s Alabama has just enough depth and complexity to be interesting if you scratch the surface, but not require you read the comic 10 times and still be confused or have to wait 5 years for the pay-off.  Runner-up: FF #17 (for accomplishing the rare feat of making me laugh at a comic book).