{"id":4091,"date":"2018-03-19T21:03:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T21:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4091"},"modified":"2018-03-19T21:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T21:03:09","slug":"x-men-blue-venom-poison-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4091","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Blue \/ Venom: Poison-X"},"content":{"rendered":"

There must be people out there somewhere who can summon up enthusiasm for a five-part crossover between\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> and\u00a0Venom<\/em>. \u00a0I am not one of them. \u00a0I rather envy them their sunny optimism. \u00a0It must make the world a more cheering place.<\/p>\n

Specifically, “Poison-X” runs through\u00a0X-Men Blue Annual<\/em> #1,\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> #21-22, and\u00a0Venom<\/em> #162-163 (which pretty much reduces the Annual to issue #20-and-a-half). \u00a0You may be wondering what might reasonably link the time-travelling junior X-Men with Venom. \u00a0And there really doesn’t seem to be an answer to that, beyond one link which this story generates, apparently to set us up for a sequel. \u00a0But I’m left entirely unconvinced that the world needed one X-Men \/ Venom crossover, let alone two.<\/p>\n

In fact, this is a Venom story first and foremost. \u00a0The entire thing is written by Cullen Bunn, and it turns out to be a sequel to his\u00a0Venomverse<\/em>. \u00a0On top of that, it leads into the\u00a0next\u00a0Venom<\/em> tie-in mini,\u00a0Venomized<\/em>. \u00a0And… seriously, it’s a Venom story. \u00a0What is it doing in three issues of\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Trawling for a plot hook, the book settles on the idea that Venom’s symbiote is from space, and space is also where Cyclops’s dad is. \u00a0So a bunch of space pirates with their own symbiotes attack and kidnap the Starjammers in order to claim the bounty on their heads. \u00a0That interrupts a video call between Corsair and Scott, so Scott realises there’s a bunch of symbiotes involved and decides to round up the X-Men and pressgang Venom into helping out, before giving chase into space. \u00a0Which apparent is something they can do using Danger, because the plot requires that she can do that now.<\/p>\n

Venom isn’t especially interested in helping out. \u00a0Or rather, Eddie Brock isn’t. \u00a0But his symbiote is quite keen to rescue its fellow symbiotes, who are presumably being bought and sold as weapons, so it drags him along to help out. \u00a0This all leads to the X-Men getting their own symbiotes so that we can have venomized X-Men teaming with Venom to rescue the Starjammers. \u00a0At that point the Poisons show up, which is meant to be a big deal, because we’re meant to have read\u00a0Venomverse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is where I tune out. \u00a0The Poisons are the main bad guys from\u00a0Venomverse<\/em>, and from what little I’ve seen of it, they’re a fiddly, overcomplicated idea. \u00a0They’re little phantomy creatures who can kill symbiote-users with one touch, the idea being that this makes the Venom symbiotes a massive disadvantage, rather than a power-up. \u00a0So it’s kind of an attempt to create a villain that inverts the Venom concept. \u00a0But once they’ve touched somebody, they take over the entire body, symbiote and user both, and you get a sort of character who is still a Poison but also sort of a version of the original character too. \u00a0Oh, and this time the Venoms can<\/em> touch them, because otherwise there wouldn’t be much fighting.<\/p>\n

It’s convoluted and profoundly dull. \u00a0There doesn’t seem to be anything very interesting about the Poisons beyond a rulebook-based power set designed specifically to play off Venom. \u00a0Nothing in particular would make them especially relevant as X-Men villains, were it not for the fact that the plot has shoehorned the X-Men into wearing their own symbiotes too.<\/p>\n

The art has its moments; Jacopo Camagni (on the\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> issues) does a good Jean Grey, draws alien worlds which feel somewhat lived in, and does some nice Venomised designs for the X-Men – Iceman works particularly well as an insubstantial shadowy figure. \u00a0The Venom<\/em> issues suffer from having two artists working in visibly different styles – Edgar Salazar and Ario Anindito – but both are fine on their own terms. \u00a0And the death-mask facial designs of the Poisoned characters are somewhat interesting, though otherwise they feel a bit bland.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t an X-Men story and it never manages to persuade me otherwise. \u00a0We’re evidently not done with all this because – spoilers – Jean gets Poisoned at the end and left behind in space. \u00a0She’s obviously not dead – the story doesn’t seriously try to persuade us of that – but that storyline is clearly going to have to be picked up and resolved somewhere. \u00a0Perhaps that’ll be in\u00a0Venomized<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This all feels tremendously boring. \u00a0It probably works better as a Venom story, where at least you have the angle of the big bad guys pursuing Eddie back to Earth. \u00a0But for the X-Men, they’re just running around in the margins of somebody else’s plot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There must be people out there somewhere who can summon up enthusiasm for a five-part crossover between\u00a0X-Men Blue and\u00a0Venom. \u00a0I am not one of them. \u00a0I rather envy them their sunny optimism. \u00a0It must make the world a more cheering place. Specifically, “Poison-X” runs through\u00a0X-Men Blue Annual #1,\u00a0X-Men Blue #21-22, and\u00a0Venom #162-163 (which pretty much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4093,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091\/revisions\/4093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}