Venom #42

"Venom" has been one of my personal favorite series from Marvel, It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary either. It was simply tale of a guy trying to control a monster inside of him, a story of a hero who tried to follow the footsteps of his hero while ending up going in a different direction. Long story short, it was a good, consistent series which had a lot of fun moments, and I had hoped that it would have had a good, or at least a fulfilling ending, however, it failed to deliver this.

First of all, one of the main problems I noticed right after I finished reading this was the fact that it didn't feel like an ending, in fact, I'm sure it could have gone on for at least two more issues. Now I'm not sure if Bunn wasn't involved in making the decision on when the title should have ended, but the fact remains that this was a very inconclusive ending to a decent story. When I was done reading I had a lot of questions on my mind, and the one character who could have provided us with answers teased us even further. The "character" I'm referring to is of course mephisto. Flash states himself that he has a lot of connections, so calling for Mephisto was strike one. Something about calling and trusting the king of evil doesn't seem very logical too me. Moreover, I found it very odd that flash would act so brashly with the Devil himself, yeah, he's brave, but he should also be aware of how powerful mephisto really is, so shooting him in the face( which was, as you may have guessed, ineffective. That's strike too) and letting Mania take a demanding tone with him (Strike three) was not such a bright idea. Which brings me two my next point, Andi ( Mania) has suffered and changed considerably during due to the recent events in her life, but any normal teenager would have at least been a little more scared when facing a tall, red, demon-looking humanoid. She's braver than most teens, yes, bu she's not brave enough, or at least shouldn't be brave enough to insult and threaten the Devil, even if she is ready to fight him.

Also Mephisto is supposed to provide us with answers and fill in some gaps, but all he really does is gives us some minor teasers and say something like " I'd love to explain, but screw it", which would be fine if this was a simple mid-arc issue, or even if the series wasn't ending, but unfortunately this was the last damn issue, and it really annoyed me that we weren't given a solid answer on what the hell was exactly going on. Furthermore, we never find out who the hell crossbones was working for, we just get told that he's a major bad guy and that's about as far as the explanation goes. The problem with this issue isn't that it's bad, because if the series had been going I could see how this would have qualified as a good issue, but Bunn doesn't approach it as the ending to the series, in fact, like I said before, it feels like an everyday issue, as if it holds no significance Even if the series gets relaunched, this is not how this title should have been concluded.

On the other hand, the action in this issue was absolutely amazing. It was absolutely fun and energetic, plus the artists gritty nature was very fitting for the book IMO, the pages were sketchy and dark and really set the tone for the whole situations. But the art wasn't flawless either, because Jorge's art normal static panels are not as good as his actions ones. In fact the characters look really terrible to me sometimes.

Overall I was immensely disappointed as I really did have high hopes for this book and what I got in return was something really confusing and incomplete.

Recommendation: Honestly, If you've come This far you might as well pick it up, but it was a major disappointment for me, so my over answer would still be No.