Venus Primer
The Series That Didn’t Know What It Wanted to Be!
Venus was an really odd comic book. It chronicled the adventures of Venus, the Greek Goddess of love as she returned to Earth and interacted with 1950s America. She gets a job working for Beauty Magazine as their editor/model and romances its owner, Whitney Hammond.
The series also played it fast and loose with Grecian and Roman mythology as well as other mythologies and historical figures. All the Olympian deities used their Roman names and would interact with characters like Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Samson. Issue #6, 9, 10, 12 she battled Loki the god of mischief (although in issue #10 he calls himself Satan for some reason). Up until issue #8 the series was mostly centered around romance, but it took on a more action oriented stories thereafter — they weren’t that great, probably because they also included the weak ass love triangle between Venus, Whitney Hammond, and Della Mason.
Issue #10 the series started featuring science fiction stories where Venus would go into space and fight super-scientific menaces. Then the tone changed again in issue #12 where Venus started doing horror stories. In the rest of the series Venus becomes a detective of sort investigating some really macabre incidents. Like I said, it’s really bizarre. Anyway, the series ended after 19 issues with little to no fanfare.
The first few issues featured backup stories featuring Hedy De Vine but she was later replaced with generic romance stories.
Confusing Continuity
Is this part of continuity? Yes! Surprisingly. There was some confusion when Agents of Atlas came out decades later. A character in that series named Venus was later revealed to be a siren and not the real Aphrodite (aka Venus) and for a while it threw everything from this Venus series into question. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #12 features profiles for both Venuses, the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the siren that served with the Agents of Atlas. It clarifies that the stories in Venus all are the exploits of the Greek goddess who later gave up on the mortal world when she began watching her friends growing older and left, that’s when the siren showed up posing as her thereafter. That same profile explains away why, at the start of the series, Venus and the other Olympian gods live on the planet Venus and why she is in charge instead of Zeus and why her powers are so inconsistent in this series. (In short order those explanations are: To distance themselves from humans, because Zeus was taking a powder, and because Zeus cast a spell to limit their powers on Earth)
Another confusing bit of continuity is the inclusion of Loki and Thor in this series. Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe A-Z #6 and 12 cite that these Venus issues were the first appearances of Thor and Loki. This was supported by later handbook entries until Guidebook to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor was published. Wait, what? Let me explain. The MCU Guidebooks had sections for each character profile that compares the characters in the movies to their comic book version. It also lists the first appearances of the comic characters. By this point, Marvel stopped listing the Venus issues as the first appearances opting for the more contemporary Journey into Mystery appearances as their first appearances. You can get a sort of explanation from one of the guys who helped write the MCU Guidebooks here.
The writer said he couldn’t say why but the change was intentional. If I were to read between the lines, I’m thinking it is for legal reasons. Marvel just got out of a lengthy legal battle with the Kirby estate and that probably has something to do with it. But that’s purely speculation on my part.
Still, this series is the first appearance of a whole lot of Olympian gods and that is confirmed as the first appearances of these characters.
Character Legacy
Venus has been seen sporadically decades later. making her first appearance in the Marvel age in Sub-Mariner #57. She also made occasional appearances in issues of the Champions, Thor, Avengers, and, more recently Incredible Hercules.
Index Scope
As usual this index will be omitting the generic romance and text stories. I am also skipping the Hedy Devine stories. Hedy is part of Marvel continuity, I just have other more important things to write about than a fashion comic form the late 40s/early 50s, reading all these Venus comics was painful enough.
