Darkest Hour
Nrama: Spider-Man and Venom have crossed passed numerous times, but never as Spidey-Ock and Agent Venom, Flash Thompson. What kind of fireworks can readers expect?
Gage: Big, gooey, symbiote-substance fireworks… by the brilliant art team of penciler Humberto Ramos, inker Victor Olazaba, and colorist by Edgar Delgado. So, scary and awesome and beautiful. This is my first time working with Humberto since our run on Avengers: The Initiative back during the “Dark Reign” era, and he’s only upped his game since then…he’s blowing me away with every page! Oh, and there’ll be a different kind of fireworks between Otto/Pete and Anna Maria Marconi…and our art team is excelling with those as well.
Nrama: Flash has a long history with Spider-Man –he grew up idolizing the Peter Parker version, but that’s not the one he’s meeting with here. How are you tying the history – or non-history in terms of Doc Ock & Flash meetings – into this impeding face-off?
Gage: It’s a big part of the story. When Otto removed all traces of Peter’s mind from his, he basically lost any chance to “read” any of Pete’s memories that he hadn’t already looked at. And he hadn’t had any reason to recall Pete’s friendship with Flash. So when Otto/Pete encounters him, he has no idea who Flash Thompson is…though it’s clear Flash knows him. Which means there’s a danger of his secret being exposed. And we know Otto will go to great lengths to protect his secret…
Nrama: And you also have the added catalyst of the Venom symbiote being in on this, who isn’t on the best terms with Spider-Man – no matter who’s inside it. What’s the Venom symbiote thinking in all of this?
Gage: That’s the wild card. It’s not a human being, it’s an alien, whose thought processes we can’t possibly understand. When Peter magically erased the memory of his secret identity from the minds of everyone in the world, did that include the symbiote? It has a new host…how does it feel about its old one?
Nrama: Seeing Superior Spider-Man come up against the Venom symbiote, another creature who unsuccessfully tried to gain control of Peter’s body, is an interesting idea. What can you say about that?
Gage: It brings up some interesting questions. Does the symbiote remember its former host? Does it remember that he’s Peter Parker…does a creature like this even grasp the concept of a “secret identity?” And whether it does or not, will it sense that there is something different – something off – about its former host now? How will it respond? That’s a huge part of the story.
Are you even more excited for this encounter now that it is only a couple months away?