YMMV / Venomverse

• Cargo Ship: Mania and the wrench that she randomly pulls out of nowhere and uses as a weapon in both the first and final issues.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gwenpool's symbiote became an instant fan favorite, due to its fun relationship with Gwen, and its attempts to help her win over Daredevil. Shame she was the only one who didn't make it through to the main series without being consumed by a Poison. Her Poisoned form is later killed off by Deadpool, ruining any chance of seeing her restored.
  • Captain Venom has achieved a following among the fanbase, in part due to his resemblance to Agent Venom. Naturally, he gets consumed by a Poison in the second issue.
  • Necroko from Extreme Venomverse proved to be immediately popular with fans due to being such a unique concept, coupled with her adorable Ship Tease with her universe's Spider hero. While Cullen Bunn initially declared she'd been killed off in Death of the Venomverse, backlash from disappointed fans led him to state she'd been one of the few survivors.
• Evil Is Cool: The Poisons' streamlined, keratinous designs and ability to exploit their prey's dearest love makes for a bunch of cool bad guys, with various "Poisoned" designs for many of Marvel's heroes and villains looking rather impressive. Spider-Man and Deadpool in particular have been complimented as looking very impressive, and Spider-Man definitely has the badass credentials to back it up. Their core concept (essentially being to the symbiotes what the hostile symbiotes are to their hosts) is also rather interesting.
• Fan Nickname: The Venomized X-23 was quickly dubbed V-23 by the fans, though she goes by Laura and Wolverine in the comic itself.
• Magnificent Bastard: Venompool proves to be one of the most competent members of the Resistance in spite of his madness and penchant for dark jokes. Hired to investigate a scientist experimenting with parasitic tapeworms on his world, Wade bonds with the Venom symbiote to gain the upper hand against the rampant parasites, killing them all before being drafted into the war against the Poisons. Noting that the Poison that consumed Spider-Man still bore vestiges of his consciousness, Venompool allows himself to be assimilated, sacrificing his symbiote and banking on his "special brand of crazy" to create a Poison Deadpool with his mind intact. Acting as a double agent within the Hive, Deadpool reveals the location of their base to the Resistance, allowing them to infiltrate the Poisons' ship to rescue Doctor Strange. Fighting alongside Carnage to buy time for the Resistance, Deadpool accepts his fate when it becomes clear that he and Cletus would be left for dead, honorably telling him that there would be no one he'd rather die with as the ship explodes.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Host Rider. A demonic combination of Venom and Elias Morrow's Spirit of Vengeance form, the two of them have completely overtaken Robbie Reyes. The most he can do is beg the two of them over and over not to harm innocents. In addition to that, Host Rider's car is MUCH more demonic, the Rider literally feeding it criminals it catches to devour their sins. It seemingly prepared to jump up to eleven when Host Rider became Poisoned, however, he was immediately killed off by Carnage before he could do anything more than burn Carnage's face (which only mildly annoyed Cletus).
  • On that note Carnage's presence on the team. Even in a group of anti heroes and sociopaths and even the aforementioned Host Rider, Carnage is completely unhinged, made it absolutely clear that he murdered his universe's version of Venom, and doesn't even try to hide the fact that he will slit every single one of his teammate's throats whenever he decides that it will amuse him. He's also much MUCH more efficient at killing the Poisons as well, making him a terror for both sides of the war.
  • Yet both are child's play compared to the reveal at the end of the event. Poison cosmic characters..... THANOS INCLUDED.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Besides neglecting the already-established alternate Venoms mentioned below, the main series also ignored a lot of the best groundwork done in the Edge and War Stories issues. Some characters were omitted entirely (like Ngozi and Venomized Punisher), and others that were introduced as being very morally ambiguous (like the Host Rider, Venomized Deadpool, and Venomized Rocket) were summarily converted into standard-issue anti-heroes.
  • Anti-Carnage from Death of the Venomverse is a fascinating never-before-seen concept, but is added into the story without any explanation only to be unceremoniously killed off so that Carnage can become immune to Anti-Venom—something Carnage (2023) disregarded entirely.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Edge of Venomverse stories were panned by some as lackluster compared to Edge of Spider-Verse due to the Venomized variants not differing significantly personality-wise from their mainstream counterparts.
  • Not using the most of the popular established Venom variants shown on the promotional banner — like She-Venom, Gargan Venom, Ultimate Venom,^note Who may not have been able to be consumed due to not being an alien. Venom 2099, or Poison from What If: The Other — was regarded as a missed opportunity.
  • Some critics have complained about the story limiting itself to the more marketable Venom, saying it would have been more interesting if other symbiotes like Toxin, Hybrid, Scorn, and Anti-Venom were thrown into the mix, or if already-established versions of Venom were used instead of Original Generation combos. This is also how Cullen Bunn felt, but due to constraints no other symbiote showed up save for Carnage, who shows up in Issue 3.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Surprisingly, despite Venom being a darker counterpart to Spidey, Venomverse averts this trope compared to Spider-Verse. Unlike in that story, only a small handful of the Venoms are actually longer-established characters, with most new Venoms being alternate counterparts to the various hosts of the mainstream Venom symbiote (Flash Thompson, Spider-Man, Rocket Raccoon, Deadpool) or flat-out new "Venomized" combos. This allows for the audience to root for their favorites to survive without having to deal with a longtime mainstay getting offed. And even if they get killed, you basically just get to see what a "Poisoned" version of the hero looks like, so it's not like the character is immediately wasted.