Thunderbolts 122 page 7 by Fernando Blanco

A great Thunderbolts page from the first issue following the great run written by Warren Ellis. I think that Christos Gage did a great job on those issues at keeping the Ellis vibe alive.

Here we have a great Venom scene which I distinctly remember reading. Venom is jumping inside old school villain the Swarm which is basically a sentient swarm or a guy composed of bees, grabs the guiding squeleton and bites the skull off. No more Swarm!

There are many elements that I love on this page.

First is obviously Venom himself which is quite monstrous/enormous here and in line with how Mike Deodato drew him under Ellis’ run.

I also had fond and distinct memories of the Swarm as pencilled by Byrne during his short Champions run.

Then the overall layout of the page is a bit different than the usual grid we read in our comics. It gives a nice splashy feeling to the page.

Art-wise, all the visible blue pencils under the inks are a nice touch and I find the brushy feeling of the swarm itself extremely well done. You really get the feeling there are thousands of bees on the page.

And lastly, I find that this was a quite violent solution to the Swarm problem and it stayed in my memory. It also set the tone for how Venom would be written/portrayed in the book.