Category Archives: Editorials

The Sinister Origin of CARNAGE!

Image July 18, 2018 Manic Exorcism Leave a comment

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.

Editorials

Could Both of VENOM’s Origins Be Featured in Upcoming Movie?

Image July 17, 2018 Manic Exorcism Leave a comment

Hey, comic fans! True believers know the iconic badass VENOM has two origin stories. Could the upcoming movie give us both?

First off, this is only friendly speculation because nothing concrete has been announced – yet. Nevertheless, the geek in me can’t help but wonder what all might be in store for us given what we’ve already seen from the teaser.

Naturally, this is an origin story about how Eddie Brock came to inherit the symbiote and together with it became the entity we know as Venom. The interesting thing is though Venom has two different origins in the comic books, and, if I’m correct, they possibly may be in play here.

Alpha Genesis

In the beginning, there was space. That’s where Spider-Man first came in contact with the symbiote and changed to the black Spidey suit. The symbiote bonded with both Peter’s flesh and mind granting him accelerated abilities in strength and speed such as he’d never known before. He was tougher, stronger, and meaner, making him a through and through greater superhero…so we would think at least.

The suit proved to have a will of its own and began to slowly poison Parker’s psyche for its sinister purposes. Peter was changing due to the symbiotic influence, and became increasingly more reliant on the suit to an unhealthy degree, as though he was an addict. At last, and realizing the deadly impact the poisonous symbiote had over him now, he tore the thing from himself. And after a great struggle was released from the toxic co-existence. The suit hated Spider-Man for being rejected.

That’s the interesting thing about the symbiotes – they are in fact living entities. They have a mind and will they exercise, not to mention they have a telepathic voice that drives (intoxicates) their chosen host. That’s the other thing, they choose which vessel will better accomplish their purpose.

Meanwhile, Eddie Brock, a former employee at the Daily Bugle, had been fired and blamed his misfortune on Peter Parker. Together, one hating the Spider and the other hating the man, the symbiote untied with Brock and became Venom, Spider-Man’s most dangerous foe. Venom knew everything about his enemy and swore to kill Parker for the troubles he’d brought upon both Eddie and the symbiote. Worst of all, Venom shared Peter’s memories, and, you guessed it, no one in Peter’s life was safe.

It was only after Spider-Man saved Eddie’s ex-wife that Brock finally realized perhaps Parker wasn’t entirely his villain. Now, wait: is Venom a supervillain or antihero? He has killed, but only killed those he felt were guilty and deserved to die. The Punisher does that much. The reason why Venom was so Hell-bent on killing Spider-Man was because he truly did believe Spidey was the bad guy. Anyway, a truce was made and Venom went on to star in his own mini-series where he battled other symbiotes.

Second Genesis.

In the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series the superhero enjoyed a successful reboot. In this version, Peter was still in high school and he and Eddie Brock were friends. The Venom symbiote was grown in a laboratory and was meant to be a secret weapon, that and their father’s both had something to do with its creation. Tracking the notes of his father, Peter discovered the experiment and bonded with the black suit. The outcome was very much the same as in the original storyline. The suit proved too great a threat for Peter and he shed himself ofit. The rejected symbiote bonded with the other son of the man who helped grant it life and Venom came into existence once again.

Admittedly there was a more epic tone to the original and I liked that it was from space, but getting Parker into space may be a complication for the story. And no, Infinity War is not connected to Venom according to my source, although it is somehow part of the current Spider-Man Homecoming storyline. So…???

So what can fans expect? What do we know so far?

From the trailer, we see a crashed ship, and things being extracted from the crash site. We then see Eddie (Tom Hardy) snooping into a high-security lab where he (I mean he has to) get in contact with the writhing black essence of the symbiote. The teaser perfectly shows how the symbiote whispers to Eddie’s mind and begins to meld with him into a dual entity, a fact proven in how he addresses himself at the end. “We are Venom” because the two have perfectly become one.

So I’m supposing the crashed ship carried some alien thing back to earth, a thing gets harvested and tested in shady experiments in hopes of perfecting the ultimate weapon. Already we know that Venom is set to fight other symbiotes in the movie, something like the comic miniseries aforementioned. We also know that Cletus Cassidy has been cast and Venom’s main threat will be Carnage! Fucking holy shit really?! Venom and Carnage in one cinematic explosive fight?! Listen, this is going to be intense, I just have a feeling. Fans have been waiting for this ever since Sam Raimi first directed Spider-Man. So yeah, I’d be cool with both origin stories in play here.

Now as for the beginning of Carnage and his dark origins, well let’s save that for next time. Until then, check out the trailer and let us know what you think. This has been Manic Exorcism. ‘Nuff said.

Editorials

Joe Bob Broke Shudder, but Not Our Hearts

Image July 17, 2018 Landon Evanson 2 Comments

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all suffered through dry spells. Droughts of the romantic variety, which led to withdrawals and yearning, and eventually to copious amounts of K-Y, and inevitably, blister cream. We’ve all been there. Then one night everything falls into place and you hop back on that horse affectionately known as tonsil hockey and your brain can’t handle the overload. “This is amazing! Why did we wait this long?! Let’s never do that again!” as you engage in “the sign of the double-humped sperm whale.”

And make no mistake, that’s exactly what happened this past weekend. We all got some after a hiatus that bordered on abusive.

Yes, it was the one-of-a-kind charm of Joe Bob’s twang that had our hearts aflutter, but more than that, it was the communal experience knowing that we were all watching at the same time. The closest we come to that anymore (beyond live tweets) is AMC’s FearFest, but if we’re honest about that, it’s lost a bit of its luster what with those Walking Dead marathons that eat up large chunks of our beloved October tradition, leaving many of us unsatisfied.

Sure, we had the internet when MonsterVision played out on television screens every Saturday night across America and beyond back in the day, but social media wasn’t a thing quite yet, so we couldn’t really share those experiences in real time.

Then Shudder swooped in to cure the horror community of its collective blue balls.

And it was glorious.

My Twitter feed was littered with Joe Bob Briggs and The Last Drive-In. All anyone could talk about was how long they’d been up, how much they’d missed this, shared laughs and memories, complete with quoting Joe Bob’s latest “Did ya hear the one about…” Not gonna lie, I shared at least three of them, myself.

But it extended beyond social media. It was an event, and how many of those do we really have in the horror community? Yes, there are movie premieres and Twitter explodes whenever shows like American Horror Story air new episodes, but it’s rare for all of us to be all-in on one thing at exactly the same time.

We’d been counting the days since April, were sure to have our Joe Bob tees clean, fridge and pantry stocked with snacks, and our favorite koozies prepped for maximum consumption of brew. I giddily left work on Friday afternoon to pick up a mess of wings and a 12-pack of Grain Belt (only because Lone Star wasn’t available here) and sped to my buddy’s place with one eye on the clock. Two hours early. We pulled up Phantasm IV: Oblivion and added our own running track. “Fuckin’ Reggie, man. Poor bastard can never seal the deal.” My pal’s wife yelped her way through the Tall Man’s extraction of the silver sphere from Mike’s skull, and we all wore shit-eating grins during Reg-Man’s ice cream commando (kinda sorta) montage. And the hour hadn’t even struck 8 (I live in the Central time zone).

All the more smile-inducing because I knew full well, we weren’t the only ones pregaming.

Even the technical issues that prevented many of us from seeing The Last Drive-In from the beginning became a shared experience. Sure, some bitched and complained and harassed Shudder, but the vast majority knew that the Netflix of Horror would make it right and we’d get our Joe Bob fix. And again if we’re honest, it was a lot of fun to see GIFs of cats hammering away at the keys of a laptop or Andre the Giant in the ring trying his best to hold off a rabid crowd, or @richpatine’s tweet that pleaded “Joe Bob broke Shudder! Add 1 crashed app to the drive-in total please!”

We were all-in, and we were all-in together.

Scrolling through message after message of childhoods relived and resurfaced memories was magical.

Eventually, though, the sun set on Saturday night. Pieces came to a close and Briggs offered his farewell. Tweets of excitement and laughter turned somber at the realization that this was the end, that we would never experience a night like this again, because no one can ever fill Joe Bob’s shoes. A fact we know far too well.

Yes, there were some tears, but more than anything, we were flooded with messages of gratitude and love. For as long as we’d all held onto our memories of MonsterVision from years before, came the knowledge that it paled when held to the neon glow of The Last Drive-In. This would be a night, a marathon, a borderline religious experience that we would never forget.

While the Drive-In Jedi’s send-off touched on the fact that his “goofy little show” was intended to offer laughter and an appreciation of forgotten films, he also mentioned that it was aimed at the “weirdos” and “misfits” who felt “left out” of the mainstream. Briggs went on to say that he hadn’t realized how many of us were out there until the past few years, which was ironic because Shudder discovered that the hard way when us drive-in junkies feenin’ for Joe Bob obliterated their server.

For all the stories and the rants and the laughs and the memories, that is what I’ll take away from The Last Drive-In – the sheer number of Joe Bob disciples who had suffered and waited. The fact that we broke Shudder is not a testament to the number of horror fiends out there, or that we just had to get one more dose of drive-in totals, but that Joe Bob Briggs means that goddamn much to us. It was a communal experience, yes, but that stemmed from the myriad personal connections that we have to someone who was either directly responsible for or augmented our love of horror cinema.

It wasn’t the kills or the gore that were difficult to watch, but rather those last moments as one-by-one, the lights turned out, and Joe Bob sat in his recliner, hat in hand, as the credits rolled, and a sad guitar took us to that final fade.

The last thing Mr. Briggs said was “I have a Dwight Yoakam hat.” Comforting in a way, because even if this truly was the end for Joe Bob, we won’t find ourselves a thousand miles from nowhere, we will carry Shudder’s magical romp in our hearts forever. Because the drive-in, and our love for Joe Bob, will never die.