Spider-view: Venom: Funeral Pyre (Venom, Part 11)
This three-parter doesn't provide the necessary space for Carl Potts to explore any engaging concepts or character developments beyond the surface
—by Nathan on October 7, 2025—
I hope you're not getting tired of Venom, because even though I've stepped away from the ooze-covered killer-criminal-turned-killer-vigilante to explore the future of the Marvel Universe and Jim Starlin's concluding installment in his "Infinity" trilogy, we've come a lot closer to Earth in the present day for this review. Not beneath the earth, as we saw in Venom's first solo series, just on the surface. Though the villain has tried turning over a new leaf, he's found the underside of that leaf is still kinda gross and ugly. We've got some bugs crawling around there, the veins are a little dark, the whole thing has been sitting in a muddy puddle for a while…
Point being, Eddie Brock is trying to be a hero, but he's struggling. He seemingly made his peace with Spider-Man and hopped over to San Francisco. Dude can't seem to fully pry himself away from the Wall-Crawler–the man has seriously sticky fingers, after all–finding himself teaming with the hero in San Fran and then temporarily returning to New York to keep his "son" Carnage from butchering a whole buncha innocent people. Even then, Eddie still works under the philosophy of killing those he deems not quite so innocent.
What the guy needs is a mentor, a shining beacon to steer him the right way. I suppose he fails to find that in this series, because Venom teams up with another infamous black-clad killer with a big white symbol on his chest who has the guts to call himself a "vigilante."
Venom: Funeral Pyre
Writer: Carl Potts
Penciler: Tom Lyle
Inkers: Scott Hanna, Al Milgrom, Josef Rubinstein
Colorist: Ed Lazellari
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Issues: Venom: Funeral Pyre #1-3
Publication Date: August 1993-October 1993
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that was the spindly strand of hope I clung to when opening up these pages. I read this series a good six or seven years ago when I first picked up the "Venomnibus" it appeared in, and all I remembered when I started re-reading the first page a few weeks back was walking away disappointed that first time. Perhaps, for me, the adage was not so much absence generating fondness, but at least absence causing a forgetfulness of sins.
It didn't help, sad to say.
I'm not gonna paint a white skull on my chest and blow this book full of holes for its transgressions, mind you, but I will inflict a different kind of hurt: words. That, hopefully, puts me in a different camp than a certain Frank Castle, who likes to talk as he kills people rather than talking instead of killing people.
This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time Venom and the Punisher crossed paths, and I am darn surprised that it took five years after Venom first debuted for the two to meet. Venom and the Punisher seem like the kind of guys who would make a weird pairing in a buddy cop movie. While Spidey has always chastised both men for their murderous rampages, Venom and Punisher exist closer to each other on the morality meter, just maybe not wholly aligned philosophically.
That idea, where Brock and Castle overlap versus where they divide, generates much of the conflict found in this series, and in concept at least, Potts succeeds. I've rambled on before about the whole tired notion of Punisher and Venom each squaring off against Spidey's nobler persona. Spidey's never going to condone murder, and though I agree, I find the debates between the hero and his vigilante "coworkers" withered and worn. It's the same thing, repeatedly. Here, at the least, we don't run the same old "killing is bad, people" argument we've seen play out so many times. Venom and Punisher agree on the surface–bad guys gotta die–but Potts introduces a new wrinkle: how do you define evil?
The differences play out through the narrative's other central character, an undercover reporter embedded with a gang worried he'll be made to murder some people. He gets a message to Venom, who spends the series working to save this guy from pulling the trigger when he isn't going toe-to-toe with the Punisher. It's decent tension Potts generates from this, a race against time that culminates in a rather surprising moment and shapes the rest of the story.
The biggest hurdle Potts faces is letting the plot get away from him, especially during the second half, which steers into the "Pyre" aspect of the title by introducing a new villain. A plot development sewn from the start yields surprising results, not all of which are welcome. I wished Potts had stuck with the Venom vs. the Punisher vs. gang members angle, as this supervillain introduces a fourth level of conflict Potts now has to juggle with everything else. Yes, this character's creation is grounded in other parts of the story, so it doesn't feel sudden or random, but it adds too much to the plot too late in the game for it to feel as integral as what Potts has created across the first two issues.
Additionally, though the philosophical differences between Punisher and Venom exist, primarily (I think) to help us recognize a glimmer of heroism in Venom, the conflict is sewn in physically and never reaches deep enough to feel genuine beyond the base idea. I do appreciate the thought of two men with similar foundational beliefs coming to blows over the nitty-gritty of their outlooks, but Potts never gets that far. Castle wants to kill the reporter to keep him from killing; Venom wants to save the reporter before he has a chance to kill. The concepts are exactly the same, and I found myself siding with Venom over Castle. Frankie-boy behaves somewhat irrationally with his logic, all so we can get a long-awaited Venom/Punisher fight.
Our reporter, a young man by the name of Gray, and the object of that conflict, is meant to serve as the focal point for that tension; upon his fate hinges the entirety of the plot. Potts doesn't have much time to create an empathetic character, and though he does an admirable job developing a backstory and placing Gray in a grim situation, the story's latter half does the reporter injustice. His tale is taken and twisted in a bizarre direction which I don't agree with, transforming him into an utterly different character than who we're introduced to, all for the sake, I believe, of providing a new vein of shocking conflict to propel the narrative. The guy's name is "Gray," and he creates conflict between Venom and Punisher which isn't quite or black or white, yet his transformation late in the narrative clears out some of that "gray" area, which is a shame.
I wasn't too fond of the first Venom limited series, nor do I end this tale with the greatest impression. There are interesting moments throughout–Venom at one point saves the Punisher from a shotgun blast by covering him with symbiote shielding–and the main tension is derived from an interesting idea. Problematically, this tale is half as long as Venom: Lethal Protector, and Potts is trying to toy with too many ideas to make it all work in the space provided. There are several moments that start off well but then meander into mediocrity. Gray is an interesting character, and his backstory provides enough impetus to follow him, but then Potts yanks his development sharply in a completely different direction than he was heading in the beginning. Gang violence is prominent, allowing for some discussion on handling violence with violence, but the introduction of a brand new villain late in the game shifts the central conflict instead of creating consistency. Punisher and Venom are two sides of the same coin with enough differences in their methodology to warrant engaging conflict, but Potts explores the idea along the surface level and doesn't allow for enough depth. It's a Venom/Punisher story, so if you're here for big explosions and bullets, you'll get 'em. Your ears might be ringing a little bit by time you reach the final page, or maybe that's just my whiny subconscious telling me there are much better stories with these characters to explore.