Rick Remender talks about Venom #1
Not really new news, but Rick Remender (author of the upcoming Venom series) did a little Q&A session with Marvel.com and gave us an outline of issue 1 of Venom. The article does talk about the new host as well, so if you are STILL holding off on that spoiler, you've been warned. Below is the snippet about issue 1:
Marvel.com: To close out, I wanted to talk about what exactly we're going to see in that first issue. What kind of mission is he going to be on and what can you say about the villain of the title?
Rick Remender: Our big crime boss hasn't been revealed yet and it won't be revealed till the third or fourth issue, but it's a classic Marvel villain who has been re-imagined. And his number one henchman is the Jack O'Lantern, who has been re-imagined as well. In the first issue, we're in an Eastern European war torn country. The thing about this book is that it's international in scope. The villain is not focused on one city. He's doesn't want to be the Kingpin of New York. He wants to be the Kingpin of the world. So, as an international arms dealer, he's discovered a giant vein of a substance known as Antarctic Vibranium that exists in the Savage Land. It's incredibly rare, so it makes this stuff the most valuable stuff in the Marvel Universe. And Antarctic Vibranium is a metal that melts through other metal. So, it's incredibly dangerous. There's never been enough of it to make a big deal out of, but he's discovered a giant vein of it and has discovered a means to weaponize it and turn it into readily available bullets. He's got a giant storehouse of these bullets that will literally melt through any other metal.
You get new plastic AK-47s and fire these bullets and nothing will stop [them]. If you're Iron Man, you're dead. So, the stakes are very high. Venom working for the U.S. Armed Forces is the first guy they go to, to stop this. It's not something a bunch of super heroes can deal with. Once these bullets spread across the globe, you have destabilization on a grand scale. You have chaos. The first mission is that they've distributed these bullets to a small band of racists doing genetic cleansing in an Eastern European nation. They're wholesale slaughtering everyone in the city. Venom, given his armor is organic and not metal, is the guy who can go up against these metal melting bullets. They drop him in, but he soon discovers Jack O'Lantern is there filming the results of these bullets for their infomercials. You get a really great battle between the new Venom and the new Jack O'Lantern in this war torn Eastern European nation that I think is going to turn some heads and be pretty terrific.
Like I said, there wasn't really anything that wasn't revealed last week. I do like the fact that they are using the Amazing Spider-Man series for the 'origin story' so that they can jump right into the action in issue 1.