Here is my argument. Richard has more Venom looking eyes with jagged lines around the eyes.
The cover has smooth lines around the eyes. To me this is just a black costume with no way to tell who is in the suit. It is basically the same as this one
How do we know that this one doesn’t depict Richard in the black suit?
Looks the webbing is white on the suit Richard is wearing but I never noticed the jagged eyes before
Could just be artists renditions for the slight difference from interior pages to exterior covers, the cover artists might not have been provided all the details of the storyline perhaps?
Perhaps but then how does one distinguish who is under the suit? Typically Richard has been shown with the jagged lines.
Just gonna have to ask the creators and we as a community will hear them and probably still tell them we don’t believe them like we do so well in the past on appearances when creators say who’s who or when they first appeared. 
Eyes and spider symbol are different
We go with what we know. Not what we don’t know.
And we know 2 years ago when the artist was laying out these covers this part of the story was not yet written. And the artist was just making covers and color swapping different suits representing different spider-man’s from the 616 universe.
This is also most likely true. Artists being asked to do variant covers likely aren’t provided every detail within the story. Only the artist can confirm what they were drawing.
They have an instagram page, I’m assuming. Someone ask him. (I see @agentpoyo already suggested…so he and I are on the same page for once…mark it on your calendars.)
Question for all, if you have to spec for Richard as the new BLACK SPIDER-MAN, would you go for the 1st appearance of Richard or when Richard dons the SPIDER-SUIT? This is like 1st Jason Todd or Jason Todd become Robin OR 1st APP of Dylan or when Dylan becomes XXX.
Not sure, but Marvel has been calling him Venom for a while now. Cover your bases and pick up both if you can.
I dunno. I let the market decide what they want to pay crazy prices on and then I’ll do my Bounty Hunter thing…
it’s actually a great read. He’s not called Venom in the issue but him and Black Cat fight then become friend being the teenagers they are. Spidey and Flash fight Kraven and it doesnt go well. Mysterio behind the scenes as well who is about to be revealed soon. I think #13 is a good book to grab.
Thanks for the tip. Cover price copies are drying up quickly. I just got ahold of 15 copies. I feel good about this one picking up serious steam this week.
Now sold out.
regal cinemas dropped packs of fantastic four trading cards at their 4dx screens on opening day. selling for pretty penny on ebay atm
I like trading cards! I’m not gonna pay a bunch for something that was a freebie tho.
Man oh man. Glad my order on those 15 copies was cancelled. This one seems to be a dud.
This will kill the price of JSC’s 1:50 for Blood & Thunder that has been seeing some pretty high prices
Blood & Thunder #1 JSC Artist EXCLUSIVE (2025) – J. Scott Campbell Store
