Appearing in "Oversight: Part One"
Featured Characters:
- Venom (Eddie Brock) (Main story and flashback)
Supporting Characters:
- Venom Symbiote (Revealed to be alive) (Main story and flashback)
Antagonists:
- Project Oversight (First appearance as Project Oversight) (Main story and flashback)
- The Maker (Reed Richards)
- Numerous unnamed others (Impersonates the Anti-Symbiote Task Force) (Death of several) (Only in flashback)
Other Characters:
- NYPD (Only in flashback)
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker) (Mentioned)
- U.S. Government (Named only) (Only on screen as a static image or video record) (Only in flashback)
- Anti-Symbiote Task Force (Named only) (Only on screen as a static image or video record) (Only in flashback)
- Grendel Offshoot (Only in flashback)
- S.H.I.E.L.D. (Mentioned) (Defunct)
- Reed Richards (Mentioned)
- Knull (Mentioned)
- Carl Brock (Only in flashback)
- Dylan Brock (First appearance) (Only in flashback)
- Flash Thompson (Mentioned) (Deceased)
Races and Species:
- Humans (Main story and flashback)
- Symbiotes (Main story and flashback)
- Elder Gods (Mentioned)
- Alien Gods (Mentioned)
- Dogs (Mentioned)
Locations:
- Earthspace (Main story and flashback)
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
- United States of America (Only in flashback)
- New York (Only in flashback)
- New York City (Only in flashback)
- Manhattan (Only in flashback)
- Rex Strickland's Warehouse (Only in flashback)
- Hudson River (Only in flashback)
- Manhattan (Only in flashback)
- New York City (Only in flashback)
- California (Only in flashback)
- San Francisco (Only in flashback)
- Tenderloin (Only in flashback)
- San Francisco (Only in flashback)
- New York (Only in flashback)
- Undisclosed location
- United States of America (Only in flashback)
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
- Hell (Invoked)
Synopsis for "Oversight: Part One"
Sitting in an interrogation cell with his hands manacled to the table, Eddie Brock - sporting a buzzcut, moustache, and beard - listens as a man shrouded in darkness and holding a scalpel tells him that no-one cares that he saved the world and that for the most part everyone still sees him as Spider-Man's bad laundry day. The man says that he can relate outliving his own legend and offers to help Eddie change that, if Eddie helps him first. The man explains that following Venom's battle against the Grendel symbiote, he had dispatched an extraction team disguised as members of the Anti-Symbiote Taskforce in order to obtain a sample of it. The extraction team had successfully obtained a sample of the Grendel symbiote, but came across Eddie's badly-burnt body and assumed he was dead.
Eddie interrupts and says that he doesn't die easily, stating that he wants his attorney and phone call. The man asks where the sample is, and Eddie states he doesn't know what the man is talking about. Realizing he's telling the truth, the man wonders how much Eddie remembers this time and asks if he remembers how he got there. Eddie refuses to cooperate unless he gets his attorney and phone call, but the man remarks that Eddie isn't in a situation where those would be helpful to him. Eddie sneers that this isn't his first time being bullied into working for the government, noting that he thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone. The man says that it was, stepping out of the shadows and introducing himself as Reed Richards - though he quickly adds he's not the Reed Richards that Eddie is familiar with, and prefers to go by "the Maker." The Maker interrupts Eddie's Fantastic Four quip, asking him to recount everything he remembers, but Eddie states he's not done asking questions and angrily demands to know what he's doing locked up.
The Maker replies that he fought and rode a symbiote-dragon controlled by a primordial god of darkness in the middle of Manhattan, before trying to kill it with a large amount of stolen ordinance and a blast furnace; and that doing so attracted the attention of the people who the Maker works for. Eddie remarks that he didn't ride the dragon, the Maker wryly stating that's a pity before saying that Eddie is there because he might be the only to find the sample. Eddie reiterates that he doesn't know what the Maker is talking about, but Richards continues - saying that the sample of the Grendel symbiote was stolen from his lab and that the people he works for are insistent that he get it back. Eddie asks who the people the Maker is working for are, and he explains that they are a group calling themselves "Project Oversight." Eddie asks what the sample that the Maker keeps referring to is of, and the Maker reveals that Eddie failed to kill the Grendel symbiote; Eddie incredulously asking how the Maker could possibly know about it and Knull. Ignoring him, the Maker says that he believes Eddie made contact with the person or people who stole the sample of the Grendel symbiote from his lab, Eddie asking how that's possible when he's been locked up by the Maker this entire time. Smirking, the Maker tells him that he's remembering things incorrectly.
The Maker informs Eddie that the Venom symbiote - sans spider-emblems and utterly feral - had taken over him and lashed out in a berserk rage; killing four of Project Oversight's extraction team. Despite tracking Venom via the symbiote's trademark green drool - which he reveals to be its version of excrement - Eddie managed to evade Project Oversight for three weeks before turning up on his father's doorstep in San Fransisco - frightening his younger half-brother Dylan. Eddie wonders why the symbiote would've taken him to his father's house, incredulously asking if he's really been locked up for three weeks. The Maker clarifies that he's been out for a total of five - three on the run and two locked up by Project Oversight - but that he doesn't remember any of it due to the Venom symbiote shielding him from trauma by erasing parts of his memory. Observing that Eddie hasn't even noticed, the Maker mockingly taps his helmet and asks Eddie if he feels a bit lonely.
Horrified, Eddie asks if the Maker took the Venom symbiote from him and then furiously demands to have it back, shouting that he'll kill him. Noting that Eddie's having the same reaction to being told this as he did previously, the Maker throws his scalpel at Eddie, who opens his eyes to see a tendril has extended from his shirt and caught it. The Maker explains that the trauma the symbiote endured during the battle against Knull has left it effectively braindead, capable of acting on instinct and obeying commands but devoid of a voice or personality. Eddie sorrowfully asks if the Maker can help him restore it, but the Maker says that the only way of doing so would be to reconnect the symbiote to the symbiotes hive-mind - and the only human known to have done so and survived was the late Flash Thompson. Grinning, the Maker states that he has some ideas of how to extract the information he needs, but is interrupted by a distraught Eddie asking if he really said that Flash Thompson was dead.
Solicit Synopsis
VENOM’S 30th ANNIVERSARY CONTINUES!
“THE ABYSS” STARTS HERE!
• Just when you thought the blockbuster story of the summer couldn’t get any more intense, Donny Cates and special guest artist and Venom veteran IBAN COELLO (VENOMVERSE, VENOMIZED) turn the story on its head AGAIN!
• But face front, True Believers, because it won’t be dragons and god-hosts and breakneck action this time. No, no. This time Donny and Iban are putting Eddie Brock through an emotional meat grinder the likes of which haven’t been seen in the Marvel Universe ever before!
