Carnage is Kasady, who’s the man that eventually becomes Carnage, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 344 in March of 1991 and made his first appearance as the Carnage in The Amazing Spider-Man 361 In April of 1992.
How And Why The Carnage Was Created
He was created by writer David Michelinie and artists Erik Larson and Mark Bagley. Writer David Michelinie created Carnage to be a darker version of Venom, intending to have Venom’s human alter ego Eddie Brock be killed off in The Amazing Spider-Man issue 400.
And have the Symbiote continue to bond with a series of hosts.
However, as Brock and Venom’s popularity increased Marvel would not allow him to be killed. David Michelinie then decided to create a new character who was a total psychopath and unlike Venom had no sense of morality.
The character was originally meant to be named Chaos and then Ravaged before they settled on The Carnage.
The Carnage is a human component of Cletus Kasady that was designed by artist Erik Larson who modeled the character after DC comic supervillain the Joker, which is actually pretty obvious once you compare the two.
So Mark Bagley’s role he designed the Carnage symbiote.
But now that you know how and why the character was created, let’s talk about his fictional history.
Fictional History of The Carnage
Cletus Kasady is a psychopath and a sadist. Kasady is a deeply disturbed individual with a dark past as a child, he killed his grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs, tried to murder his mother by throwing a television into a bathtub, and tortured and killed his mother’s dog.
So I think that’s all I have to say to put a stamp on him being a psychopath.
After the latter, Cletus’s mother tried to kill him, he soon became an orphan and was sent to a Home for Boys, where his antisocial behavior made him a target of abuse from the other orphans, and the staff.
10 Awesome Powers Of Moon Knight That Will Blow Your Mind
But see you don’t want to make fun of a psychopath because when you do they get revenge like Kasady did by murdering a teacher or pushing a girl in front of a moving bus because she laughed at him for asking her out on a date, followed by him turning down the orphanage.
Anyway during his brutal years at the Home for Boys Kasady acquired his philosophy that life was essentially meaningless and futile, the laws were only words and came to see the spreading of chaos through random unpatterned bloodshed as the ultimate freedom.
Flash forward a bit Kasady became a serial killer. Wow. He was then captured and sent to Rikers Island prison for 11 murders, though he bragged of a dozen more and he shared a cell with Eddie Brock. Who had lost the alien symbiote that transformed him into the supervillain Venom.
Brock’s symbiote soon returned and bonded with him again and unwittingly left behind his symbiote offspring.
What is A Symbiote?
For those of you who don’t know, the symbiote reproduces asexually once per generation, the new symbiote, then entered Kasady’s bloodstream through a cut and bonded with his blood, transforming him into The Carnage.
He escaped prison and began a series of murders and then at the scene of each crime, real Carnage on the walls with his own blood, which is very disturbing yet awesome.
He was found by Spider-Man but Spider-Man proved to be no match for the Carnage in desperation, Spider-Man made a truce with Venom to fight Carnage.
Carnage was defeated with a sonic weapon.
Spiderman Crossover with The Carnage
After this, we get perhaps the most famous carnage storyline in the Spider-Man crossover event, Maximum Carnage.
The alien symbiote Kasady was bonded to was destroyed during his capture so he was presumed powerless and jailed at Raven craft asylum.
However, the symbiote mutated his blood prior to its destruction, enabling Kasady to generate a copy of the symbiote and breakout. During his escape, Kasady again calling himself Carnage and frees his fellow inmate Shriek.
Over the course of their ensuing killing spree through New York City, they recruited doppelganger DemoGoblin and Carrion.
The Carnage dubs himself to their father, but in fact, they all despise Carnage and only stay with the group out of devotion to Shriek.
As the death toll increases Spider-Man, Venom, Captain America, Black hat, and so on, all join the cause of stopping them.
I’m not gonna give away the ending for those of you who haven’t read it but just know it’s a great storyline.
Now, of course, I couldn’t talk about Carnage without at least mentioning Spider Carnage.
The Spider Carnage
During the web of Carnage Ark, Ben Riley is bonded with the Carnage symbiote when it escapes from Ravencroft Institute, where its host Cletus Kasadyis being held.
Riley struggles for control of themselves and tries to prevent the symbiote from taking over. The subsequent inner battle with the creature ends when he has John Jameson taken to a cell designed to hold Carnage.
He willingly subjects himself to a potentially fatal dose of microwave radiation to try to kill the symbiote, which then returns to Kasady via the pipes.
Deadpool V/s Carnage
Then we have the awesome and recent Deadpool vs Carnage storyline which gave us another mash-up of sorts when Carnage bonds with Deadpool.
I want to mention Venompool simply because without Venom there would be no Carnage. Venompool is a combination of Venom and Deadpool which is quite obvious. He’s from an alternate reality.
But now I’m going to talk about Carnage’s presumed death.
How Carnage Died?
After 2004, appearance in New Avengers The character was presumed dead and was absent from the comics for nearly six years.
But a 2010 limited series titled Carnage featured the return of the symbiote where it temporarily found a new female host before reuniting with Kasady.
Now we all know by now that Carnage is the offspring of Venom, but Venom isn’t the only one popping out babies if you will, Carnage also made it a little symbiote bundle of joy called Toxin, who has been said to be the most powerful of all the symbiotes.
The more I think about it, The Toxin was never really a little bundle of joy. It’s actually kind of scary.
I’ve been mentioning Carnage for a few minutes now talking about his creation his fictional origin and so on but.
I have yet to talk about his power so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
The Powers of The Carnage
I’m only going to be mentioning a handful because he has way too many powers to mention them all.
- The alien symbiote in doubt Cletus Kasady with enhanced physical strength greater than that of spider man and Venom combined.
- It gives him shapeshifting abilities, allows him to project a web-like substance from any part of his body.
- The symbiote can also form weapons out of itself like turning his hand into an axe.
- He can plant thoughts into a person’s head using the symbiote tendril, and much like spiderman, Carnage has the ability to cling to virtually any surface and the list goes on and on.
Now I know I didn’t mention every little detail about the carnage in this article, and that’s simply because its history is really rich with content as our most comical characters but everything I did mention is the basis of what you need to know about the character.
but if you still want to know more about the symbiotes, Please let me know in the comments below.
Comics Recommendations for Carnage
And lastly, before I leave you guys, it’s time for some carnage reading recommendations you have the Maximum Carnage storyline, Minimum Carnage, Web of Carnage, Deadpool V/S Carnage, Venom V/S Carnage, and Ultimate Spider-Man volume 11 Carnage.
Spider-Man Batman Crossover Series
And I almost forgot I want to mention Spider-Man Batman which is a crossover series that has Spider-Man and Batman fight Carnage and the Joker.
It shows similarities get differences between the Joker and Carnage, which is really interesting because as I said earlier Cletus Kasady was based on the Joker.
Also Read:
[…] Carnage, on the other hand, has never been one to hold back. But that also makes him vulnerable, he can be a bit of a loose cannon at times. […]