Imagine some time after Venom #8, Sleeper makes a trip back to NYC, blasting Kinks all the way, to visit his parents, but finds no one at home. Then he saw the news of the “Dragon” attack. And after some digging, he found Dylan Brock.
I just read The Hunger, aka that Venom comic that had all that explicit romantic imagery in it back in the ‘90s, and it is wild. I have…many more feelings than expected.
Like, it starts out projecting this very specific flavor of destructive, misanthropic machismo that I associate with Taxi Driver (which, sure enough, get referenced in the comic). The underclass of NYC (of which Eddie is a part) are literally depicted as monsters and ghouls, and the relationship between Eddie and the symbiote has explicit romantic imagery attached to it, but that imagery is painted as demented and creepy.
Add to this some pretty heavy queer subtext.
(continued under the cut because long post is long)
Thank you for the great insight because for me it’s hard to tell whether The Hunger is being genuine for the queer context or just using is for dark humor. It’s great to know the background of the NYC too.
They’re on the Kree battleship for about five minutes before they’re caught and shot out of the nearest airlock.
What the fuck, Eddie thinks, and can’t stop himself there, his thoughts circling an endless howling loop of What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
“Stop it,” Venom instructs, from where they’re trying to pick the lock on the airlock control panel. “You are distracting us.” There’s an awkward little squirm from somewhere near Eddie’s small intestines that makes Eddie think Venom is also a little embarrassed at how it’s making them look, which is stupid because Spiderman plainly lost consciousness about thirty seconds ago, and even though the kid’s only not drifting off into the endless cold and black because they’ve got a tentacle wrapped around one of his ankles, Eddie’s jealous of him. His suit has an oxygen pack. Fucking Stark tech.
“We are better than Stark tech,” Venom says, insulted. “Stop overreacting.”
This is not an over-reaction, Eddie protests, suddenly aware that he’s sweating so much he’s shivering. This is–this is outer goddamn space, V!
“So?”
So that’s not right! That’s not where we’re supposed to be, we’re supposed to be–on a planet, on a ship, somewhere with oxygen, anywhere that’s not the–jesus christ, the literal fucking void.
“We are on a spaceship,” Venom points out, and stomps one foot down on the hull, as if to remind Eddie of the facts of their situation, when he absolutely doesn’t need to be reminded. Frighteningly, the hull dents a little under their foot.
We’re on the outside of a spaceship!!!!! Very different from being in a ship, V!!!! Humans are not supposed to be in outer space, or like, like if we are, we’re supposed to wear space suits. Eddie is sweating so much he starts shivering, even totally encased in symbiote.
“We don’t need a space suit,” Venom says sharply, and takes control of their reflexes to stop the shaking. “We are superior to any suit.”
Oh my god, don’t get jealous, Eddie says, and feels a hysterical swell of laughter welling up. I just–I need reliable access to oxygen, V.
“I am healing our oxygen-deprivation damage, Eddie. You won’t feel a thing. And I don’t need to breathe.”
Like, Eddie tries. Like also psychologically. I need oxygen psychologically.
“You’re so delicate,” Venom complains. “Fine.”
The airlock pops open with a hiss.
Oh my god, Eddie thinks, delirious with relief. Oh my god, I love you.
“You do?” Venom asks, plainly delighted.
You–live in my head! Eddie thinks, and this time he’s the one giving an embarrassed internal wriggle. You know this.
“We still like to hear it,” Venom says, and hauls Spiderman through the airlock, where he lands with an ungentle thunk.
You’re such a goddamn sap. I love you like I love air. Come on, take a breath. Let’s wake the kid up.
I just realized “I’ve survived the Mike Costa Transformers comic, I can survive whatever 2018 Marvel Venom dish out. It won’t be worse then that.” Must be a very confusing statement to comic Venom fans lol
LMFAO earlier today I was JUST thinking about what a bizarro plot twist this is, as a person in both of these fandoms?
2009: Mike Costa writes some of the actual worst comics in human history, so bad that their notoriety spread beyond the Transformers fandom. Mike Costa claims that the Transformers aren’t real people with real emotions, and can’t have relationships because there aren’t any girls.
2012: James Roberts swoops in with More Than Meets The Eye, decides that all the Transformers are actually gay and live in a homonormative society, and gives us a buffet of canon queer relationships.
(We cross over to a parallel universe or alternate timeline, probably)
2016: Mike Costa writes Venom and gives us a tender, domestic, and fully queer story about a man and alien being struggling to overcome their checkered histories to be better for themselves and each other. Eddie and Venom both make a real effort to improve the communication and trust in their relationship, grow together as people, and have a child that Venom wants to raise in Eddie’s image.
2018: Don Cates writes Venom and begins the process of aggressively no-homo’ing Costa’s run by looping us back to the 2000s and making sure to loudly proclaim how terrible Eddie and Venom are and always have been for each other, how they don’t even like each other actually, and how their whole relationship is in fact nothing more than a toxic metaphor for Angst and Darkness!!11!1
HAHAHHAHA THANK YOU FOR WRITING THE HISTORY OUT
Mike “Transformers can’t love because they have no females” Costa
?
?? Alien abduction?? Some sort of Enlightment?? Mirror Verse Crossover??
?
Mike “Symbiote and Eddie Brock are in love this is a love story” Costa
It has just come to my attention that Mike Costa teamed up with James Roberts to write the transformers “Chaos” storyline, which was pretty good from what i‘ve heared
And after that his attitude towards transformers fiction seemed to have changed…
To put it simly: i think James Roberts is indirectly responsible for making Venom gay
Hold on. What of the Mike Costa tf run is legendary bad? Obv the whole they’re not people thing is fucking bullshit, but that also seems contrary to what he wrote (unless there was a ghost writer)?
Oh my, where do I start.
Mike Costa missed everything important about Transformers.
His run started with the last story arc All Hai Megatron. The story ended with the Decepticons defeated and stranded on Earth. It is a mess itself (AHM has mixed review at best) but at least it leave an empty slate, so it’s not a Hot Mess.
But Costa chose to let the human be the focus of his story. The human main being a Dudebro
™
who hunts down transformers (powerful Decepticons no less) and make them his bitch.
The
Dudebro
™
is such a Gary Stu of Costa. He is all mighty and was written and drawn as so notorious a White
Dudebro
™ that even the male readers in the actual transformers fandom, who are, ironically, mostly dudebros, hate him. Especially when the
Dudebro
™
killed a member of the fucking Devastator (you can say it’s The most famous and loved combiner in the TF fandom) with his BARE HAND and A CAN OF WINDEX.
No Transformers fans want to watch this Dudebro looking down and killing their beloved Transformers as if they are nothing. IT’S DISGUSTING.
Costa didn’t focus on the Transformers, and when he did, totally didn’t get any of the characters, because he admited in a raged interview that he didn’t get them because “they have no family (as in no genectic relative relatives) and no females”.
For example, Optimus Prime, the wise leader of the Autobots, who is more like an even
more stubborn version of Captain America, who was a MILITARY LEADER in the previous IDW story, was written as a passive,
pathetic piece of junk who surrended himself to the human just so he can
sit in a cage at the human’s mercy for 9 fucking issues while his
fellow mechs are dealing with the human and Decepticons outside.
I’m sorry but this is what Optimus did when the human abducted one of his Autobot in the first IDW TF story arc:
Optimus Prime may be kind and caring for those he cares, but he is a fucking military leader who has been fighting for 4 fucking million of years and he won’t hesitate to kick your ass if you are a threat, human or not.
At this point reader were starting to be pissed off and started to dropping the books. The official IDW forum discussion threads were started to filled with more and more negative reviews, but this is not the end of it.
Costa also wanted to write Political Epic later on, but his ignorance is so INSULTING and RACIST it’s become hilarius:
The Stunticons (another famous and powerful Decepticon Combiners) became
Kim Jong-un’s bitches lmao
The Heroic USA and their bitch Optimus Prime fight the evil forces of the North Korea in the DMZ. But after ten min of ground battle, they reached the North Korea/China boarder.
Also, he clearly didn’t know SHIT about politics in Asia (except North Korea=eViL) because he wrote People’s Republic of China (the China that’s recognized in UN) as Republic of China (Taiwan)
If you have even a little bit of knowledge you’ll know that these two “countries” has been in civil war since the WWII and even though there’s no active warfare, the PROC is actively wanting to take over ROC/Taiwan so that they can unify China. TAIWAN IS RATED AS THE 2ND LIKELY PLACE TO ERUPT WWIII because the political struggle between PROC and USA and Costa didn’t know shit about any of this.
(As a Taiwanese, it’s hilarious because our government’s biggest goal when the civil war was still hot was to defeated the PROC but lmao it’s achieved in the IDW Transformers universe)
Also, the Predacons are China’s bitches now because they are red and gold (duh)
I guess we know who’s the Good Guy and who’s the Evil Guy, huh?
After this “International Incident” arc, like half of the fans of the original fandom either dropped the book or dropped the fandom once and for all. But some people, like me, hanged on. And the official forum became more and more resentful because readers must find outlet for their frustration and man, did they criticized Costa.
Anyway, IDW give Costa 31 issues for his run. And imagine the SUFFERING we went through. But that’s not all, by the time he finished this Hell, he lashed out to the fandom in an interview:
“They don’t have all of the basic things that humans have that motivate
them and give them motivation for drama for a story. They don’t really
get hungry, they don’t get tired, they don’t have women or relationships like that [which] they value because they don’t have females that they can love; maybe brotherly love, but how — they don’t have parents? They don’t have religion or spirituality… you have to manufacture [these things] and that makes it very incoherent."
He basically called the TF fandom “a bunch or negative people staying in their closed and hostile fandom” in the interview so you can imagine how the TF fandom take it lol
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 