Customer Reviews

Batman: Venom

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The reason why Batman is one of the most fascinating characters in comics is because his has always been the most human of environments. No super powers of any kind. Only a man guided by his values, intellect, strength and will power. And it is this last trait that becomes the critical element in "Venom," a work that shows us why Michael Keaton never would have donned the cape and cowl if Denny O'Neil had never existed.

"Venom" shows us that the Batman is only as strong as the Bruce Wayne beneath the cowl. When the latter weakens, the former disappears. Bruce becomes addicted to venom, a sort of super-steroid, and must go through hell and back to once again become the man he was. This is made even more difficult due to the fact that Bruce's self-righteousness and stubbornness only give rise to an enormous feeling of self-loathing.

This is one of the Batman books that best illustrates what it takes to be a hero. All human beings are flawed, and everyone falls at one time. But it takes a true hero to summon up the best in his/her humanity to rise again. Beyond leaping tall buildings in a single bound or clinging to walls, "Venom" shows that the true nature of a super-hero lies closer to home than we'd expect, and that no character in comics exemplifies it like Batman.

Truly the best of the Legends of the Dark Knight series, Venom is the frightening story of Batman's lapse into performance-enhancing drugs, and how he must literally climb his way back into rehabilitation. Batman's human side is displayed with such realism that you actually hate what he becomes and then feel the pain he goes through. An interesting sidenote is that the drug, Venom, used in this story is also the substance that Bane, the villain who breaks the Batman in Knightfall, uses as a steroid and strength-builder.

"Batman: Venom" is a story that compels the Batman reader in a very different manner. Much like "Knightfall," one must endure a period of helplessness with Bruce. As someone whose confidence is so important, because he lacks powers, Batman has lost his central strength.

The story begins as Batman has trailed kidnappers to an abandoned mine. In a heavy rain, the mine is flooding, with a little girl trapped inside. Frantically searching, Batman finds the girl behind a rock. He moves each rock and finally approaches the largest, nearly a boulder. The space behind the rock is filling and in desperation, Batman cannot move it. Before his very eyes, the spark of innocence is extinguished as the girl succumbs to death.

Though Batman has had his back broken, been injected with the world's deadliest poisons, and endured psychological torture, watching the girl die struck him still more deeply. Assuming the guilt that belongs to the kidnappers, Batman tries to gain strength. The father of the girl is a pharmacist who has perfected the ultimate "performance enhancer."

Batman accepts the package of pills and finally decides to take them. What Batman doesn't know, however, is that the drugs harbor addictive properties. The rest of the story is primarily a struggle within Batman to beat a foreign substance that threatens to take over his own body and mind.

The struggle within is masterfully told, and Batman has never seen so desperate an hour. The reason I don't give a five is twofold: First, Batman putting it in his system without analyzing it at the Batcave? The writers explain that some, but still it is unbelievable. Second: He has his utility belt, and I am surprised nothing in there would have been useful to save the girl.

However, the death of the girl is the first necessary tragedy in a string of brutal losses and sorrowful events. This is one of the saddest Batman stories I have ever read, with the possible exception of "Night Cries." Can Batman conquer demons when they are his own?

Title: Batman: Venom
Publisher: DC
Writer: Dennis O'Neil
Artists: Trevor Von Eeden, Russel Braun
Inker: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Collects: Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20
Price: $9.95

Originally this story came out back in 1992 - back in my college days when I still bought many, many comics on a monthly basis. Although this is an older story, however, it's still a good one - definitely worth the paltry cover price of $10.00. Most of you reading this review are probably familiar with the Batman: Knightfall storyline, in which Batman has his back broken by Bane. Well, this storyline was a prelude (of sorts) to the events that led to that momentous story.

In this story, Batman finds a kidnapped girl trapped in a sewer, but can do nothing to prevent her from drowning as he is unable to move the large, heavy rocks blocking the tunnel. Grieving from his failure, Batman is offered a "designer drug" by the dead girl's father - a drug that he claims would have enabled Batman the strength necessary to have saved his daughter. At first, Batman declines the offer. Later, however, tired and beaten, he accepts the drugs to help him overcome his weakness. Thus begins his eventual addiction to the drug.

Once again, Batman is portrayed here as a very human hero. He has far more physical limitations than many of his spandex-clad brethren, and faced with the possibility that he just may not be good enough to save children from dying, he does what he can to raise the level of his abilities. Unfortunately, this drug comes at a steep price, as do most any drugs. The side effects of the drug hamper Batman's reasoning skills, his emotional stability, and his aspirations to continually push his mental knowledge of everything he can. Alfred notices the changes right away, and tries to steer his friend back on track, but, as so often occurs with addicts, Bruce fails to see his own problem. Like many real-world addicts, Bruce must sink to an emotional and physical low before he has the strength to divorce himself from the drug's addictive power. It's a great tale in the telling, and one with many real-life parallels.

Dennis O'Niel, in the foreword, states that this story was years in the making, and I'm certainly glad he finally had the outlet and the opportunity to share it with us. It's a tale that any Batman fan will love, and a tale that I would recommend to any comic fan in general. I'm glad I finally got around to trying this one out. Maybe now I'll try to find a copy of Knightfall to read through, too.

The artwork in this book is typical DC. What is that, you ask? It's good but not great. For decades, DC has taken a backseat to Marvel in terms of landing good artists. I think that DC really closed the gap in these last ten years, but this tale was from back in the day when DC just couldn't keep good artists in their stable for one reason or another. In fact, the artwork in this book - at the time it was originally published in comic form - was some of the best DC has to offer. By today's higher standards and newer technology that is implemented, this book looks dated. That's OK, though, and I'll take that into consideration when I hand out the art score. Don't assume this is bad art, because it's not. It's just not stellar and not up to the higher standards that contemporary comic readers are used to. Besides, the story is good enough that you won't mind if the artwork isn't as good, and the colorist did a pretty nice job, too.


Writing: 9/10
Artwork: 7/10
Cool Factor: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

This graphic novel reprints Legends of the Dark Knight #16 to 20. In a nutshell, Batman becomes addicted to a strength enhancing drug after he fails to save the life of a little girl. The story is well told, although there are some plot holes. Like, what is happening in Gotham while Batman is detoxing for a month? And of course, some may say that it is out of character for Batman to use drugs in the first place. But, for what it is, it is an entertaining comic book.

These are all words that describe Batman: Venom. After Batman fails to save a little girl from drowning before his very eyes, he begins to question his abilities. The little girl's father has the perfect solution, a new designer steroid called Venom that will build Batman's muscles as he sits doing detective work. He begins taking it with strictly good intentions, but soon finds himself turning his back on everything and everyone he holds dear, turning into the type of monster he fights. Soon he's lost in a world of designer super soldiers and designer drugs that tests his faith in himself. Though not mentioned in this story it is interesting that venom is later the drug that would help create Bane.

O'Neil and Von Eeden are at the top of their game with his brutal, cold story, that ranks among the great works by Miller such as Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It also is every bit as gritty as The Killing Joke. I can not recommend this strongly enough.

Batman Venom reprints Batman Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20.

Everybody knows that when a person gets addicted to hard-drugs his dealer can make him do just about anything in order to get his next fix. But what if the one who gets addicted is Batman ?! That's what this story (collecting "Legends of the Dark Knight" #16-20) is about. When Batman oneday fails to get to a kidnapped child in time to save her life, due to psychical lack of strength, he accepts some strength-boosting steroid pills (like Bane's) from the girls father who engineered them, in order to never fail that way again. Only it turns out that the man is of ill will and the pills very addictive. In the beginning Batman gets the pills for free but the supply gets thinner and thinner and once Batman is fully addicted, and his supply of pills gone, he has to start following certain orders to keep getting them. The pills have some other nasty side-effects as well. One of them being Bruce losing a big part of his humanity, and the streets of Gotham get more dangerous than ever now Batman, the one who's supposed to be the savior of the streets, is more aggresive as ever before. And that's without even mentioning his sudden lack of any morality. Batman just isn't Batman anymore and something needs to be done about his current state of being or else the future looks very bleak for Gotham. And that's not the end of it because Batman turns out to be just a guinea-pig to test the effect of the pills, which are meant for an operation much bigger than this.

This book has a good and fluent story which will give most Batman fans a satisfactory read. The art is nothing spectacular but it's more than sufficient to get you through the story. However, compared to a lot of other stories collected from the early "Legends of the Dark Knight" series this is really pretty mediocre. The dialoguing and the motives of the characters could have been a lot better, more worked out, and most of all, more original. For example, the bad guys (mere men) wanting to rule the world , instead of having a more realistic and original goal, is pretty dusty by now. It's a real shame because the story starts very promising and full of potential, you really start to think you have something unique in your hands at one point, but turns into something we've seen so many times before halfway. It's like the writer goes on automatic pilot all of a sudden. If you don't have them already you're better off getting stories like "Gothic" (#6-10) and/or "Prey" (#11-15), and THEN this one (or if you're also open to get something that's not from the "Legend of the Dark Knight" series, things like 'The Killing Joke', 'The Long Halloween', 'Cataclysm', 'Dark Knight Returns' and 'Year One' are much better choices). It's like I said, it's a nice story for Batfans but it shouldn't be considered as a priority.

Back when I was around five or six my dad brought home a copy of Venom: Part 3, a free sample he recieved from a printing company. Venom stands out for me in many ways: It was one of the first three comic books I ever owned, the other two being Spider-Man. It introduced me to Batman, and I later traded in my Spider-Man comics for other Batman issues. It also included the most brutal, violent, death I had ever witnessed, and even today I still skip that page when I come to it. But reading 'Venom' changed me. I wouldn't go as far as to say it was mental scarring, but it was pretty dramatic nonetheless.

Unfortunately, as things turned out, I never got a chance to read the other parts of 'Venom' until well over a decade later. Dad may have given me my first comic, but he and mom weren't too keen on me constantly spending money on comic books. It wasn't until I had my own source of pocket money that I picked up the trade paperback.

As much as I want to give Venom five stars out of sentimental value, the story does have a few holes which bump it down a notch. The first two parts of the story are the best; Batman fails to save the life of a little girl, and his failure haunts him so badly that he decides to take strengh-enhancing pills to find the killers and bring them down. By part two, the pills have turned Batman into an amoral monster, which creates friction between him and Alfred. Part three marks Batman's attempt to cleanse himself, but besides the violent death I mentioned earlier, this part is merely transitional. The same goes for the fourth part, which finds Batman and Alfred tracking a rogue general and the creator of the pills to a small island called Santa Prisca. Part five fares much better, as Batman is put in a life or death trap, and must resist the temptation to use the pills during his escape. The artwork was standard fare for the 'Legends of the Dark Knight' series, but that book always had better artwork than the basic Batman titles, so there's no complaint here.

'Venom' might not be on par with other trade paperbacks such as "The Killing Joke" and "Dark Knight Returns", but as a general rule, any Batman trade paperback is worth reading. Batman is one of the most human of all superheroes, but constantly tries to overcome his own flaws, which is what this story is about. Recommended read, just don't show part 3 to young, impressionable children!

An early tale in Batman's career that was written following the Knightfall saga to tie into the introduction of Bane's strenth enhancing Venom. Batman can't save a young girl in time and as a result gives into the drug developed by her father Dr. Randolph Porter. I don't like the fact that Batman could have easily cut her loose instead of wasting his time trying to lift a ridiculously heavy rock but oh well.

Batman begins using the pills and gets addicted in no time. He comes back for more and meets up with General Slaycroft, a man working with Porter to develop mindless brutes to carry out their dirty work, and they want to have Batman under their control. The best part about this story is watching how the drug takes over Batman as well as Slaycroft's innocent weakling son Tim, their first successful experiment. Alfred even quits as a result of Bruce's drastic change in personality until Bruce calls for help.

With Alfred's help Batman kicks the drugs and they make their way to a remote island Santa Prisca. It was nice to see Alfred a little more involved. Dennis O'Neil did the same thing in Sword of Azrael which was cool, except that this time all he used him for was to get captured as bait which was dissapointing. Slaycroft turns out to be a pretty ruthless man with Porter not any better, and as much as I enjoy some of Batman's more colorful rogue's, it's cool when a writer can tell a decent Batman story without relying too heavily on the higher profile villains.

With only a few minor complaints, I still enjoyed Venom and would reccomend checking it out to fans of Batman's early career.

This series is the best story arc that I have read from thethe Legends of the Dark Knight series. It also introduces the venom drug, which Bane would later use in his successful attempt to break the Batman.
But this is a good story in itself. In it Batman becomes adicted to the same drug and struggles to overcome the addiction.
Dennis O'Neil proves he is still one of the greatest writers ever to work on Batman and the artwork is also great.