Welcome back webheads! I hope you’re ready for the grand finale of the three-part look into some of the most dangerous aspects of the Spider-Man comics. We’ve already spent some time speculating on what wonderful villainy we could expect from the fast-approaching VENOM film! Today we’ll be overtaken by the blood-lusting symbiote better known as Carnage!

As his name alone suggests, this is a very violent character and one I’ve waited years to see come to the big screen. Fittingly, the gnarled roots of his twisted backstory are found deep in a cell within Rikers Prison. Here we meet Cletus Kasady, a leering madman with a sick grin as if he alone knows the punchline of a secret joke no one else can guess, one that always ends in bloodshed and carnage. The notorious serial killer was already serving eleven-consecutive life sentences when he was introduced to his newest cellmate – Eddie Brock.

Little did either of them know how destiny would lock the two together in a frenzy of ongoing mayhem with enough behemoth power to rip the city of New York to bleeding shreds! Or at the very least leave New York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in tatters every time he rushed out to face whatever chaos these two could accomplish.

Eddie and Cletus were not friends and never became chums. Cletus was a total metal head with one goal – murder. Eddie was likewise driven by a singular focus – revenge! Having had enough of Brock’s bullshit, Kasady planned to shiv his cell-buddy right in the goddam throat… but we’ll cover that in more detail here in a bit.

What Makes Kasady Work?

Cletus Kasady is the lethal combination of what we all fear – the serial killer. Men who walk behind a mask of ordinary, regular faces. They fit in as our neighbors, our coworkers, or our church brothers. They are BTK, Dahmer, and Albert Fish. They remind us of one gravely sobering fact: the devil walks safest behind human eyes.

Kasady is a man who loves to kill and is Marvel’s closest answer to DC’s Joker. He kills without prejudice and relishes the agonized sobs of his dying victim’s slow death. He is the psychopath, without sympathy and certainly void of any remorse, a perfect host to an outside alien mind with a taste for mayhem. Kasady was born in the grimmest alleyways of Marvel.

Kasady already made up his mind to kill Eddie and bided his time for the right opportunity. However, before he could strike, out of the dark of night the symbiote returned for Brock, melded once again with him, and Venom was newly reborn!

No bars could hold the monstrosity back and Venom was free to haunt New York all over again. However, and possibly the cruelest act Venom has ever done, a small piece, a dribble, of the symbiote lingered behind and melded with Cletus Kasady giving birth to the entity Carnage, son of Venom!

Straight away Carnage set about killing everywhere he went, random people, victims picked here and there just for the sake of staining the streets with their blood and scarring the very soul of the city.

Carnage single-handily turned Marvel’s comics into a Mature-rated exploitation field of murder and left Spider-Man sick as he followed the gruesome crime scenes left in the psychopath’s wake.

That was the Marvel universe I grew up with, not the Disney stuff out there now. I’m talking about spines being torn out, mangled limbs and body parts used as decorations. Signatures left in the blood of the innocent. At one point Carnage announces he’s going to turn a mother into cold-cuts right in front of her children. This was hard-gore stuff and why I’m a 90’s era Marvel fan.

This was right on the verge of the big Marvel breakup, just before McFarlane and Jim Lee left to form Image comics – along with fellow artists, but I’m showing my favoritism here – and we saw the birth of Spawn. Marvel was dark. Marvel was gritty. It was ultra-violent and far removed from what we see today. And leading the blood-soaked parade was Carnage.

Maximum Carnage is a good place to start if you’re curious to see some of the maniac’s greatest hits.

It’s already been announced that Woody Harrelson (Zombieland, Natural Born Killers) is cast for the role of Cletus Kasady in VENOM.

Will Eddie be locked up at some point in the film? Will he be cell mates with Cletus Kasady? Will the events of the comic come to life as a massive prison break gives wake to Carnage?
Be free to share your thoughts with us.