Venomverse Vol. 5

This volume is the fifth and final issue of Marvel's five-part weekly limited event Venomverse (2017), written by Cullen Bunn and drawn by Iban Coello. The story follows the first four issues: symbiote hosts from timelines across the multiverse are hunted and assimilated by the Poisons, a predator species from the Venomverse, and Eddie Brock of Earth-616 is drawn into this cross-dimensional war, allying with Rocket Raccoon, Laura Kinney (X-23), Scott Lang, Mary Jane, old man Logan, and other versions of Venom; meanwhile, because the Poisons seize the bodies of symbiote hosts, the Venom side is forced to contend with dangerous figures such as Carnage and a Poisoned Deadpool. In the final issue the Venom camp is driven to the brink: Deadpool and Carnage hold off a horde of Poisons, Rocket Raccoon leads Eddie and the others to plant a bomb in the Poisons' headquarters, and Eddie takes a team to rescue the captured Doctor Strange, confronting the Poisoned Spider-Man, Peter Parker, head-on. Doctor Strange sacrifices himself in a spell that sends the allies back to their own worlds, Rocket's bomb destroys a large number of Poisons, but Doctor Doom slips away in the chaos; in an end-of-issue teaser, he reports to his superior, a Poisoned Thanos, hinting that a larger cross-dimensional invasion is coming. The closing battle is large in scale and dense with action, and it also lays groundwork for later spin-off stories such as Edge of Venomverse.