A really cool take on the black costume and creation of Venom, although I felt the whole story line was a bit hurried. ( )

The angstiness got a little old after a while--this volume is longer than some--but it was still interesting to read if sporadically irritating. ( )

In the previous comic, Captain Gordon gets killed as a result of a robbery and Gwen comes to stay with Peter and Aunt Mae which causes Mary Jane to become even more jealous. This coupled with the nightmares that she's been having and Peter not seeming to care about her life causes Mary Jane to break up with Peter. Spider-Man must face off against a fake Spider-Man who is robbing places and giving him a bad name not to mention getting him shot by the cops. His healing factor plus some help from S.H.I.E.L.D. help with that.

Aunt Mae gives Peter a box of his dad's old stuff and inside is a video of a picnic that he attended with a kid named Eddie Brock and his family. So he decides to look up Eddie Brock and finds him going to college nearby and working on something that their fathers worked on that he's working on with Dr. Connors. It's supposed to be a cure for cancer. It's a suit that you wear. They used Peter's dad's DNA for the black blob of the substance.

One night Peter gets curious about it and breaks into the lab as Spider-Man and takes a small sample to test, but a drop gets on him and changes him into a black version of himself. He runs into a man who he believes killed his uncle Ben and he is ready to kill that man. He is barely able to rid himself of the suit. When he tells Brock of his discovery and the dangers of the suit and that he destroyed the substance, Brock is furious.

But Brock had a second sample and Brock takes the sample for himself and becomes Venom.

He can't control it the way Peter could and he kills the janitor and the two security guards. Peter, meanwhile, has a heart-to-heart with Mary Jane and says all the things that need to be said while Venom comes for him.

Eddie Brock is not a sympathetic character in this comic as he is in the Venom comics. He's to be blunt, an asshole and getting powers just made it worse. Peter was looking for someone to connect with the past with and this is who he gets. On top of that, he has two angry females in his life: Mary Jane for doing what he does and Gwen for introducing her to Eddie. Now more people know his secret too. Peter just can't win in this comic which is what makes it so good. I give it four and a half out of five stars. ( )

This trade is my favorite so far in the Ultimate Spider-Man line. Peter still can't catch a break; not only has Mary Jane ended their relationship, but he finds out that his father's research project was stolen from him in the final years of his life. Peter finds Eddie Brock, the son of his father's business partner (who also died in the airplane crash that ended Peter's mother's and father's lives), and discovers that the "suit" they had been developing before their deaths is in Eddie's possession. The elder Parker and Brock had wanted to cure cancer, but this suit, as can be expected, isn't all it seems. Peter also learns a valuable lesson: you can't save everyone, even when you're Spider-Man.

I know very little about how the 616-verse Venom came to exist (all I know is that the "suit" is made of symbiotes, which are extraterrestrial in origin), but I really like how Venom came to be in the Ultimate Universe. The story gives Venom's origins a more modern kick (it's the result of genetic engineering), and both Peter's and Eddie's motivations to don the suit were understandable (even if Eddie is a jerk). Also, Nick Fury's sense of humor was great, and I loved his interaction with Peter. ( )

Die venom-toestand vind ik één van de interessantere wendingen in het Spider-Man verhaal; gezien die Ultimates hervertellingen zijn, zou ik toch ook graag leen hoe zich dat in de oorspronkelijke versie afspeelt. ( )