Best of Marvel: Week of October 16th, 2019

Best of this Week: Absolute Carnage #4 – Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin, Jay Leisten and Clayton Cowles

God is Coming and Eddie Brock is ready for him.

Things have not been looking good for Eddie, Peter and the rest of the heroes of New York. Carnage’s brutality and efficiency has seen him gain the upper hand at every turn imaginable, allowing him to snatch up codices from almost everyone he’s encountered. Ghost Riders haven’t been safe, Spider-People haven’t been safe and even girls with magical powers over hell haven’t been able to stop Carnage’s warpath.

The last issue saw him take the appearance of Eddie Brock to infiltrate The Maker’s lab to steal the codices from Captain America, The Thing and Wolverine, taking everyone by surprise and seeing the Hulk use the Venom Symbiote himself. This issue follows up on that excellently by showing us the fallout of Hulk merging with Venom, Eddie dealing with the loss of his other again and the heroic efforts he makes to protect his son.

The book begins with an amazingly drawn and explosive punch by Venom Hulk. Carnage is laughing as he’s being put through a wall while clawing at Hulk’s eyes. The Symbiote is barely able to contain all of Hulk’s massive musculature as it appears to be tearing apart around his fist and forearm. The use of blur around the edges of the page sell you on the velocity of the punch and all of the rubble flying out as they go through the wall shows just how heavy and impactful the blow was. For added measure, there’s even a pigeon just flying by as it all happens.

As the fight is going on, Eddie and Peter take Normie and Ethan to The Maker’s armory to protect the kids from the Symbiote Zombies and Norman Osborn himself. Eddie is dead set on protecting the other heroes, but Peter tries to convince him to stay down with the rest of them. This issue gives us one of the best glimpses of the inner heroism of Eddie Brock as he looks at Spider-Man with the most desperate look possible, one eye stitched closed and asks him to let him do this. Spider-Man does and Eddie gathers Cap’s shield and maybe some kind of electric glove to go and protect everyone. Presumably, the events of Amazing Spider-Man #31 take place while Eddie is out fighting.

The next few pages are just strings of awesomely paced and spectacularly drawn fight scenes. Eddie, armed with the shield, fights his way through Carnage’s hordes and Miles Morales as an infected symbiote re-emerges. (Sorta ignoring the events of Miles’ own tie-in) Elsewhere, Venom Hulk and Carnage continue their romp around the warehouse district as Carnage is surprisingly holding his own against the black and green giant. Frank Martin and the various inkers really set the mood for the fight. The fires glow bright in the backgrounds with a vibrant red and white coloring to it, almost like a fiery mist. Rain crashes down around them and the inks are dark in the perfect places, really bringing out the deep red in Carnage’s color scheme as well as the black veins that now coil around his body. As Carnage mushes Hulk into a wall, you can feel his expression of pain and rage, accentuated by the glowing green of his eyes.

Pinned under Cap’s shield with Miles bearing down on him, Eddie decides to use the shock glove to blast the symbiote off of the young Spider, allowing the two to finally re-team as Miles runs down what he learned while hearing Carnage’s thoughts. He warns that if he gets Hulk’s Codex and the Venom Symbiote, he’ll be unstoppable. In a surprise upset, Carnage overpowers the mind of the Hulk, turning him back into Banner and rips his spine right out as Eddie and Miles show up. It’s a disgusting scene as they always are with Cowles making sure to put as much emphasis as he can by giving it a nice “SHRIPP” sound effect in big, bold, red letters over an entirely black background.

Before we know it, Carnage is covered in the Venom Symbiote, becoming an ultra badass. Ryan Stegman has done a lot to redesign some of the elements of some symbiotes, but this Black Carnage is somehow so much cooler and so much better. He looks like a demon knight with the pauldrons with spikes, an improbable neck guard/collar and Maleficent-esque horns all crackling with hell energy. Eddie begins to lose all hope upon seeing him, but that feeling is washed away when Captain America, The Thing and Wolverine all show up to help in the fight.

Miles grabs Eddie and tells him that the Maker’s machine that was supposed to destroy the codices did no such thing and instead saved them all. The last moments of the book show the Doverton Avengers fight a losing effort against Carnage while Eddie punches the machine, giving his own inner monologue about how he feels something creeping up inside of him. The hope that he thought was lost. Surrounded by all of this blackness and despair, Carnage and all of his bringers of Death, Eddie punches his way to the light.

As the penultimate issue to Absolute Carnage, have to say that this event and the various tie-ins that have accompanied it have been absolutely amazing to read. I usually decry back to back event stories, especially since we had just come off the heels of War of the Realms, but Absolute Carnage fit the aesthetic of everything I love in stories. It’s dark, it’s bleak and it’s Absolutely Brutal.

Ryan Stegman can do no wrong here as his art style is amazing from start to finish, he has an eye for action scenes and makes great use of single a double page spreads to bring out the most in every scene. Even when the fighting is confined to a few panels, he manages to spring as many infected as he can into the space, making things feel claustrophobic and dangerous. Frank Martin’s colors give this book life, however, when they’re burning with darkness or glimmer with small glimpses of hope. They complete the amazing package by pulling the emotion out of you, whether you’re terrified or you have a bit of hope only or it to be ripped away.

JP Mayer and Jay Leisten help him by making sure that the pages have the perfect amount of darkness to them. The inks are phenomenal and really help to give off that feeling of hopelessness and danger in every scene, even better that most of this story takes place at night so the mood is always set.

I love that Eddie Brock is starting to be seen less as the villain who used to eat people’s brains and more as this responsible every-man that’s been caught in an extraordinary situation. When he got the Symbiote back at the end of Lee Price’s time in All-New, All Different Marvel, I never expected him to get this much heart. That’s the main thing that Donny Cates has contributed to this character, that feeling of heroism.

Eddie’s becoming a much better person than he ever was in the past, but at the same time, we know that he can never fully escape who he was. Even at the end of this issue there was a transcription of his first time in jail when he first met Cletus Kasady and it was so weird to see how unhinged Eddie was not too long ago.

As Absolute Carnage draws to a close (and with Venom Island on the horizon) I can’t wait to see what direction his story takes and how Eddie Brock could possibly see Avenger status in the far future. High recommend.

Best of Marvel: Week of August 28th, 2019

Runner Up: Absolute Carnage #2 – Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin and Clayton Cowles

God is Here.

After the events of the last issue there aren’t enough words to describe just how hopeless things are looking for anyone who has ever worn a symbiote.

Spider-Man and venom have been backed into a corner by Carnage and his horde of infected inmates at the Ravencroft Asylum. With no other options Eddie decides it best to break out and punches a hole through the wall for a tactical retreat. Eddie is typically known for his ability to brute force his way through any problem, but Carnage is a new monster altogether and as he sees Spider-Man running out of energy, he gives into the fear that they might die.

In the past, the combined might of Spider-Man and Venom has been more than enough to combat Cletus Kasady. Even when Cletus had help, he still couldn’t hold a candle to the heroes, but now, they’re almost low tier by comparison.

Spider-Man notes that he’s almost out of web fluid, so there’s no way that they’re swinging out of there, so Eddie and the Symbiote utilize one of their badass upgrades, spreads his wings and flies out of Ravencroft with Peter screaming frantically “WHATISGOINGONRIGHTNOWIHATEALLOFIT!” They then land on a roof in the city, defeated and horrified that they may not be able to stop Carnage this time.

Spider-Man says that he’ll try to get a hold of Wolverine and Captain America and Eddie says that he’ll go find any of the lowlifes that have been Symbiotes and the two split to complete their missions. Carnage chooses not to follow after them, instead he waits and plots. This issue then turns into a bit of a catch up game for the other tie in issues while Carnage gloats to Norman that everything is running smoothly and that the world will be painted red soon enough.

Ryan Stegman absolutely smashes the art in this issue with absolutely killer detail, expressions of fear and disgusting visuals, especially in Carnage’s underground lair – The sprawling mass of symbiotic flesh that covers New York’s sewage system, packed full of infected humans is a dreadful sight. In the beginning of the issue, Stegman drew a splash page of Carnage with other panels overlaid, showing one of his eyes of madness and the decayed flesh that’s absolutely under the symbiote. It’s an absolutely terrifying sight that set the tone of this horror show.

Not only were these shots great, but Stegman kills one of the moments that happens in the Miles Morales tie-in where Miles and Scorpion (Mac Gargan) fight off the infected hordes trying to take Gargan’s spine. In the tie-in, the art is more subdued and less violent, but here, Stegman turns it into something to get squeamish over. Gargan tries to abandon Miles to fight the infected alone, but is thrown back into the fight by Venom.

Unfortunately, Carnage is there waiting to pounce. He plunges a tendril into Mac’s back and DIGS around to get that spine. There’s no need to leave anything to the imagination as the blood spurts out, Gargan screams in agony and Kasady looks like he’s having the goddamned time of his life. Mayer and Martin’s colors and inks really sell just how violent all of this is. It’s almost gross just how close they get the color right and how dark the scene is. Miles swoops in to save him, but… no good deed goes unpunished.

Absolute Carnage absolutely does what it set out to do. I have never been more afraid for the Marvel Universe than I am right now. Of course, there have been universal threats, but with how close and personal this feels and the looming feeling of dread knowing that Knull is THIS close to returning is mortifying. Normally a villain will just kill a hero or destroy them and whatnot, but Carnage wants nothing but massacre. If there’s not torture and blood then what is it all worth?

Everything that Cates and Stegman have been building to has lead us here. To say that it’s beginning to lay off would be an understatement. The dividends of fear are fore more exponential than anyone could have anticipated and this will likely go down as one of the greatest Venom/Carnage stories ever written. Absolute High Recommend.

Best of Marvel: Week of August 14th, 2019

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.

Best of Marvel: Week of August 7th, 2019

Best of this Week: Absolute Carnage #1 – Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin and Clayton Cowles

God is Here.

The seeds have been sown all over the Marvel Universe for the re-emergence of Carnage in a big way for months. He’s had single back-up pages in The Avengers, Black Cat, Captain Marvel, Immortal Hulk and many others portending his arrival and the sheer amount of people and creatures that are now within his thrall. Everything is coming to a head and it is absolutely terrifying.

The book begins with Eddie Brock recalling the events of everything Donny Cates has written since he took over the character.and other past events that have ultimately shaped what will soon happen. Eddie tells his son Dylan, who doesn’t know that Eddie is his father, about Knull, the God of the Symbiotes, and how he’s being kept asleep by the planet of symbiotes surrounding him. The only way for Knull to be woken up is if someone collected enough symbiote pieces and DNA to reconnect to the hive mind and if Knull is reawakened, he will begin spreading a new age of darkness across the cosmos.

Eddie references the fights against the Dragon of Knull in the beginning of his run, but also talks about the other people who have held the Symbiote or symbiotes. He pulls so much history out in so few sentences, along with a stellar double page spread by Stegman that one might be convinced to check out other great stories just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Characters from Maximum Carnage are shown, heroes that may have been changed during Venomized and of course Captain America, The Thing and Wolverine from the amazing Carnage USA.

After Eddie recounts the danger that the two are in, they see that Eddie is a wanted man after killing many inmates at Ryker’s Island. Of course Eddie was never there and after suspecting that they’re being followed, Eddie tells Dylan that they need to make a break for it and they run away from their tail into the subway. Unfortunately for them, Cletus Kasady was lying in wait and pushes them onto the tracks, only for them to be saved by their tail; Venom.

Eddie re-bonds with the symbiote after derailing the train and a new and terrifying Carnage confronts them. Stegman wastes not a single stroke in making Carnage look like a menacing force of pure psychotic evil. His teeth are jagged, his limbs are gangly with “skin” that looks like it’s constantly dripping with blood an his ribcage and spine are exposed, but covered in the same material. He could almost be considered skeletal if not for the pumping veins all around him. This is a Monster Carnage, even more terrifying than 2015’s Carnage series and many times more powerful.

Carnage, like most children of other symbiotes, has always been stronger than Venom. Though, with enough force and maybe some help, Carnage has always been defeated one way or another, but not this time. Kasady beats the ever living hell out of Venom, smacking him in the face and smashing him into the ground. He gets right on the cusp of killing him before Eddie grabs the third rail of the subway line and electrocutes the both of them, a temporary victory so that he and Dylan can escape. The symbiote puts Eddie into something of a coma while he heals the body and takes them to the one person that can help.

In a little diner where they think it’s safe, Eddie, Dylan and Spider-Man talk about what’s been going on. Spider-Man is taken aback and annoyingly jokes to Eddie about all of this being out of his league before a news report is shown depicting a mass grave of people that have had their spines ripped out, likely for the Symbiote DNA or Codices (plural for Codex) as Eddie calls them. After some chumps try to rob the diner, Spider-Man takes them out handedly while formulating a plan with Eddie, saying that Reed Richards could have made a machine to help remove the Codex from anyone that has ever been attached to a symbiote, but he would have needed to start long ago.

We then cut to The Maker, the Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe that has taken up residence in the 616 Universe, as he’s actually been working on such a machine for use on Flash Thompson. The Maker’s goals and those of his employers are unknown and that makes for horrifying implications because there is no way that he is up to any sort of good at all and makes it clear that he too is trying to reunite the symbiotes.

Spider-Man shows up with Normie Osborn as the first possible test subject, but doesn’t want it to be used until he knows that it’s safe. Maker moans that if he has to be so sure, then he should find someone else with a codex, someone dangerous that Carnage may in fact go after next. Peter and Eddie get the same thought: Norman Osborn.

Norman had used the Carnage symbiote to become the Red Goblin not too long ago and after his defeat at the hands of Spider-Man, lost his mind and gained the memories and personality of Cletus Kasady. Things go to hell in a handbasket very quickly as John Jameson, the guard who let them into Ravencroft also known as the Man-Wolf, reveals himself as another of Carnage’s infected puppets.

Mayer then coats the book in an intense and overbearing red hue, signaling nothing but danger as Carnage throws pieces of himself into each cell. There are elements of body horror as he pulls these tiny bits of himself out of his chest and they burrow into the victims. Kasady’s mouth and eyes also seem to drip with his symbiote form as he and the other barrel down on Venom and Spider-Man. A giant and beautiful brawl ensues with the infected ripping and tearing at the pair. The mass of bodies overwhelm and Eddie almost begins to kill before being reigned in by Spider-Man. Unfortunately Spider-Man gets caught by Carnage.

It was around here that I had the realization that Pete and Cletus haven’t actually clashed in YEARS. Maybe as far back as 2011’s Carnage USA was the last time the two fought, so to see Pete finally see him again with half of his mask gone, there’s a small bit of fear in his body language. This is doubled as Carnage throws Spider-Man into Norman’s cell door, breaking it open to reveal a deranged Norman who appears to have been slicing himself with a piece of glass in his cell. With the combination of the bright red of his blood juxtaposed against the darkness of his cell, Norman stands out, not as the cunning genius that we knew him, but as another victim of Carnage and he smiles with mad glee.

Absolute Carnage #1 absolutely lives up to the hype that has been built for it. This story can expand so far and with the tie-ins that have been announced, I’m actually very excited. Carnage has been scary, but this is on a whole new level for him. You never quite know who is one of his thralls! Hell, John Jamson appeared to be completely normal until the trigger was pulled in him and turned him into another monster. Carnage has always been a problem for the larger Marvel universe whenever people have had to fight him individually. Deadpool had a hard time fighting him. Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye and the Thing almost died fighting him. Even when he was temporarily a good guy during AXIS, he was still horrifically dangerous.

With new god-like abilities, lack of weaknesses and unimaginable unpredictability, what can anyone do?

Ryan Stegman’s art needs to be absolutely praised as well. His lines are crisp and heavy in an almost perfect way. He manages to give things a darkness and depth to them that makes everything feel absolutely brutal, disgusting and weighty. He can capture faces of absolute terror, rage and every wonderful expression that Venom makes. Personally I love how emotive he makes Spider-Man’s mask with the eyes widening and shrinking with his surprise or incredulity. He also has a talent for spreads as there are about three really good ones that really shows his skill for depth of field. Venom and Spider-Man also look incredibly strong. We all know that I love muscular art and all of their muscles are accentuated through their costumes. Spider-Man has his lithe and athletic body and Venom is nothing but raw strength and I love it.

Absolute Carnage hit every correct note. There was violence, horror and even a little bit of family drama. The stakes are very high and while not on the same scale as War of the Realms, the sheer amount of murders caused and their horrifying nature is more than enough to be concerned about. Donny Cates looks like he’s going to do it again with his first big Marvel event (I think, I don’t really remember) and bring us all to another level of badass storytelling.

High recommend.