His Marvel work has been brilliantly creative, often exploring characters in new, interesting ways and introducing different takes on long established heroes and villains. Truthfully, I can’t say enough positive things about Donny Cates as a creator. Moreover, this volume embraced some more cartoonish moments that may have been missing to lighten the mood previously. Both artists’ styles are in keeping with what we’ve seen so far in Venom, with both bringing the darker elements associated with the character to life. The majority of the artwork throughout this volume is provided by Iban Coello with the exception of issue #16 which is illustrated by Juan Gedeon. There’s a new level of mystery surrounding Dylan and Sleeper, and the cliffhanger ending with the Maker builds endless intrigue around an already interesting character.

With that being said it, does serve to develop many of Venom’s supporting cast. However, I feel that this is a volume that only provides a peripheral of the event it’s connected to, and in some ways that makes it overly dependent on the main Absolute Carnage collection. There’s also a scene with the Thing and Spider-Man performing a version of the fastball special which is comedy gold. We learn more about the significance of Dylan, and also the significance of Sleeper (Venom’s offspring from 2018’s Venom: First Host). There are a lot of positives within this volume. In fact, it’s only within issue #20 that we see the titular character reunited with Dylan.

While I do like that Dylan and returning antagonist The Maker are given more attention throughout these issues, it is noticeable that Venom himself is only briefly glimpsed.

It makes sense to give focus to Dylan, as over the course of the series he’s become an essential part of Eddie’s life - the previous arc served brilliantly to inform both his family history and relationship with the Venom symbiote. That’s issue #16, at least the following two issues mainly focus on Dylan, Normie and The Maker trying to fight off an attack from a group of symbiotes infected by Carnage. Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!

Venom vol 3 donny cates