Saturday, July 09, 2011
Comic Art
SO BAD, THEY'RE GOOD
WELL USUALLY, BUT IN THIS CASE WE MIGHT MAKE AN EXCEPTION
Rarely have I had less of a liking for a more popular villain that I have for for the Spidey arch-nemesis - Venom. So popular he has been blatantly ripped off (see this space in a few weeks), Venom has likely surpassed Doc Ock and Goblin in popularity.
Venom's origin is Todd Macfarlane's success and the rescue of one of the worst turns a comic icon has ever taken. Orginally Venom was nothing more than an effort to update Spidey's costume that proved so unpopular that they turned it into a bad guy in order to get rid of it. Nope, throwing it into the trash was not good enough for this failure of a design, they had to make it a villain. Thus Venom was born.
Macfarlane took the character absolutely over the top and developed a visual style with it that was revolutionary at the time, and stunning. Needless to say, it caught on. And yet, I look at this image at left and its uncanny resemblance to the later Macfarlane creation of "Spawn" that one wonders just where Macfarlane's creativity began and ended.
But that is an aside. Like most really good villains, this one sees some sort of redemption and is currently masquerading as a "good guy" in the post Civil War Marvel universe, but it is too evil to ever get away with that for long. My opinion - the character survives purely on its look, for there is no depth. It has undergone so many incarnations at this point that you need a name-and-number program just to know who you are dealing with.
Popular yes, a good bad guy - not so much.
WELL USUALLY, BUT IN THIS CASE WE MIGHT MAKE AN EXCEPTION
Rarely have I had less of a liking for a more popular villain that I have for for the Spidey arch-nemesis - Venom. So popular he has been blatantly ripped off (see this space in a few weeks), Venom has likely surpassed Doc Ock and Goblin in popularity.Venom's origin is Todd Macfarlane's success and the rescue of one of the worst turns a comic icon has ever taken. Orginally Venom was nothing more than an effort to update Spidey's costume that proved so unpopular that they turned it into a bad guy in order to get rid of it. Nope, throwing it into the trash was not good enough for this failure of a design, they had to make it a villain. Thus Venom was born.
Macfarlane took the character absolutely over the top and developed a visual style with it that was revolutionary at the time, and stunning. Needless to say, it caught on. And yet, I look at this image at left and its uncanny resemblance to the later Macfarlane creation of "Spawn" that one wonders just where Macfarlane's creativity began and ended.But that is an aside. Like most really good villains, this one sees some sort of redemption and is currently masquerading as a "good guy" in the post Civil War Marvel universe, but it is too evil to ever get away with that for long. My opinion - the character survives purely on its look, for there is no depth. It has undergone so many incarnations at this point that you need a name-and-number program just to know who you are dealing with.
Popular yes, a good bad guy - not so much.
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