Marvel Announces Brand New Venom With Mysterious Host

A new one Poison series is a spin-off of the father-son struggle between Eddie and Dylan Brock in Venom WarThe event by current Poison architect Al Ewing pits Eddie Brock and Dylan Brock against each other, each believing the other is the cause of a hellish future yet to come. Ironically, neither character is in possession of the Klyntar, with the Venom symbiote instead reuniting with Spider-Man in Venom War‘s opening number. However, it looks like the web-slinger won’t be keeping the symbiote, as Marvel has officially revealed All-New Venom (via Polygon).

Brand New Venom is by writer Al Ewing and artist Carlos G?mez. Unlike Ewing’s previous Poison – which was a time-traveling, cosmic affair – Brand New Venom will be a street-level comic book story featuring a mysterious character under the slimy symbiote suit. While the identity of the character is being kept under wraps, we get four suspects that will be familiar to Marvel fans: Rick Jones, Madame Masque, Robbie Robertson, and Luke Cage.

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Cover for the brand new Venom #1

– Marvel Comics)

Venom returns to its street-level roots

“If people have a strong hankering for something different than I do, this is it. It’s almost more of a Spider-Man story. It’s set on Earth, very much in a regular New York City. Everywhere we go in the story is a place you could go, or at least the type of place you could go. Obviously, if we go to a warehouse… well, I tend to go to real warehouses, and change them just enough to be legal. So yeah, everywhere we go in this story is a natural place you could go in New York City,” Ewing said of Brand New Venom via the street level route.

“So we’re taking a swing away from the big cosmic thing. The pendulum swings away from that and back to a much more intimate, character-driven story, but also has a lot of that ground-level superhero action, where it’s less about cosmic entities battling in each other’s mindscapes, or mysterious zones outside of time, and much more on the streets — web-slinging, chain-slinging, doing the Venom thing. It’s almost like going back to an old-school kind of superhero comic, but with a few twists that we’re going to have fun throwing in.”

The Four Guest Contestants of All-New Venom

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Character Design Sheet for the All New Venom

– Marvel Comics)

Of Rick Jones, Ewing said, “It’s good to write a version of Rick who’s been through a lot of stuff and come out the other side. This is a much more laid-back, jokey, witty Rick than we’re used to from me. He’s not going through it anymore… unless he’s going through something else now. Who knows…”

Next up is Madame Masque. “Madame Masque is another big suspect. She comes straight from the Gang warfarewhere we last saw her in a Spidey context. She has plans. Do those plans involve taking a symbiote? Do they involve taking revenge on other gangs in an identity no one would ever suspect? The ultimate mask for Madame Masque? I can’t possibly comment on that…” Ewing said.

“Robbie Robertson is another one who was touched by the great Gang War and Spidey. He’s never been tempted by power or superpowers. Did that change after his son got so involved in the criminal underworld of New York and fell in love with the Beetle? Does Robbie want to find a way to control things in a way that you know he can’t as a newspaperman? Is this one of the great secret identities, like Clark Kent, a newspaper reporter — or newspaper editor, in Robbie’s case — who hears about problems and then goes out and deals with them?”

And finally, we have Mayor Luke Cage: “We’ve seen heroes get symbiotes to get a little bit more done. And we’ve seen Luke Cage struggle to get out on the streets and do what he loves to do while sitting behind the mayor’s desk. Could this be a way to do that? Could this be a way to don another identity, kick the ass that he knows needs to be kicked, but in a capacity where he’s not officially dealing with it? He doesn’t have to answer questions that he would answer if he was going out on the streets in his mayoral garb and doing what he used to do for the community. Maybe a symbiote is the perfect cover for him. Again, who knows? I’m just saying words. These are all possibilities…”

Brand New Venom #1 will be available for purchase from December.