Olivetti's Venom Interview
VENOM: SPACE KNIGHT artist, Ariel Olivetti sat down with Marvel and discussed (and shared some art) the upcoming series:
Flash Thompson plans to see the cosmos and who can blame him? Along the way he will meet plenty of new and familiar faces in the Robbie Thompson-written and Ariel Olivetti-drawn ongoing series VENOM: SPACE KNIGHT launching on November 25.
The character who started out teasing Peter Parker way back in AMAZING FANTASY #15 eventually became a soldier, lost his legs in battle, bonded with a symbiote to become Agent Venom, and wound up hanging out with the Guardians of the Galaxy in space. Before the events of Secret Wars, a trip to the symbiote home planet with the Guardians helped heal Venom to the point where Flash can communicate with his “partner” even better and also more fully utilize the Klyntar’s amazing abilities.
Thanks to the new status quo for the character all around, artist Olivetti comes excited to work on the series. “Venom has always been one of my favorite characters of Marvel comics,” he says. “So VENOM: SPACE KNIGHT is the [book] I've been waiting [to draw] for years!” The artist notes that the symbiote offers plenty of design opportunities, but also praises the man under the suit as a huge draw for the book. “Flash is a very interesting character because he is an expert soldier, but at the same time he also has a physical disability,” Olivetti explains.
Still, no matter how wild the situation Flash finds himself in, Olivetti notes that his outlook remains positive: “Flash has very tense situations, but our character goes out with a lot of humor and the symbiote’s abilities are very crazy and fun!” How crazy and fun will those abilities get?
The artist remains cagey about how exactly the new version of the symbiote armor will function, though he teases “Yes, he will change his look.”
In addition to the various ways Flash will use the Venom symbiote, Olivetti also enjoys designing the alien characters, worlds, and ships that will inhabit VENOM: SPACE KNIGHT. “That’s one of the parts of my job that I enjoy the most,” he says.
The artist also very much enjoys working with his collaborator on this book. “Robbie is the best thing about the book,” Olivetti relates. “Working with Robbie has been absolutely brilliant; everything he writes inspires a million images for me!”
I should note that the article says the series launches on November 25th, but Marvel's online release date calendar has the series scheduled to go on sale next week. I did not receive a response from Marvel when I questioned it.
I gotta tell ya, the art in this series has me the most excited! Are you pumped for Venom to start his adventures as a Space Knight?
Also, in case you missed the previous CBR interview, here are two other preview pages from that post:
