I guess it’s a bit different that I’m skipping writing about the #1 of this series, but to be honest, I haven’t very much liked the Venom: Space Knight series so far. It’s an interesting take on Venom, send the symbiote back to space and learn a bit more about what they are. At first it sounds like a great premise that’s ripe with possibilities, but it turns into a generic space adventure with little on the line for Venom. That was until the two latest issues, which I’ll try to avoid spoilers but there will be some.

As a bit of a run up, I’ll go into how Venom got to where he is and what he’s doing in this series briefly. We start with Agent Venom travelling space with the Guardians of the Galaxy starting in Issue #21 of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 acting as a link to the Avengers and Earth. After a battle between the symbiote and the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Venom symbiote is revealed to be a corrupted Klyntar (the proper name for symbiotes) caused by bonding with the then unstable Eddie Brock. Once Venom had returned to the Klyntar home world, it was able to shed its latent corruption and fuse back with Flash Thompson. Here is where we enter into Venom: Space Knight, which follows Flash Thompson and Venom travelling the galaxy helping people in need.

As the next few issues went on, I really didn’t care about the adventure he was on or his giant panda friend. As a reader, I was hankering to read more of the struggle of Flash Thompson and the looming darkness of Venom. I wanted to read more stories about him being a highschool gym teacher in a wheelchair, it deepened his character and his ongoing struggle. In Space Knight both venom and Flash Thompson were boring, they may have went to different planets and interacted with interesting aliens, the characters had become flat. Now with Issue #8 and #9 we finally get to see some of that struggle again.

During issue #9 we have Flash trapped inside Venom as the Klyntar rampages and attacks Flash’s compatriots after swallowing Flash whole at the end of issue #8. Inside of Venom we see Flash confronted by his demons in the forms of traumatic memories as Venom wants to turn Flash bad. Being reminded of Flash’s past is great, we get to see his character shine and see him being tested and prevailing. The writing and story direction is done well during Flash’s memory scenes, nothing memorable really happens though. I haven’t read any other books by Robbie Thompson but he’s been writing the new spider books Spidey and Silk which it seems his lighter style fits the tone of those books. I’m glad the story is bringing it back to Earth, we can see some classic Venom as well as seeing what some of the characters we left behind are up to.

The art by Kim Jacinto and RB Silva is good, they have some great Venom moments and can be very vivid when going through some of the Alien ships. Unfortunatly, it doesn’t quite live up to the chaotic and gritty style of the previous Venom series written by Cullen Bunn.

As much as I liked this issue over the previous issues, I can’t recommend this series to fans of Venom or anyone looking for a space adventure book. I feel the previous issues don’t do a good job showing off the character of Venom or Flash Thompson. This issue does have some great moments and does a great job in reminding us who Flash was and who he is now, sadly it’s 9 issues deep. In the next few issues, as we can see from the preview covers, we’ll be back on Earth to connect to the Civil War II event which could have some interesting consequences for Venom. If the book doesn’t turn around by the end of the Civil War event I may stop picking up until we’re done with Venom in Space.