Venom co-creator David Michelinie returns to the character again this year for another miniseries set during Venom’s early days.
Venom: Separation Anxiety by Michelinie and Death of the Venomverse artist Gerardo Sandoval will feature Eddie Brock encountering the Purple Man, who uses his powers to steal Brock’s symbiote and become “The King in Purple.”
“I’m always delighted to write a new Venom story in a retro background,” Michelinie said. “With ‘Separation Anxiety’ as the required theme, the problem became how to do something that’s already been done—have Eddie Brock separated from his symbiote ‘other.’ So I thought, what if there was a deeply creepy villain with a decidedly bloodthirsty agenda who was able to take bits of Eddie’s symbiote away every time the two touched, with that enemy slowly growing stronger as Venom slowly grew weaker? And that was the nugget that became ‘The King In Purple.'”
Here’s the full description from Marvel:
In his latest retro VENOM series, Michelinie will pit Eddie against a new foe with the power to alter reality itself: Purple Man! When the iconic villain uses his terrifying mind control powers to torment Eddie and steal his symbiote for himself, everyone’s favorite symbiote slugger may need to ask for unlikely help to get it back AND save his sanity!
The miniseries recycles the name of a previous Venom series from the mid-1990s by Howard Mackie and Ron Randall. That miniseries also featured a separation of Brock from the symbiote, as Scream, Lasher and the other Life Foundation symbiotes capture Eddie and try to convince him to teach them to control their symbiotes.
Look for the first issue of the new miniseries on May 15.