Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #388 (Venom story only)
Cover Date: Apr 94
Title: "The lost days"
Credits:
David Michelinie - Writer
Ron Lim - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker
Mark Bernardo - Assistant Editor
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
This story begins with this note:

Back in Web of Spider-Man #18 and #24, we showed the first brief glimpses of Venom attacking Spidey. The tale that follows tells the whole story of those events!

The story begins a day after Venom's story from the 1992 Spider-Man annuals, which was also a continuity insert taking place in 1986.

Venom has just had his first fight, but his Eddie Brock side is not sure how he'll stack up against the super-powered Spider-Man. So he decides to go to a subject for one of his stories as a reporter, a veteran named Chuck Stone who was denied benefits when he returned to the US but fought the system.

Stone gives Brock a pep talk...

...giving him the confidence to, er, sneak up behind Peter Parker and try to push him onto the subway tracks (as seen in Web of Spider-Man #18).

It turns out that he was noticed by the crowd.

Venom uses his camouflage ability to get away.

Later, we see why Venom didn't follow up on his attack on Spider-Man from Web of Spider-Man #24.

So there you go. Venom's initial attacks weren't part of some cool psychological stalking; he was just interrupted by randos.

Venom later returns to his mentor to find that he's OD'd thanks to the money that Eddie gave him.

This causes Venom to double-down on his vow to, er, kill Spider-Man.

The story definitely wants us to be aware that Venom is insane, showing us people backing away from Eddie while he talks out loud to himself and stuff like that. But it adds nothing to Venom's backstory and just serves to make the original Venom cameos feel really mundane. Better to have not filled in the details.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Venom's fight with the Markham bodyguards in Amazing Spider-Man annual #26, Spectacular Spider-Man annual #12, and Web of Spider-Man annual #8 happened "yesterday".

References:

• Venom's fight with the Markham bodyguards happened in Amazing Spider-Man annual #26, Spectacular Spider-Man annual #12, and Web of Spider-Man annual #8.
  
• This story details the Venom scenes from Web of Spider-Man #18 and Web of Spider-Man #24 from Venom's perspective.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A

Again, we have Michelinie pulling the same thing he did with the Mauler- the records were lost so someone can't get Social Security/ Veteran's benefits. Appparently Michelinie thinks Social Security taxes are only paid every 20 years or so.

For once, Eddie is right in saying he's not responsible. The story tries to make it ambiguous with Chuck saying he's constantly tempted to buy drugs, but come on now. He didn't need Eddie to get the money for them. And they're both functioning adults (in as much you can say that about Brock). It was on Chuck to tell Eddie he'd better not give him money; Eddie wasn't there to pry into the extent of his junkie problem and it wasn't his business.

Of course the fact Brock went to a junkie for advice on how to kill Spiderman might be a symptom of his being an unsympathetic twit.

And these days, with wireless headsets, Eddie wouldn't look so crazy talking to himself...

My bad- Michelinie was actually referring to real instances that happened after a fire at the Pentagon in 1973. I still say the Mauler thing was dumb though.

Eddie Brock was seriously unbalanced from his very first story. Talks to himself do not even register, seeing how he has homicidal intent both here and in his first appearance and insists that there is "nothing wrong" with that.

I notice that the security guard says "some nut in a black costume" rather than "Some nut in a Spider-man costume". That seems pretty jarring to me given how long Spider-man had been dressed like that. After all, we were long past the "Who are you" phase of black costume Spidey by that point. It's as if Marvel was minimising associating that costume with anyone other than Venom.