I'm not proud of that title, but I make do with what my brain provides. Also, Jeff Parker says in the HC edition of Agents of Atlas Ken Bald was the artist, or the creator of the character, but the Grand Comics Database has it updated to their best guess being Klein as penciler.
Venus started as more of a romance mag. Venus is the actual goddess of love, and lives on the planet Venus, which, because this came out in 1948, has lush wooded hills and oceans, rather than barren rock, crushing atmospheric pressure and sulfuric acid rain that never reaches the surface. But Venus is bored with all this idyll, and wishes she could go to Earth and meet a guy.
By the magic of plot contrivance, she is somehow whisked to Earth, and deposited in the middle of a street in New York City, where a cop tells her she can't just walk around like she's sleepwalking, because it's 'demoralizing.' Would you rather she walked around staring at her phone all day? A Mister Hammond sees all the commotion, and decides this lady is just the publicity stunt he needs to make his beauty magazine, creatively named "Beauty Magazine", a big hit. Presumably none of the other beauty mags on the stands had thought of using pictures of pretty girls.
Venus feels like a MacGuffin in that stuff happens around her and because of her, but she's not really doing any of it. She lost her powers in the abrupt trip to Earth, so she's a regular lady, except with no actual skills besides looking nice. Mostly it's Hammond doing everything. Hammond decides to run a story that she was discovered on a remote Pacific Island, Hammond fires his magazine editor when the guy refuses to go along with this nonsense. Hammond then names Venus editor, despite her complete lack of experience, and to the annoyance of his secretary, who Venus immediately tags as her enemy. How about making friends instead?
Goddess of love, unless she gives me a side-eye. Then it's on.
Later, the book shifted to more of horror bent, with Venus running into mummies and living skeletons, stuff like that. I'm guessing she got her powers back for that stretch, but I don't know for sure. Parker went with the idea Venus was a siren given human form - made to look like the actual goddess Aphrodite, to said goddess' irritation - by a Sorcerer Supreme that Golden Claw paid to act as security. She spent so running from that past and all the lives she took she forgot it entirely, until the worst possible moment for the team. Jimmy Woo helps her realize she's since used her powers to help people by ending conflicts and getting them to talk or maybe fall in love, and that seems to help.
The Agents of Atlas version is generally bubbly and friendly. Greets everyone with big hugs, changes her hair color to red once Namora's awake because the team can't have two blondes, that kind of thing. Someone that, at a glance, might be dismissed as an airhead, but she's perceptive and empathetic. Some of that is her powers, but she chooses how to use the ability, so some of it has to be down to personality. She chose to travel to the conflict-torn region where Ken Hale became a gorilla to end all the strife there. She's also the one who embraces her power when it's the only way to stop the team tearing itself apart. Jimmy Woo could encourage her, but Venus had to open up and do it.
The ultimate end of Agents of Atlas was Jimmy Woo embracing a destiny he didn't know about, and deciding to turn something used for evil towards good. All the characters are dealing with that to varying degrees, making the best of bad situations. Ken Hale accepting he's a gorilla and just hiding away is no good, Bob accepting he can't go back to Uranus. Venus has to deal with her origin not being at all what she thought, and having some skeletons in her closet as a result, but making the best of it with her friends. If they can make the world better, and she can help by ending fights faster, why not?
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