Hot off the heels of his last Venom mini-series, David Michelinie has been announced to return to the Lethal Protector in a new limited series titled Venom: Separation Anxiety.
Joined by Gerardo Sandoval (Death of the Venomverse, Absolute Carnage: Scream), this new five-issue limited series is set once again in the early days of Venom’s anti-hero career. This time around however, Eddie and the symbiote are facing off against a villain we’ve never seen them face before: The Purple Man!
As Michelinie describes it, the choice to pit Venom against the Purple Man came from having to find a new way into the “Separation Anxiety” tagline: ‘what if there was a deeply creepy villain with a decidedly bloodthirsty agenda who was able to take bits of Eddie’s symbiote away every time the two touched, with that enemy slowly growing stronger as Venom slowly grew weaker?’
The series will launch in May 2024.
Marvel also provided an official synopsis for Venom: Separation Anxiety here, in their official press release:
‘In his latest retro VENOM series, Michelinie will pit Eddie against a new foe with the power to alter reality itself: Purple Man! When the iconic villain uses his terrifying mind control powers to torment Eddie and steal his symbiote for himself, everyone’s favorite symbiote slugger may need to ask for unlikely help to get it back AND save his sanity!
LONG LIVE…THE KING IN PURPLE!
David Michelinie’s ‘Venom: Separation Anxiety’ Pits the King in Black Against the King in Purple, via Marvel.com
David Michelinie: Master of the Symbiote
No stranger to the alien symbiote, David Michelinie has a long history with the Venom character – both near and far history at that.
Way back in the 1980s, Michelinie co-created Venom alongside Todd McFarlane. His first full appearance (that is, Eddie Brock in the Venom costume) occurs in The Amazing Spider-Man #300. Technically, Venom makes cameo appearances in the previous couple of issues, influencing events as a shadowy figure, but this is his official debut. Of course, Eddie Brock had been making Peter Parker’s life difficult long before that, just without the symbiotic aid.
More recently, David Michelinie has been joined by Ivan Fiorelli and Farid Kamari on Venom: Lethal Protector: Heart of the Hunted and Venom: Lethal Protector: Life and Deaths respectively. The new series Venom: Separation Anxiety serves as a kind of third instalment to Michelinie’s retro-revisitation of the character.
Who is The Purple Man?
Fans of the Jessica Jones Netflix series – as well as those long-time, street-level comics fans – will recognise the Purple Man as a particularly terrifying Marvel supervillain.
Otherwise known as Zebediah Killgrave (or Kevin Thompson, in the Netflix series), The Purple Man is able to bend the wills of those around him using pheromones.
Recently, Killgrave was a key character in the latter arcs of Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s Daredevil run, with Kingpin murdering him and using his powers to facilitate control of New York during the Devil’s Reign event.
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