By Kevin Shinick, Stephen Segovia, Dennis Crisostomo, Don Ho & Dan Mexia (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-567-3
Back in the anything goes, desperate hurly-burly of the late 1980s and early1990s, fad-fever and spin-off madness gripped the superhero genre in America as publishers hungrily exploited every trick to bolster flagging sales. In the melee Spider-Man spawned an intractable enemy called Venom: deranged, disgraced reporter Eddie Brock who bonded with Peter Parker‘s Secret Wars costume (a semi-sentient alien parasite dubbed the Symbiote) to become a savage, shape-changing dark-side version of the Webspinner.
Eventually the arachnid adversaries reached a brooding détente and Venom became the “Lethal Protectorâ€, dispensing his own highly individualistic brand of justice anywhere but New York City.
But then the symbiote went into breeding mode; spawning a junior version which merged with serial psycho-killer Cletus Kasady. Utterly amoral, murderously twisted and addicted to both pain and excitement, he became the terrifying metamorphic Carnage: a murder-crazy monster tearing a bloody swathe through the Big Apple before an army of superheroes caught him and his equally lethal “family†(as seen in the crossover epic Maximum Carnage).
One of the most dangerous beings on Earth, eventually Kasady was executed with his remains dumped safely into high-Earth orbit.
However, “safe†is an extremely relative word and eventually the crimson killer returned…
More recently, as part of the MarvelNow! restart event, Spider-Man underwent a startling shake-up which left arch villain Otto Octavius in control of the Wallcrawler’s body and permanently installed in Peter Parker’s brain.
The hero’s mind had been maliciously transferred and trapped in the dying body of Dr. Octopus where, despite his every desperate effort, Parker perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame. With his final efforts he bombarded the psychic invader with his full unvarnished memories and forced Octavius to experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice, binding Ock to living the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his enemy and earnestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission. However, Octavius’ personality gradually was in control, resulting in a cold, calculating and obsessively Superior Spider-Man.
Scripted by Kevin Shinick (Avenging Spider-Man, Robot Chicken) with art from Stephen Segovia, Dennis Crisostomo, Don Ho & Dan Mexia, this slim, grim tome collects the 5-issue miniseries Superior Carnage (September 2013-January 2014), beginning in an undisclosed containment facility where the recently recaptured Kasady -lobotomised in a clash with the Scarlet Spider – has been transferred to be dumped and forgotten.
Sadly it only makes the monster available to another ruthless maniac…
The Wizard has his own problems: once one of the smartest men on Earth, a battle with Black Bolt has left him with induced and progressive dementia which will soon kill him. Desperate to prove himself to his son (who couldn’t care less), the sinister savant uses mind-control tech to release Carnage – dormant since Kasady became functionally brain-dead – and lets the bloodthirsty beast run wild amongst the prison population…
The Wizard’s goal is to revive and restock his gang The Frightful Four, but he hits a slight snag when the beast proves uncontrollable due to the simple fact that Kasady has no mind…
Lucky for the bewildered boffin his already-restored ally Klaw is still loyal. The creature is composed of solidified sound and easily subdues the rampaging Carnage, since the only vulnerabilities symbiotes possess are no tolerance for fire and extreme sonic frequencies…
With Plan A a bust, the increasingly unstable Wizard then transfers the alien parasite to his confederate Karl Malus, a wheelchair-bound rogue surgeon who is far from happy to be the monster’s new home, but upon whom the aforementioned mind-control mechanisms will work…
And all this time the Superior Spider-Man has been hunting the escapees: dedicating his vast crimefighting resources to seeking out the Wizard, even though he believes there’s little to fear from a demented ex-genius and brain-dead serial killer…
Impossibly, the impromptu tactic works and Malus’ intellect has had a transformative effect on the alien, which now augments its lethal metamorphic abilities with an arsenal of high-tech weaponry.
Delighted and delirious, the rapidly declining Wizard then leads his team in a murderous assault on City Hall, attacking New York’s controversial Mayor J. Jonah Jameson. The big brain has no intention of surviving the foray and fully intends to go out in a headline-grabbing blaze of glory…
It’s just as well, as Malus’ grip on the Carnage creature is slowly slipping…
The doomed desperadoes are just too late. Spider-Man has deployed his own mercenaries to spirit Jameson away, but has in turn severely underestimated the threat posed by the invaders.
Only after all of his men are slaughtered does the Wallcrawler realise his error, and is further shocked when the Wizard – despite his declining faculties – discerns that he’s fighting Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man’s body…
When the Wizard’s control fades Carnage then takes over its host and goes completely wild, beating Spider-Man and destroying Klaw, but as the sound-master’s body explodes, the uncontained fury blasts the Symbiote off and out of Malus…
And into the Wizard…
Shock follows shock as the tales escalates to a spectacular and fearsomely foreboding conclusion that will satisfy every Fights ‘n’ Tights fan’s wildest dreams whilst promising even nastier surprises in days to come…
Smart, sharp, fast-paced and addictively action-packed, this stand-alone saga keeps tensions high and the suspense bubbling, and this creepy chronicle also includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Clayton Crain, Marco Checchetto and Raffa Garres.
The Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it’s almost become commonplace, but this
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.