Venom #29 Review Venom's vacation in Philadelphia turns sour.

There must be some enormous, untapped market of potential comic readers in Philadelphia. That's the only explanation for why Cullen Bunn is so heavily flaunting Flash Thompson's move to the City of Brotherly Love in this current story arc. In this issue alone, Flash travels from Germantown Ave. to the Mutter Museum to the river ports. That's to say nothing of the various mentions of other city attractions (Fat Jack's!!! Woot!!!). But after a certain point, all this Philly love just becomes distracting. For one thing, the actual Philly is much more dirty and crowded than this series lets on. But more importantly, it seems that the constant name-dropping and scenery changes are only working to hide the fact that the actual story is dull and unremarkable.

This issue does little more than bounce Flash from one clash with the U-Foes to the next with a hefty dose of Philly ogling in between. Bunn attempts to explore a decades-old military conspiracy, but it really just reads like a half-hearted attempt to inject some X-Files-style mystery into what would otherwise be a mindless action book. Bunn's handling of Flash is fine. I actually enjoyed his concerted attempt to ditch the football references that have become such a regular and played out element of Flash's internal monologue. But this series really suffers from the lack of black humor that used to be so prevalent in the Rick Remender days. About the only real point of interest these days is the blossoming romance between Flash and Valkyrie.

The artwork in this issue is functional, if little else. Thony Silas' art works best in the close-up shots and action sequences. Most other scenes suffer from a general lack of detail and flat, lifeless characters. The shift between inkers also harms the book at times. One page turn in particular makes it seem as though the book has completely switched pencillers.

Venom is missing the charm and flavor it once had, and no amount of Philly landmarks will fix that problem.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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