10 Reasons Why Donny Cates’ Venom Was So Great
7. Incorporating Canon From The Classic Comics
A lot of people might not know this, but Eddie Brock is actually from San Francisco. He is most frequently depicted onscreen with a working-class New York accent, which originated from Hank Azaria’s take on the character in Spider-Man: The Animated Series and endured all the way to the live action Venom movies. But the butch, blond bad boy was born on the opposite side of the country, in sunny California, as revealed in Venom: Lethal Protector #1.
Bringing Eddie back to San Fran for a troubled reunion with his estranged father was just one of the things Cates did to make sense of the admittedly messy Venom canon. This run made frequent use of locations, characters and concepts introduced by previous writers, in ways that were rewarding for long-time fans without alienating new ones.
From setting an arc on the Island of Bones, where Venom brought Spidey for their supposed final battle in Amazing Spider-Man #347, to the reintroduction of Eddie’s sister Mary, to the exploration of Eddie’s relationship with his ex-wife Anne, these moments were always used in service of the story rather than as blatant, distracting fanservice.