With a solo Venom movie finally being made a reality this coming fall, it only makes sense that Marvel place as much focus as they can on one of their most popular anti-heroes throughout 2018. And with a boatload of curious new readers sure to venture out to comic shops and bookstores, it’s not a bad idea in the slightest to provide them with a friendly jumping on point.
Much like the recently announced new Avengers series, the House of Ideas will be rolling Venom back to issue #1, which you may have seen coming. Set to be written by Donny Cates (God Country) with art and covers provided by Ryan Stegman (Superior Spider-Man), this looks to be a creative team capable of making new fans and satisfying old ones. In fact, we invite you to look at some of Stegman’s pencils for the first issue in the gallery below.
Of course, this is all part of the publisher’s upcoming “Fresh Start” initiative set to launch this spring, about which Marvel’s SVP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort had this to say:
“Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be rolling out new beginnings for a few of our key franchises—new creative teams, new starting points, new storylines—all the big stuff that we’ve been building towards since LEGACY began. This isn’t a clearing of the slate—while these new starts will kick off with new #1s, we’ll be maintaining the classic LEGACY issue counts as dual numbering on these titles as well. Oh, and don’t read anything into not seeing a character on the Jim Cheung piece…we can only squeeze so many characters onto there without killing poor Jim!”
Now, all of these new #1’s may confuse you, what with Marvel recently returning many of their enduring titles to classic numbering. But, if you were to ask us, they knew certain milestone issues – The Mighty Thor #700 and Amazing Spider-Man #800, for example – were coming up, and those would no doubt rake in some dough. But with those soon to be behind us, it’s open season on the next slew of #1’s.
Venom #1 arrives in comic shops on May 9th.