I’ve really been digging Hasbro’s trend towards pure black and white figures without blue shading, to the point that when a new figure comes out featuring a black and white color scheme, it jumps to the top of my want list just based on pure aesthetic value, even if it’s not a character that excites me on a primal level. That’s where Anti-Venom comes in.
Anti-Venom is yet another symbiote-bred character in the Marvel Universe. If you remember the ’90s, symbiotes were all the rage, with offsprings and offsprings-of-offsprings popping up very regularly, to the point where the concept became as stretched as it possibly could. Symbiotes cooled off a bit after that, but it seems like you can’t keep them down forever because we’ve managed to get quite a few Symbiotes over the course of the past few waves of Spider-Man’s Infinite series. We’ve managed to get Carnage, Toxin, a Flash Thompson Venom, and now Anti-Venom. We’ll be getting a Superior Venom in the upcoming Rhino wave, which means we’ll be getting every permutation of the symbiote possible before getting just plain Venom, the daddy of them all, but in a way that’s a good thing.
Anti-venom’s host is actually Eddie Brock, who was also the host of the original Venom, and it’s fitting that, being called “Anti-Venom,” he’s wearing a negative version of that original Venom costume. For more info on how Eddie became Anti-Venom, you’re going to have to google it because it’s way too much to go into here.
Anti-Venom comes on the larger of the standard Hasbro bodies, which has become known as either the Hyperion or Sabretooth body. He has the newly sculpted symbiote forearms that first showed up on the Toxin figure, with some nice upraised spikes, topped off with a pair of oversized claw-hands that are extremely dynamic and expressive. I’m a huge fan of this body, and the combo of the body and those oversized claws gives Anti-Venom a lot of personality.
He has a nice array of articulation and all of it works pretty well, especially for a bulkier body. RoboKillah has a closer look at the motion in his ocean, so take a peek:
Anti-Venom has taken some flack for not being on a totally comic-accurate body. Some have praised the Marvel Select’s version as being more accurate due to not being as “thick,” but a quick google search shows Anti-Venom as being beefy just as much as he’s shown as a bit leaner, so I’m perfectly okay with this body being used.
Anti-Venom’s head sculpt is appropriately monstrous, and it looks very comic accurate. It evokes Venom while having an identity all its own. All the black areas of paint have a nice glossiness that offsets the flatter white plastic. There’s a nice yellow-orange shading in his mouth that gives it some depth.
One reason I’m glad they’ve held off on doing the original Venom figure is that while Toxin’s figure still featured the boot-feet that most figures on this body have come with, this body has a brand new foot that rids itself of the heeled, booted look and feels more in character for your average symbiote. It is sized a bit weird in the back, though, and has a look like a kid wearing his dad’s slippers, so nothing is perfect. Still, I’d rather have that than a Venom in boots, and there’s literally no way we’re not getting a Venom in the near future since all the parts are now in place. Place your bets.
Understandably, Anti-Venom is one of those figures that only excites you “if you’re into that kind of thing.” While waiting for Venom to show up, I wasn’t overly excited for the figure, but having him in hand and seeing the dynamic white/black contrast and those oversized hands, he ended up being a lot more fun than I was expecting. I’m still looking forward to a pure classic Venom on this body, but Anti-Venom takes up some of that slack in the wait, and has made me want to go backwards and pick up Toxin also.
