By Cullen Bunn, Salvador Espin, Mike Henderson, Aaron Kim Jacinto & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-613-7
Stylish killers and mercenaries craving something more than money have long made popular fiction protagonists and light-hearted, exuberant bloodbath comics will always find an appreciative audience…
Deadpool is Wade Wilson (yes, a thinly disguised knockoff of Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke the Terminator: get over it – DC did), a hired killer and survivor of genetics experiments that have left him a grotesque bundle of scabs, scars and physical abnormalities but practically immortal, invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.
He is also a certifiable loon…
The wisecracking high-tech “Merc with a Mouth†was created by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, debuting in New Mutants #97, another product of the Canadian “Weapon X†project which created Wolverine and so many other mutant/cyborg super-doers. He got his first shot at solo stardom with a couple of miniseries in 1993 (Deadpool: the Circle Chase & Sins of the Past) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title, which blended 4th-wall-busting absurdist humour (a la Ambush Bug) into the mix and secured his place in Marvel history.
Since then he has become one of Marvel’s iconic, nigh-inescapable characters, perennially undergoing radical rethinks, identity changes, reboots and more before always, inevitably, reverting to irascible, irreverent, intoxicating type in the end…
Back in the anything goes, desperate hurly-burly of the late 1980s-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 archenemy 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.
However, when the symbiote went into breeding mode it spawned a junior version which merged with serial psycho-killer Cletus Kasady. Utterly amoral, murderously twisted and addicted to both pain and excitement, they became the terrifying metamorphic Carnage: a death-crazed 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 and his remains dumped safely into high-Earth orbit. Of course “safe†is an extremely relative term and eventually the crimson killer returned…
Following a clash between The Superior Spider-Man (Otto Octavius‘ mind in Peter Parker’s body) and the Wizard, Kasady was resurrected but separated from his increasingly self-aware symbiote…
Written throughout by Cullen Bunn, this sublimely continuity-light and baggage-free bloody kill spree collects Superior Carnage Annual (April 2014) and the subsequent 4-part miniseries Deadpool vs. Carnage (June-August 2014), gorily repositioning the scarlet slaughterer for his next assault on the cowering Marvel Universe.
The all-action abattoir-fest opens with Superior Carnage Annual (illustrated by Kim Jacinto, Mike Henderson and colourist Jay David Ramos) as the recently recaptured Kasady – lobotomised in a clash with the Scarlet Spider – awaits medical assessment in Kramer Penitentiary. Psychologist Dr. Jenner is interviewing the unrepentant but clearly cognitively recovered felon to see if he is mentally competent to be tried for his crimes, but the headshrinker also has a secret agenda…
In New York City, the symbiote is barely contained in an unbreakable tube on Spider Island (fortress base of the Superior Spider-Man), raging in destructive fury against imprisonment and terrifying the mercenaries guarding it.
When an inmate at far-distant Kramer tries to kill Kasady the captive creature goes instantly berserk before apparently expiring.
Meanwhile at Morse Laboratories in New Mexico, researcher Carla Unger is working late, examining a few scrapings taken from the symbiote. Despite the risks, it’s way better than cooking dinner for her abusive husband Will, but when the seemingly-dormant scarlet shreds suddenly possess her, she heads home for a final family meal…
The symbiote is going to find Cletus, and is soon hopping from body to body, gaining strength whilst leaving a trail of corpses across America, but it is all too late. Power-mad Dr. Jenner, hungry to be the symbiote’s permanent host and exasperated that his first attempt to kill Kasady failed, stifles the dying inmate in the prison infirmary, but when the thing from another world final arrives it rejects him before reanimating its preferred host’s corpse…
Reunited and resurgent, the component parts that comprise the revitalised Carnage then begin taking an awful vengeance on everybody at the institution…
Some time later Deadpool vs. Carnage opens with the scarlet slayer still enjoying an extended if motiveless murder spree throughout the Midwest.
In his apartment and own world, Wade Wilson is channel surfing TV stations and suddenly divines a personal message from the universe telling him to stop Carnage…
After a few false starts and more nudging from everyday objects like billboards, video games and comics, the Manic Merc finally stumbles across Kasady in an abandoned housing development in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the two unkillable kooks start fighting.
It seems to be pretty even until Cletus’ homicidal old squeeze Shriek turns up and ambushes Deadpool…
This really isn’t the kind of tale that depends on plot, but if you’re a fan of hyperkinetic Warner Brothers cartoons where two protagonists try increasingly outrageous and escalating methods of mass destruction to destroy each other then you’ll adore the frantic, blackly hilarious duel which only ends after Deadpool picks up a bunch of symbiotes of his own – and a cool shape-changing dog – from a secret military base where the government has been trying to weaponise the alien parasites for the army…
Sharp, fast-paced and excessively, addictively action-packed, this wry and sanguine rollercoaster romp also includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Rafa Garres, Glenn Fabry & Adam Brown and Leinil Francis Yu: offering a complication free riot of gratuitous gory fun and thrills that will delight the appetites for graphic destruction of Fights ‘n’ Tights fans everywhere.
™ & © 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.