While taking his break from being one of The Avengers, Flash Thompson has setup shop in Phily. I’m not sure exactly where this takes place in line with the current Thunderbolts story line though he seems pretty settled in here and not jaunting all over Europe as he is over there.

While romping around his new stomping grounds and starting to lay into local crime he’s come to a discovery that most of it is being done in the name of Lord Ogre. As he is climbing the criminal ladder to find and stop the man behind it all, he suddenly falls into a trap. Ogre realized what he was doing and set things up so that Venom would go right where they want him to be. Once he realized that Venom would be able to go through his organization, he had set things up to make sure someone would be waiting for him.

The trap is laid and out of nowhere he is attacked by a group of who can only be described as Dark Avengers rejects (of the Norman Osborne Dark Avengers variety) with outfits and moves similar to Spider-Man, Captain America, and Hawkeye. He’s able to take most of them out (not too easily) and quips that they should have brought more men. The art throughout the fight just gets better as it goes. Truly some amazing work here on both the new characters and the Venom symbiote in both armor and alien monster forms.

Being a clone of Parker it’s only fitting that he has the Parker Luck as, out of nowhere, Constrictor pops up and starts electrocuting him. When it looks like someone finally has the advantage against Venom, Constrictor is quickly stopped. Not by someone trying to help, but by Lord Deathstrike who wants the bounty on Venom for his own.

The five villains fall into an argument among themselves on who gets to kill Venom during which he makes a stealthy escape.

At this point we fast forward to the next day with Flash at school getting a visit by reporter Kay Kiernan. She is not out of the picture at all and ends up with Venom paying her a visit right after school to find out what she wants, He ends up enlisting her help.

On the Lord Ogre side of things? He’s called a meeting of assassins and wants his particular spider problem squashed and is willing to go overkill to make it happen. Aside from the slew of assassins we’ve already seen and a few new ones, the most interesting addition will be Jack O’Lantern. It looks like Venom is going to have his work cut out for him having to deal with this lunatic.

While I’m not sold on Lord Ogre being any real kind of a criminal mastermind quite yet, with the inclusion of Jack O’Lantern, he really is starting to look like a Kingpin ripoff. Still with good old Jack in tow, it’ll be fun to see the reunion between him and his best pal Venom!

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Inker: Aaron Kim Jacinto
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Sana Amanat
Penciler: Aaron Kim Jacinto