The free archive of this month is Reward No.04(05/2017) which also contains variations of this venom & Carnage!! Currently you can get both No. 04 and No. 20 at my Patreon!
Venom : Carnage Unleashed 3 (1995) . There’s Too Much Confusion! . Written by Larry Hama Penciled by Andrew Wildman Inked by Josef Rubinstein Colors by Tom Smith Lettered by Dave Sharpe Edited by Eric Fein . Carnage continued to search and found the people responsible for the Carnage video game… . #venom #carnage #spiderman #90s #andrewwildman #larryhama #josefrubinstein https://www.instagram.com/p/CeBpMuLsJpk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Carnage cover up that went down the other day on @og_slag adding background soon. Can’t wait to show off the full Spider-Man sleeve #tattoos #spiderman #carnage #venom #coveruptattoo (at Black Hand Studio) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTCp652LBbk/?utm_medium=tumblr
As bad as Maximum Carnage is there are aspects of it I actually like, at least conceptually.
This sequence is one of them.
It’s a neat idea, juxtaposing the heroic couples in Peter/MJ with the villainous couple in Carnage/Shriek.
It’s extra juicy because Carnage and Shriek are so obviously a toxic relationship yet their argument ends with them back on good terms, whilst Peter and MJ’s argument isn’t toxic at all (albeit very stressful) and ends poorly with no real resolution reached.
I just think it was a small and modestly clever sequence is all.
If you want to go deeper, I guess you could argue Maximum Carnage was a rebuttal to the breakdown or changing of the perceived norms of the time, the institution of marriage/family being one of them. So having the hero’s marriage be in a bad place whilst the villains’ relationship is an extremely warped depiction of the traditional nuclear family does play well into the themes the story was going for…however poorly it tried to reach those themes in other parts of the story
This is from Maximum Carnage and re-reading this I’m given pause to question some things. Peter partnered with Venom twice but the idea of ‘condoning his violent methods’ wasn’t really a consideration in those stories. One of those occasions entailed facing Carnage; the other was in ‘Lethal Protector’.
And yet here, when he’s facing Carnage along 2 other villains he’s concerned about condoning his methods?
Were i to offer a solution to the problem I’d go with something like this.
Whilst Peter knew in the original Carnage story that Venom was willing to kill to defend innocent life, he had a contingency plan in place to apprehend Venom* and was likely willing to mix it up with him if Venom stepped out of line.
However, in Maximum Carnage the situation hasn’t afforded him any time to set up any such contingency. Back in ASm 361-363, Peter needed Venom’s help to learn about what Carnage was and bring him in. But that entailed travelling to the island he’d left Venom on in the first place, which he needed Human Torch’s help to transport him over anyway. So he could’ve set something up en route to that island or in contacting the F4 anyway.
Here though Venom is in NYC (specifically asleep on Peter’s coach during the above scene), Carnage and 2 other mass murderers are on the loose. It’s not practical or responsible to waste time setting up a plan to reign in Venom when it’d waste time that could otherwise be spent on stopping the Carnage crew.
So basically Spidey is in a situation where he needs to team up with Venom but also can’t really hope to hold Venom in check. Not only does he have some injured ribs in this scene but because Carnage has 2 accomplices, he’d be at a major disadvantage if he had to stop Venom going too far against Carnage.
Of course he resolves to at least TRY to do that later, but at this point you can understand how from his POV his options seem like he either works with Venom and accepts his methods or doesn’t work with him at all.
Essentially he needs Venom’s muscle but hasn’t got anything in his back pocket to keep Venom in check if needs be.
It occurs to me that Maximum Carnage could’ve been a much better story if Spidey had been a parent and if the story had made family it’s central theme.
Consider that the story already contains 3 distinct and broken/dysfunctional family units.
The Osborns: Harry’s madness and consequent death traumatized his wife and child.
Venom and Carnage: As Mike Costa, Donny Cates and others have pointed out, Brock and his symbiote are functionally a romantic relationship, through that lens Carnage is their child and there is a mutual disdain between them. Appropriately given Brock’s moniker, they are a toxic family dynamic.
Team Carnage: Carnage and Shriek form a twisted couple and act as ‘parents’ to Doppelganger, Carrion and arguably Demogoblin (I guess you could call him an ‘uncle’). Collectively they form a warped parody of the traditional American nuclear family (and likely an attempt to evoke the Manson Family).
Of course Carnage and Shriek can be abusive to one another and Carnage eventually kills Doppelganger.Of course another element in this story was Peter’s parents. Whilst they were later revealed as imposters as originally written in Maximum Carnage they were the bona fide articles.
By making Peter a father and tweaking the role his parents play Spidey becomes a potential reflection of the above three families.
If you emphasized the distance and differing ideologies between his parents and himself he becomes a reflection of Carnage and his relationship with Venom and Brock.
He is already something of a reflection of Normie because like him he lost a father at a young age, whether you are talking about Richard or Ben.
If you made him a father then in being Spidey he runs the risk of subjecting MJ and their child to pain and loss just as Harry did to Liz and Normie. A different kind of pain and loss sure, but pain and loss all the same.
And by being a father the Parker family, whilst far from perfect, stands in opposition to Team Carnage’s perverse parody of the ‘all-American nuclear family’. The tension then coming from Peter’s act of being Spidey to fight Carnage risks tearing his family apart. But the story would obviously demonstrate their family as strong enough to weather the storm.
I’m not saying this would fix all the problems with the story automatically. But I see the seeds of what could’ve been if you removed unnecessary stuff, added in this one element and placed the focus in a different place.
