Sideshow Collectibles and Marvel Form a Symbiotic Relationship for New Venom Statue

On this day in history, Venom made his debut in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. You might have heard a little something about it. To commemorate the occasion, Sideshow Collectibles officially unveiled its new Venom Premium Format Figure. The hulking symbiotic spider-monster now joins Spider-Man, Carnage, Black Cat and Green Goblin in Sideshow's expanding Spider-Statue series. Venom might also be the baddest in the bunch.

Standing atop a architectural base that looks like it could be from any number of the Big Apple's many skyscrapers --- and which features 1988 in Roman numerals to hint at Venom's orgins --- Venom lords over the scene with a lot of mass. This is a big statue, and while Venom has always been portrayed as larger than most other Spider-characters, this piece takes things to another level. It also invokes the old school stylings of Todd McFarlane with a special alternate head that drops the over-sized tongue that became prevalent in later incarnations of the symbiote villain.

On its own, the Venom statue is really impressive. There's a tremendous amount of detail in all the rippling "skin," but you can still get a great sense of the musculature and deformed anatomy the alien gives to its host, Eddie Brock. Combined with the other pieces in this series though, you begin to see an amazing picture of the battle Sideshow envisioned for the webslinger and his most devious of enemies. I can only hope this isn't the last piece of the puzzle, and even more sinister rogues find their way into statues that I'll likely never be able to afford.

The Venom Premium Format Figure is available for pre-order now for $624.99, and is expected to arrive in Q4 2017.