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If you follow comic books at all, you’re probably familiar with the character Venom. Venom is an alien symbiote that, on earth, is basically a pile of black goo. It needs a strong human host in order to survive.
On our earth, Peter Parker (Spider-Man) bonded with the symbiote to become the evil Venom and on earth 65, home of Spider Gwen (Gwen Stacy, our Peter Parker’s BFF), it ended up bonding with Gwen to create a very angry creature that Marvel named Gwenom.
The relationship between the Venom symbiote and the host is pretty one-sided. Venom is now a part of you, as it’s melded with your body to create a dark, black creature that thrives on revenge and eating the heads off of the people it kills. Luckily we don’t see any head eating in this story arc.
Gwen’s earth is messed up in comparison to ours. On our earth, Matt Murdock is Daredevil, The Man Without Fear. Daredevil’s fiercest rival is the Kingpin, A.K.A., the Kingpin of Crime. Murdock has dedicated his life to stopping the man who had his father killed.
On earth 65, Murdock IS the Kingpin and he’s as evil as the one on our earth, earth 616. Harry Osborn, a friend to our version of Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker, takes the Lizard serum and turns into a huge lizard/T-Rex looking thing that has it out for Spider Gwen.
Are you confused yet? You should be. Moving between alternate universes that somewhat parallel ours can be difficult to remember.
In the story arc Gwendom (Radioactive Spider Gwen 2015-2018, #24-29) Gwen finds herself working for Murdock after the supervillain, The Rhino, put her police captain father in a coma.
Gwen gets the lizard DNA out of Harry and is waiting for it to bond with her, though she has no clue what it will do when it does. First, it goes after the earth 65 version of Logan (Wolverine) and after making an already guy even angrier, Gwen uses high pitched noise to pull the symbiote out of the X-Man and it bonds with her.
Gwen goes after pretty much anyone who has ever screwed with her or her father and eventually goes after the Kingpin himself. It’s a great storyline, with a bit of darkness overtaking the normally bright and optimistic Spider Gwen.
We also see Gwen having to face the people she’s close with (her bandmates, the Mary Janes, plus Peter Parker’s Aunt May and Uncle Ben) and tell them that she is actually Spider Gwen, known on the streets as Spider Woman.
When Venom takes over and turns her into Gwenom, we see some very well-drawn panels to go along with the solid writing. Artist Robby Rodriguez didn’t just take her white suit and make it black. He raised the bar on what a Venom symbiote can look like.
The trade paperback, Gwenom, has been out since 2018 and if your favorite comic book shop doesn’t have it, I’m sure they can order it for you. If you prefer your comic books done digital, you can order it from the Marvel Comic Store.
If you’re a fan of the Venom comics and storylines with Spider-Man, you should love Gwenom. Epic writing and over the top art make this something definitely worth checking out.
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Photos courtesy Marvel Comics.