Issue(s): Venom: The Enemy Within #1, Venom: The Enemy Within #2, Venom: The Enemy Within #3
Cover Date: Feb-Apr 94
Title: " Down and dirty" / "King of the Goblins!" / "Blood tide"
Credits:
Bruce Jones - Writer
Bob McLeod - Penciler
Bob McLeod / Harry Candelario - Inker
Mark Bernardo - Assistant Editor
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
I loved Bruce Jones' Ka-Zar run but i hated his interminable Hulk run years later. The two runs were decades apart, and i never followed anything else Jones did in the meantime (which was more television and books than comics). Jones did do a couple of other stories for Marvel prior to this, and they weren't very good but they were too short to really judge. So i thought this Venom miniseries might show how his writing had evolved at the midpoint between the Ka-Zar and Hulk runs.

Oddly, disappointingly, and yet also intriguingly, the story is very much 1990s Marvel house style. If the credits had said that it were written by any of Marvel's writer-editors at this point, like, say, Terry Kavanagh, i wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. It's just as incomprehensible, just as wordy, just as generic and pointless. So maybe Bruce Jones just has the uncanny ability to mimic the writing style of whatever period he's working in. After all, he wrote that boring Hulk run at the height of the "decompression" era, and he wrote his great Ka-Zar run back in the 1980s, when comics were good! (that is an "i'm an old man" joke, people). And now he's doing pure 1990s shlock.

After an opening sequence in which Venom twice resists the universe's attempt to troll him with Halloweeners in Spider-Man costumes...

...the main story begins with an earthquake in San Francisco, which is followed by a horde of sonic-boom producing goblins.

Then Morbius gets teleported in from New York.

Later, the goblins are led by the Demogoblin.

However, the twist is that the goblins were really summoned by a former criminal who found a magic necklace that allowed him to escape prison and run for mayor. Venom and Morbius go after the mayor. The necklace also produces sonic booms, conveniently enough.

But Demogoblin is not really allied with the goblins. He's still true to his regular motivations, and is opposed to all things supernatural. So he helps against the mayor...

...and then in the most bizarro portion of the story, he absorbs the necklace's power, transforming him into a giant, and leads the goblins Pied Piper style off the Golden Gate bridge.

The necklace is destroyed and Demogoblin returns to normal size.

A giant Demogoblin stomping down the Golden Gate Bridge followed by a horde of goblins did kind of make up for a lot, but this is still not what i would have expected from Jones. I can say the same for Bob McLeod, who was also much better in the 80s.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Morbius' appearance is context free, but i'm following the MCP and placing it before Morbius #18.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A