Best of this Week: Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety One-Shot – Clay McCleod Chapman, Brian Level, Jordan Boyd and Travis Lanham

God is Here.

Riot, Lasher, Agony and Phage – four of the symbiotes created by the Life Foundation had been fused together in the body of a War Dog since the incidents of Carnage USA (2012). They hadn’t been seen in years, but now that Carnage’s plot is in full swing, the formerly heroic (?) Symbiotes have been twisted and turned to Knull’s will.

The book begins with the War Dog sitting in the middle of the street in a small Colorado town, hearing the sounds of a child crying. Slobbering with flies buzzing around him, the dog walks over to the crying child and we learn that her name is Sadie. Sadie is lamenting the impending divorce of her mother and father and she’s crying about the fact that they don’t seem to care about how this is affecting their kids as Sadie has a younger brother as well. She vents to the Dog, wishing that they could stay in their home and stay a family while panels of her mother and father screaming at each other at either side of the pages.

Sadie invites the dog in for a little while and as she goes to pack, the dog listens to the mother and father arguing and the horror ensues in an amazing page. It shows the slow and terrifying transformation of the dog into a fleshy, toothy monster as its face and skin stretches back to the point of tearing and tendrils begin to protrude from it’s back. It’s almost disgusting to the point of hearing the sloshy and squirmy noises of the beast as it roars, soon to consume the family.

We get our late title card and cut to Sadie going up to the attic to grab her brother, Billy, and show him the dog. Unfortunately, elation turns to horror as they come to find their father pinned to the ceiling by the slimy and slithering mess of symbiotic fluid as their mother looks on in cold fear. He is soon absorbed into the form of Riot as the panel layout shows as a small spiral as the symbiote enters his eyes nose and mouth before he is shown as an absolutely terrifying beast, the father half absorbed and looking on with wide eyes as Riot says “Come to daddy,” to the children.

Their mother screams at them to run away as she too is attacked and taken over by the Agony Symbiote. The chase begins as they kids try to get away from the possessed bodies of their mother and father, who plead with them, saying that they can finally be together again, a family. One of their neighbors knocks on the door and asks about the screaming. When Sadie tries to scream for help, Agony sprays acid in his face and we have to sit and watch in horror as his face dissolves, melting with a gross hiss as he screams in death. Sadie manages to hide herself and Billy in the attic until Riot sniffs them out and breaks in.

Sadie and Billy seem to know a little bit about Symbiotes and she cranks the music on her radio loud and it manages to do little but peel the symbiote away a little bit, revealing her father before they crush the radio. They crash through the ceiling and the siblings make their way to the bathroom, listening to their “Dad” taunt them about being a family again, if only they’d just join him. Sadie and Billy hide in the bathroom, lying in the tub as it drips with an eerie SPLCH sound. Sadie tells Billy that everything will be okay and as we all know, it is never okay as Phage drips right onto Billy’s head and infects him.

Riot, Phage and the unbonded Lasher converge on her and she uses a lighter and hairspray as a last resort to weaken them. It soon runs out and she is forced to run downstairs, right into the arms of Agony who has prepared the body of the neighbor as dinner.

The dinner scene itself is absolutely terrifying and combines the worst of the Texas Chainsaw dinner scene and the recent family dinner from Resident Evil 7. Sadie is bound by Lasher and crying as she is forced to listen to the rest of her possessed family say their grace to Knull. They act like a normal family, but with their jagged teeth, spiralled faces and red speech bubbles, nothing is wholesome. Everything is dangerous. Everything is Carnage.

They begin to pour a little bit of their symbiotes into a glass of possibly wine and try to offer it to Sadie. As it gets close to her lips, she smashes the glass and stabs Lasher, freeing her for just a moment. She runs and runs, the door right in her sights and repeats that she’s gonna make it. She’s going to make it!

She doesn’t.

I didn’t expect Separation Anxiety to be any good. I thought it would have been a cash grab on one of those old Symbiote stories, but this was an excellent lesson in horror. The writing is chilling and the art is absolutely disgusting in the best ways. Brian Level did an amazing job in hi layouts with the paneling being some of the best parts of this as almost every scene weaves itself as either something formless or an object pertinent to the moment. Chapman captured the hope and terror of child fear like a champ, making you root for Billy and Sadie as they tried to make their futile escape only for it to be ripped from their hands like everything in Absolute Carnage so far.

If this is the quality that all of these tie-ins are going to have, then I am all aboard for this ride. HIGH Recommend.