This Week in Comic Collecting: Venom Comics to Consider

Every Wednesday, thousands of members of the comic book community pour into local comic shops to grab the new comic book day releases. Most weeks, the community is split over which books are the ones to grab, but every once in a while there is really one true winner. This week happens to be one of those weeks. No matter whether you found yourself in a discussion on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, your LCS or an old school message board or forum, the discussion most likely surrounded one book this week. That book was Venom.  

Now, most of the time I talk about a property in the pages of ONE37pm, we are talking about movie rights or movie releases and their subsequent impact on the comic market. This week though, we are talking about Venom purely from a publishing perspective. Venom has always been a popular character ever since he debuted in a cameo in Amazing Spider Man #299. Originally a villain, his popularity in the early 90s demanded a face turn and in doing so, boxed in creators, forcing them to write the character as good, but with all the badass traits that made him popular in the first place. Many writers tried to accomplish this with varying degrees of success. Each time, the tone of the character and series would change. This all became a distant memory when the dynamic duo of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman was announced to take over the title in 2018. Cates was the hottest indie comics writer around before taking over his dream character in Venom. 

During Cates run, he fleshed out a ton of backstory as well as introduced us to a new character, Dylan Brock, the son of Eddie Brock. Almost immediately upon his debut in issue #7, Dylan began to get people's attention. With Dylan appearing only briefly, some collectors gravitated towards issue #9. This issue has been deemed his first full appearance and is the more desirable of the two. He would have two major events in Absolute Carnage and King in Black that really were the anchors of this run. While Venom as a character has been going strong for 200 solo issues as of Wednesday, issue #200 marked the 35th and final of the Cates and Stegman run as they moved on to take over as the creative team behind The Hulk in November. 

Issue #200 was fabulous and really gave you everything you could want from a conclusion to a story that took 3 years to tell. The issue sees a lot of change in the world of our favorite Symbiote Venom. As the issue concludes, making way for a new creative team to take the helm, we see Flash Thompson return as Anti Venom with Eddie even suggesting to Captain America that Flash would make a good Avenger after Cap extended the offer to Eddie. We then see Dylan walking home from school with his dog (and Venom symbiote) when Jack O Lantern is seen accosting a woman in an alley. When Dylan tries to save her, he is shot and in an effort to save him the symbiote joins with Dylan.  Jack O Lantern immediately recognizes the kid as the son of Eddie Brock and becomes wary, only for Dylan to stand up, now monstrous in size and scale and proclaim: “We Are Venom” before attacking and brutalizing the villain right there in the alley. This gives us the first appearance of a new Venom: Dylan Brock. We then see Eddie happy to see his son take the mantle as he is now old and weary and ready to be a "stay at home Dad" as he puts it.  He knows the Venom symbiote is the best way to keep his son safe.  

So this brings me to the investment opportunity. Comic investors have long speculated on a bright future for Dylan Brock upon his debut and this week's new issue only validated those beliefs for diamond handed investors. Having said that, there is still plenty of opportunity for profit with the newest Anti Hero in the Marvel Universe. Here are 5 options for investing: