WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Empyre: Savage Avengers, by Gerry Duggan, Greg Smallwood, and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
The Marvel Comics event Empyre has been short on levity, thanks to its incredibly high stakes. After a bitter betrayal by the Cotati -- the plant people who used to be friends with the heroes of Earth and are now threatening to destroy all animal life after manipulating the Kree and Skrull civilizations -- the planet now must repel a horde of "salad people" determined to take revenge for generational wrongs.
While that's a very serious story, one recent Empyre tie-in, Empyre: Savage Avengers, spares a few moments for some laughs that feature two typically serious characters: Venom and Conan the Barbarian.
Venom and Conan are essentially work friends, thanks to their short time together in the Savage Avengers. While Conan and Marvel's other savage heroes have been primarily concerned with the mad wizard Kulan Gath, Conan finds himself in Mexico City here, watching Lucha Libre while on a break from hunting for evil wizards.
While enjoying a beer and a burrito, as barbarians are wont to do, Conan remarks upon the artificiality of the fighting in the ring, which brings him to pick a fight with some of the men in the stands. At that moment, a tree seemingly crashes into the stadium, crushing the ring and some of the people in it. The tree turns out to be a Cotati warship that's there to harvest humans, War of the Worlds-style, to churn into fertilizer.
Though Conan misunderstands just who the Cotati are and what they're doing there, he doesn't miss an opportunity to test his mettle, and he sets to pruning the invaders. The Cotati use a "coward's weapon," a bow and arrow laced with poison, to take Conan out of commission. The poison makes him hallucinate. Just when he's about to be eaten by his hallucinated beautiful woman, the dream is interrupted by Eddie Brock, Venom. Venom rouses Conan from his stupor and gets him up to speed. There are plant aliens that need killing. That's when the book turns into a violent buddy movie complete with a Legend of Zelda joke.
Between the two of them, Venom commandeers a tanker truck and Conan mounts a huge farming machine, and the streets of Mexico City run green with Cotati blood. Despite the death surrounding them, the book revels in the comedy of these two hulking brutes in their borrowed vehicles. Of course, Conan successfully reaps countless Cotati, and Venom manages to explode the tanker truck right where he wants it, and the day is won. The book ends with the two heroes celebrating at a nearby taco stand.
Considering its participants, the tone of this issue might seem a little surprising, but these two antiheroes still found enough time to enjoy a little mayhem during Empyre, even though the world was crashing around them.