Tbf, a proper mars colony (as opposed to like some kind of research base analogous to the sorts of thing we have in antarctica) is similarly far off, the challenges compared to venus are just a bit less obvious because the harshness of dealing with, say, dangerous regolith and low gravity are less visually obvious than those of dealing with a crushing and corrosive atmosphere.

I'm honestly not really convinced that mars or any planet makes a good target for space colonies. Mining/resource extraction maybe, but you cant realistically build any kind of space colony until the infrastructure exists to obtain materials and manufacture everything a society needs in space, just on account of how expensive launching stuff from earth is, and since that infrastructure would need to come before large numbers of people do and therefore must be automated, there's not a particular need to have a space colony on the same site as a resource extraction facility. Given that, I think that the various concepts for centrifugal space habitats make more sense, where you can set your day length and simulated gravity where humans prefer them, and dont need to worry about taking off from or landing in a deep gravity well every time you want to enter or leave the thing.