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Venom
Shiver - Part One
1/JUNE/2003
Publisher: Tsunami / Marvel Comics
Writer: Daniel Way
Pencils: Francisco Herrera
Inks: Carlos Cuevas
Colors: Studio F
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Price: $2.25 US/R26.50 SA
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Yet another Tsunami [Marvel] book makes its way
from the printing press to a comic shop near you. This time it’s
the turn of one of Marvel’s nastiest villains to star in his
own ongoing title. Venom might not be exactly what
you thought it was going to be though…
A soldier stationed in the Arctic stumbles across a massacre inside
a remote research facility. She takes the sole survivor with her
back to her Army Radar base twenty miles away. The question is who
killed all the researchers? And is this the only survivor?
This issue turned out to be more of a horror story than a ‘super-villain’
one. It’s definitely a set-up issue as it spends a lot of
pages laying down the suspenseful setting and the preparations are
made for the central characters first appearance.
The story itself is of a relatively simple origin. If you’ve
seen any of the Alien films then you’ll easily
relate to this. The remote location, the military stumbling upon
a research facility full of dead bodies and of course… the
strange black substance found around the corpses. Of course this
issue includes a survivor of the massacre and he goes into the classic
‘manic convulsing fit’ by the end of the book.
It all seems a bit too ‘sci-fi horror movie’
for me and has far too many links to the aforementioned ‘Alien’
style plotlines to be really enjoyable. However if you dig that
kind of thing I’m sure you’ll be happy enough with this
comic.
Francisco Herrera gets a mixed reaction from me. At first I bought
this title because he was on art chores. I had seen samples of his
work and seen the obvious relation in style to a favourite artist
of mine, Humberto Ramos [Crimson, Out There, Impulse],
and so decided to give Herrera a shot. Venom has not impressed me
all that much and if it’s indicative of his future work then
I doubt I’ll be much of a lasting fan.
Apart from the exentuated hands and feet and some of the facial
expressions, Herrera’s art just doesn’t match up to
Ramos’s. It’s quite obviously a copy-cat style and perhaps
he needs a bit of a change to make it his own and to get taken a
bit more seriously. His middle distance figure work is very sketchy
and his characters get very hard to distinguish when not up close.
He tends to draw figures a little too much out of proportion and
uses a lot of geometric square-style shapes in hair and fur in this
issue. This kind of reminded me of Chris Bachalo’s[Ultimate
X-men, New X-Men, Steampunk] style for a moment and if
anything I might describe Herrera as a hybrid Bachalo /
Ramos kind of artist at this stage in his career. Overall
the art is not that impressive and seems to be lacking that original
spark which could set it off.
My main gripe about this book would have to be the fact that the
story and art don’t fit together. The story is almost a horror
and is both moody and full of suspense. The art is overdone, cartoony
and vastly, unrealistically out of proportion. The two simply don’t
match and the comic suffers because of it. Someone with a more realistic
style like Bryan Hitch [The Ultimates]
or a distinctly creepy/shadowy style like Eduardo Risso
[100 Bullets] would have been great to see alongside
this storyline.
The story, or though clichéd, was enjoyable and makes you
want to see what happens next. The art is mediocre with solid colours
by Studio F. If both story and art could come together without such
clashing styles then perhaps the title will have
a strong future. Not all that bad but then again not all that good.
Score 5/10
Reviewed By:Iain Duncan
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Comic Reviews
