“Comics Companies in the 90’s: “Holy shit, this Venom character is really selling! We need to get him in his own book so we can cha-ching! Let’s make him into a hero, no, ANTI-HERO, and that’s how we’ll make a mint!”
The problem with this line of thinking is that these folks weren’t wrong. They made a good chunk of change from characters like Venom in the 90’s.
But good god did I hate turning a villain into a hero. That’s just…the worst. It’s the most 90’s thing in this book, and this is a book where the main character has a mullet that would probably even make 90’s kids say, “Whoa, too far!’
Although…now that I think about it, there’s been a BIG resurgence of Joker being the main character, sometimes hero, in Batman stories these days. I’m not talking about the movie so much (I don’t think he was supposed to be heroic in the movie) but White Knight and a couple others definitely pose Joker as an anti-hero, maybe, or even a secret hero.
I have to say, Venom from the 90’s reminded me A LOT of Deadp00l. You might not be able to tell, but those are zeroes in Deadp00l because I think that dude is a big zero in the comics. The movie was fun, but the comics somehow just never seem all that hilarious to me. Deadp00l is, like…wacky? But not funny? He’s silly…but not funny?
Maybe because Deadp00l just doesn’t fit into the Marvel U, yet they insist on teaming him up with other characters all the time. They need to stop with the team-ups, stop having him fight villains we know, and just make him be his own thing.
You just can’t have Deadp00l and Captain America together. Just doesn’t work.”