Loved symbiote suit clowning on the Sinister Six. The Venom arc in Spectacular was the best portrayal of the character across of any medium it has appeared in so far, design aside.
I'm still partial to the arc across ASM 374-375, when Venom goes ape shit on Peter, and basically kicks his ass all over the mall. My favorites Venom/Spiderman altercations have always been the ones where Spidey just looked hopelessly out-matched, and generally survived by getting out of fighting Venom altogether.
Spider-man is literally thrown OUT of the mall (like several hundred free), and Venom kidnaps his parents. Not to hurt them.... no no no, but to preserve their innocence in the face of the cruel, selfish Spider-Man, so that they aren't humiliated or disgusted by his foul deeds.
He takes them to the same Carnival the he and his former wife had been to, the last memories of happiness he had before his career was destroyed. Spidey tracks down Eddie's ex, asks a ton of questions, figures out at the Carnival is the best place to go looking.
His costume is torn, he's walking through the snow in this abandonned amusement park, and mid-internal-dialog, realizes that Venom is right behind him. Not in full costume. Just boots, jeans, and a leather jacket with the white-spider emblazened on it (would pay much moneyz for this jacket). This brings out one of the best lines in modern Spidey history.
"You usually run from us."
Yes he does. Immediately fans of spidey are reminded that this is an enemy that has had Spidey's number again and again, and only by running, tricking, or finding help has Spidey EVER managed to slow him down.
Venom explains why he took Parker's parents, Parker politely explains how fucking crazy he is, and the two go about tearing apart an amusement park.... well, Venom starts tearing it apart, generally using Spidermans limp, bruising body as his destructive tool of choice.
Mid way through the Wild Pack (Silver Sable) come down, hired by JJ to wrangle Venom for an exclusive interview, after JJ had seen the events at the mall from the day prior.
So Spiderman and Venom are both busy kicking the crap out of the Wild Pack with hilarious efficiency, until Venom has to stop for a minute to rescue Peter's parents from a fire unleashe by a flame-thrower. He had promised no harm would come to them at the beginning of the arc.
So finally, with the side-show taken care of, Venom and Spider-Man get back to fighting in the amusement park. Only there's an unintended guest in the form of Brock's ex-wife, who came to the same conclusion as Spidey after talking to him. Damage dealt over the course of the battle weakened a ferris wheel and it was about to fall on her. Eddie was weakened too and couldn't save her, and then Spider-man helped.
After that, Eddie comes to the grudging conclusion that despite how much of his innocence Spider-Man stole, he does a lot of good protecting other innocents. So they make a truce, and Venom is free to go somewhere else, and Spider-Man won't follow him. Spider-Man breaks his word (which he does a lot with Venom, actually), but they end up buddy buddy just in time for Maximum Carnage.
That arc pretty much turned me into a Venom and Spider-Man fan in one fell swoop.
Artwork by Bagley, with character positioning and abilities HEAVILY inspired my Mcfarlane's work, and we saw Venom as he was always supposed to be: The psychotic, conflicted, insanely powerful anti-spiderman. The opposite side of the same coin. No worries about world domination, or anything stupid like that. He want's to hurt one person very badly, and he will rationalize every terrible thing he does around that.
So good.
None of the other mediums have been daring enough to explore the psychosis or outward violence of the character enough.
