Editor's Note: Dark Reign: The Sinister Spider-Man #1 arrives in stores tomorrow, June 24.

"Chapter One: Women Love Him, Men Want To Be Him"

From the very first pages of this issue, it's apparent that this book is going to revel in its iconoclastic nature. From the amusingly inappropriate title of the story, to the twisted riff on the opening monologue from the first Spider-Man movie, to the bizarre supervillain concept of "General Wolfram, genetic terror of the Third Reich," it's clear that this isn't going to be a standard superhero book. And it's all the better for it.

As the title of the miniseries suggests, this book is all about Venom, who is currently masquerading as Spider-Man as part of the Marvel Universe's "Dark Reign" status quo. Despite that limited-sounding set-up, writer Brian Reed manages to get a lot of mileage out of Venom's misadventures as a would-be superhero, whilst also setting up several interesting plot threads to be explored in future issues.

Venom's growing antagonism with Norman Osborn is hardly the most original concept in the world -- Norman seems to be having trouble keeping many of his "Dark Avengers" in check lately -- but it allows Reed to have some sick fun with Gargan's excesses (jokes about dead hookers somehow seem a lot more fitting for a Venom title than they did in one of the most recent issues of Amazing Spider-Man). There's also the introduction of an interesting new superhero (or should that be villain?) in the form of the Redeemer, who I look forward to seeing developed further in future issues. And Reed is clearly enjoying writing J. Jonah Jameson as the mayor of New York, whose new role gets more exposure here than we've seen in the core Amazing title lately.

However, the real draw of this book for me is Chris Bachalo's art. I've been a fan of Bachalo for a while: in addition to his run with Grant Morrison on New X-Men, I've enjoyed the artist's recent work on one of the earliest arcs of Amazing Spider-Man's "Brand New Day" relaunch, and his contributions to the pages of New Avengers have shown further development of his style.

In addition to the sharp angles and distinctive character designs (which make for some very sexy strippers, and a very scary and imposing Venom) this title sees yet another leap forwards in the artist's craft, with Bachalo using colour to emphasise different areas of his pages, whilst other panels are left in stark black-and-white. It's a distinctive, attention-grabbing technique that suggests that Bachalo is putting more and more effort into his overall page designs without it coming at the expense of his panel-to-panel storytelling. That's a pretty tough compromise to pull off (current issues of Astonishing X-Men have shown that even established talents like Simone Bianchi have trouble striking a balance), but Bachalo manages it with aplomb here.

There's also a wide variety in Bachalo's layouts, making each new page feel like a different experience to the last, and tailoring each one to the needs of the story: a good example is the elongated set of panels that show Mayor Jameson marching down the corridors of power, or the switching perspectives of the nine-panel grid page, which create a strong feeling of disjointedness and confusion immediately before Jameson gets the grim shock that he gets at the end of the issue.

Those people who don't appreciate Bachalo's exaggerated angular style will probably find little to win them over here, but for everybody else this is a great-looking book that tells an intriguing story, plunging the love-to-hate anti-hero that is Venom into the sandbox of the current status quo of Amazing Spider-Man, with entertaining results.

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