Venom: Separation Anxiety #4

History

Announced in February 2024 and launched in May of the same year, Venom: Separation Anxiety is a five-issue limited series written by David Michelinie — who co-created Eddie Brock alongside artist Todd McFarlane during their landmark Amazing Spider-Man run in the late 1980s — with interior art by Gerardo Sandoval (Death of the Venomverse) and cover art by Paulo Siqueira. The series followed directly from two previous retro Venom miniseries Michelinie had written for Marvel (Venom: Lethal Protector Vol. 2 and its sequel), effectively making Separation Anxiety the third installment of his modern revisitation of Venom's early anti-hero career. Michelinie has stated that the central story problem was finding a new angle on the 'separation anxiety' theme, ultimately settling on Purple Man as a villain whose touch could siphon pieces of the symbiote away, inverting the usual dynamic by making Venom progressively weaker across the run rather than staging a single dramatic separation. Issue #4 was edited by Thomas Groneman under editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue #4 is titled 'The King in Purple: Part Four – The Past is Prologue,' the penultimate chapter of the five-issue Venom: Separation Anxiety (Vol. 2) limited series.
• Written by David Michelinie — co-creator of Eddie Brock/Venom alongside artist Todd McFarlane — with interior pencils and inks by Gerardo Sandoval, inking assists by Victor Nava, colors by Romulo Fajardo Jr., letters by VC's Travis Lanham, and a cover by Paulo Siqueira.
• The central conflict pits Eddie Brock against Zebediah Killgrave (Purple Man), whose pheromone-based reality-warping powers have been progressively stealing fragments of Eddie's symbiote throughout the series, growing stronger as Venom grows weaker — a previously unexplored villain pairing in Venom's publishing history.
• Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich) returns in this issue as a surprise complicating antagonist, disrupting Venom's 'final stand' against the Purple Man.
• Victor Von Doom (Dr. Doom) appears only in recap pages, not in the issue's main story — his active role occurred in an earlier chapter of the arc.
• Supporting character Joy Mercado, the Daily Bugle reporter with a long history in Spider-Man and Venom comics, appears as a supporting character alongside Eddie Brock throughout the series.
• The entire series is set in Eddie Brock's earliest days as Venom, functioning as a retro-continuity story outside the current main Marvel timeline, consistent with Michelinie's previous two Lethal Protector revival miniseries.
• The complete five-issue run was collected in the trade paperback Venom: Separation Anxiety – The King in Purple, collecting issues #1–5.

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