Description

Amazing Spider-Man: Venom Inc. Alpha                              One-shot Variant Comic
Featuring the Variant #1B Edition w/ cover art by Adi Granov.  Awesome!!
Writers: Dan Slott & Mike Costa
Artist: Ryan Stegman
Colorist: Brian Reber
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Editors: Allison Stock, Tom Groneman, Nick Lowe & Devin Lewis
Variant Cover B by: Adi Granov

Things are worse than ever for Peter Parker. His company has gone bankrupt, and Peter has no choice but to crash on his girlfriend, Bobbi Morse A.K.A. Mockingbird’s, couch. With a full-time job as the Daily Bugle science editor and his Aunt May to worry about, only Peter’s daily patrols as the Amazing Spider-Man have given him any kind of comfort.

Things aren’t going so well for Venom, either. After months in space, the symbiote is back in New York and reunited with Eddie Brock, but its behavior has become erratic and now requires a unique serum to keep its violent impulses in check. In exchange for this serum, Venom has been covertly helping Alchemax, a chemical conglomerate, control their experiments…

Story/Spoilers
Web-swinging through Philadelphia, Mania receives a phone call from her mentor and father figure Flash Thompson, who tells her that he has yet to find his symbiote. Mania offers to travel to New York and help him using her symbiote’s connection to the Venom symbiote, but Flash tells her a new Venom has shown up and is all over the news. Coming across a mugging, Mania intervenes with Flash coaching her on combat technique, and Mania boasts that she’s become pretty good at being a superhero. As the woman she rescued thanks her, an alarm goes off and Mania tells her to call the police. Arriving at a jewelry store and dismayed to find it’s just a bunch of thugs in ski masks unloading jewelry into a black van, Mania attacks them and asks when she’ll get to face a real super villain. As if on cue, the van’s side door opens to reveal a man holding a sonic cannon, who blasts her point-blank and causes her to drop her phone, which breaks. As Andi is stunned, her symbiote rears off her with its jaws gaping, but the man and his employees simply blast her with the sonic cannon and flamethrowers. The symbiote detaches itself from Andi and tries to crawl away, leaving her naked and unconscious, but the man wielding the sonic cannon stomps on its head and claims it for himself.

At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tumbler and the Ringer prepare to steal the art on display in order to impress the Five Families. They’re surprised by Spider-Man, who cracks a joke about needing to speak to the prison warden about getting their conjugal privileges and then effortlessly defeats them. As he celebrates, his Spider-Sense goes off as Black Cat attacks him with her bladed whip, using her probability manipulation to pin him under a heavy sculpture. As she leaves to rob the place, Spider-Man receives a phone call but is pre-occupied with putting the sculpture back on its exhibit pedestal. At the airport, Flash anxiously waits for Peter to pick up.

The following day, Peter meets Flash in a café and apologizes for being missing his call, adding that he’s surprised Flash wanted to be seen in public with him after the fallout of Parker Industries’ collapse. Flash assures Peter that a few bad headlines couldn’t destroy their friendship, then admits that he needs Peter’s help. Flash tells Peter that he had been bonded to the Venom symbiote but that someone had stolen it from him a while ago. Informing Peter of the attack on Mania and that Andi had survived but was hospitalized, he states he suspects the same person was responsible and expresses concern over what they’ll do with the symbiotes. Telling Peter he’s able to sense the Venom symbiote due to lingering traces of it still inside him, he asks for Spider-Man’s assistance in getting it back. Peter remarks that Spider-Man would probably want to destroy it, shocking Flash, but when Peter tries to explain why Flash cuts him off and tells him not to get Spider-Man involved after all.

That night, the Looter pleads with Venom, saying that the automatic weapons he was carrying are fakes. Venom doesn’t buy it and snarls that Norton was previously small-time but has now graduated to a merchant of death, but the Looter hurriedly explains that they’re toy guns painted black, used by small-time criminals for stick-ups and to avoid illegal firearm possession charges if they’re caught. When the Looter protests that he’s wet himself out of terror, Venom tosses him aside and notes that fear and prison are good teachers… and then promptly sinks his claws into his shoulders, snarling that death is even better. Eddie struggles to restrain the symbiote, telling it to stop and that the Looter is just an idiot, but the symbiote retorts that he’s low-life scum, asking who’d care if they pretended the guns were real. As Eddie struggles to keep the symbiote under control, the Looter flees. Finally suppressing the symbiote, Eddie walks to Alchemax to obtain more medication. The symbiote protests that it doesn’t like the corporation, and when it notes that they’re being followed Eddie dismisses its concerns as paranoia caused by its illness. Sitting nearby, Flash Thompson watches Eddie walk past and then walks up to the security guard at the front desk, introducing himself as a childhood friend of Liz Allan. The guard promptly has Flash thrown out by security, but he manages to swipe one of the guards’ ID cards and uses it to sneak in a back entrance. Spider-Man watches from nearby, wondering whether it was worth spending his rent money on Spider-Tracers with full audio capability.

In the astro-biology lab, Eddie confronts Dr. Steven over the ineffectiveness of the cure at suppressing the symbiote’s bloodlust. Angered by Dr. Steven’s flippant response, Eddie threatens him unless he fixes what he screwed up. Dr. Steven tells Eddie that no-one screwed up, but that the symbiote has been adapting and developing an immunity to the serum – which he anticipated by making a new serum incorporating Anti-Venom so that it adapts alongside the symbiote. When Dr. Steven notes that the serum might accidentally kill the Venom symbiote but there’s no way of knowing how harmful it is without a test, Flash enters the lab and declares he isn’t going to let anyone hurt the Venom symbiote ever again. Eddie dismisses Flash’s claim to the symbiote, saying it’s back where it belongs, but Flash rebukes this by saying that he was the one who taught it to be a hero and that from what he’s seen on the news Eddie can barely control it. Starting to transform, Eddie snaps that being bonded to the symbiote isn’t about control or following orders, declaring that he is the one and only Venom and will not be separated from his symbiote. Eavesdropping, Spider-Man recognizes Eddie’s voice and decides to intervene, diving through a window and encountering the same security guards who had thrown Flash out. When they aim their guns at him, Spider-Man declares he doesn’t have time to explain and knocks them out.

Saying he’s done talking to Eddie, Flash addresses the symbiote as his partner and tells it that it’s time to fight the good fight again. Eddie starts to dismiss Flash’s efforts as futile, but to his shock the symbiote emerges from him. Eddie and Flash both try to coax the symbiote into bonding with them, and torn between its two favorite hosts it tries to bond to both of them at the same time. As Flash and Eddie struggle over the symbiote, Dr. Steven leaves to check on what’s taking security so long to arrive. Spider-Man rips open the door to Dr. Steven’s lab, causing him to ask if Liz hired him after the collapse of Parker Industries. Spider-Man says that he’s here for Eddie and Flash, and then dives into the fray to separate Flash from the symbiote. Flash tells Spider-Man to back off and that he can feel the symbiote returning to him, but Eddie shouts that he and the symbiote were meant to be together. Declaring both of them insane for wanting to be bonded to the symbiote, Spider-Man starts ripping chunks of the alien off and tossing them into one of the vats. Upon hearing that the vat’s contents are harmful to symbiotes and not humans, Spider-Man promptly overturns one of them, missing Eddie but dousing Flash. The serum alters the part of the Venom symbiote bonded to Flash, transforming him into Anti-Venom; and he transforms his new white-and-black symbiote to mirror his old Agent Venom look.

At a pub, the Looter tells the bartender about Venom trying to eat him, but is interrupted by a man who offers him a spot in his new criminal organization. Norton refuses, saying he works alone, but the man says that this is an offer Norton can’t refuse and then spits a gob of symbiote biomass into his eyes. Norton collapses as the biomass covers his face, and then tells his new boss not to worry about a thing. Lee Price, wearing the Mania symbiote as a mask and trench coat, introduces himself as Maniac and welcomes the Looter into his gang, revealing he’s taken over the bar’s other patrons as well.

… story continues in The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) Issue #792.  Marvel Comics

One-Shot Variant Comic is bagged & triple boarded and will be carefully / securely packaged then shipped via USPS Priority Mail to ensure that it arrives to you perfectly and quickly.

First Printing
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Publication Date: February 2018
Format: FC, 48 pages, Comic, 10.25″ x 6.65″
UPC: 759606087907

Collectible Entertainment note: One-Shot Variant Comic is in Very Fine to Very Fine + condition.  Beautiful!  Please See Scans!!  A must have for any serious Spider-Man and/or Venom collector / enthusiast.  A fun & entertaining read.  Highly Recommended.

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