We recently talked about Carnage in our recent episode! You can find that here, but in the meantime – you can read all about it in part one and two of our Carnage comic history blog post below:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
But now let’s jump into the where Carnage has been over the last five or so years, shall we?
The Darkhold
In 2015 we come to the second volume of Carnage’s self-titled series, and what is probably my favourite of Carnage of his stories. I just wish it could have lasted longer!
Carnage #1-16 (2015-17), with art by Mike Perkins and written by the legendary Gerry Conway, is a great read – and with some killer covers to boot.
After his moral inversion (and back again) in the AXIS event, Carnage tried to take out Nova – for the sole reason that he had witnessed his goodness in action. He’s taken down and dropped off in Ryker’s once more, only to escape – and that’s where we find Cletus at the start of this series.
Cletus watches an interview with one of the sole survivors of one of his first slaughters – Manuela Calderon. Manuela was one of his victims at St. Este’s Home For Boys, but survived Cletus’ attack to become a decorated veteran and a private security expert in West Virginia. Seeing her on the news like this (in a report where they also misspell his name) angers him and leads him to seek her out.
Little does he know, this report was engineered by FBI agent Claire Dixon in order to lure Carnage to a now-defunct mine where they will bombard him with sonic cannons.
Her strikeforce team includes John Jameson (who has had frequent encounters with Carnage over the years now) and Eddie Brock – who is currently wearing the Toxin symbiote, suppressed using symbiote inhibitors.
The plan soon goes awry as the mine collapses, trapping the team inside with Carnage. Barry Gleason, the owner of the mine who suggested they use it for the operation, turns out to be part of a elder-god-worshipping cult working underground.
The cult worships the dark god Chthon and believe Carnage is the ‘red slayer’ who will be instrumental in releasing their lord using the ancient magical book, the Darkhold.
During this ordeal in the mines, Carnage’s powers are enhanced by the Darkhold’s magic. He slaughters the assembled worshippers and steals the Darkhold for himself, but not before giving himself immunity to both sonics and heat – making him even more unstoppable.
At this point, his only true weakness is magic, especially the chthonic runes used by the cult in spells and weaponry.
Not only that, but he can create offshoots of his own symbiote that aren’t just mindless hordes like in Carnage USA or new minds like Toxin – but his will shared across many.
Carnage’s goal now is to find the missing pages of the Darkhold, bringing Chthon back to the land of the living for his own ends. It’s here that we lean into Conway’s Tomb of Dracula inspiration, as the heroes search the globe to find and stop Carnage.
In Carnage #10 (2016), he creates another offspring, Raze, which attaches itself to Claire Dixon. Cletus is happy to get more power from helping Chthon, but he is also a big fan of bringing about the apocalypse. Even if it has given him some demonic-looking goat legs. You do you, Cletus.
The task force eventually catches up with Carnage, as he finds the Temple of Chthon on an uncharted island in the Timor Sea. With the help of Raze and others, they stop him short of releasing Chthon to its full extent.
The elder god is banished, and the Darkhold is used on Carnage, stripping him of the symbiote and reshaping it into a cage to detain him.
Kasady is delivered to the FBI, where he was stripped off the symbiote once more (as much as he can be, anyway).
The Red Goblin
Who is the last person you would want to take control of the Carnage symbiote?
If you’re first answer isn’t Cletus Kasady, it would probably be Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin.
Osborn got his hands on the symbiote (stolen from S.H.I.E.L.D. during the Secret Empire event) in Amazing Spider-Man #794 (2018). He hoped to use it to reignite his own mojo after he was stripped of his goblin formula.
This all led through to Amazing Spider-Man #800, wherein Osborn became his own version of Carnage in an attempt to re-discover his insanity and take down Spider-Man for good.
In this final arc of Dan Slott’s run on the web-slinger, Osborn dubs himself ‘The Red Goblin’, leading to an all-out war between Peter’s allies and the newly-powered-up Osborn.
At the climax of this story, Peter convinces Osborn to remove the symbiote so that he can revel in defeating his arch-enemy without needing it. He takes him down, leaving Norman’s brain a little… rattled by the experience.
As if that dude needed to be more insane.
Poison Carnage & The Death of Cletus Kasady (Again)
The Venomverse and Venomised (2018) events saw Eddie Brock – now as Venom once again – going to war against the Poison Hive. These creatures are effectively anti-symbiotes, living parasitically off the symbiote species once they have taken over another host’s body.
The Hive are particularly afraid of Carnage, whose unique traits as a symbiote poses as serious threat to them – so they force yet another new symbiote (technically Carnage III) onto Cletus after breaking him out, then transform him into their own soldier as Poison Carnage.
It was later revealed that Carnage was resisting their mind control and just joining in for the fun of it. After a battle with Venom and Spider-Man, he was jettisoned into space at the end of this event.
Poison Carnage became a crystalline exoskeleton as he floated through space, before this crumbled away to reveal Cletus underneath as he fell towards Earth.
The remnants of the original Carnage symbiote emerged to try and shield Cletus’ body from burning up on re-entry, but despite any Darkhold augmentations his crash landing left him a little on the Anakin Skywalker side.
Shortly after landing in the desert, Cletus died from his severe injuries, his body being recovered and ID’d by authorities.
And there we have it. Cletus is dead.
Again.
Or is he?
…
Nope!
The Cult of Dark Carnage
Cletus’ (ultra crispy) remains were recovered by the Church of the New Darkness, also known by the Cult of Knull. Led by Scorn, now corrupted by the awakening of Knull – the god and creator of all symbiotes.
Scorn uses a piece of the primordial grendel symbiote (an ancient symbiote dragon created by Knull) to reanimate Carnage, before sacrificing herself to complete the ressurection.
The plan is for this newly-revived Carnage (known here as Dark Carnage) to be used to free yet another dark god: Knull. Carnage is now even more powerful than before, with a psychic connection to the creator of his kind and more than glad to free him from his symbiote prison on Klyntar.
To do this, he needs to find and absorb each symbiote codex – a trace imprint of the symbiote hive left over on all current and former symbiote hosts.
This includes obvious targets like Venom and Spider-Man – but also heroes/villains who have been exposed to symbiotes briefly over the years… leading to some insane transformations with each one – including after he absorbs the codex of the then-Ghost Rider Alejandra Jones.
Yeah, this Ghost Rider/Carnage hybrid even comes with his own Carnage motorcycle (sold separately).
This all culminates in the five-issue event series Absolute Carnage (2019), in which Dark Carnage tracked down former hosts (including every citizen of Doverton) and removing their spines.
He also infects inmates from Ravencroft with offshoots of his new symbiote to act as his doppelgänger minions.
It’s his base of operations for a while, until a fight with Deadpool burns the entire facility down, leaving Ravencroft in ruins.
Cletus grows in power the more codices he takes on did this, becoming a 13-foot skeletal demigod. It’s such a great design – take a look at its final form in Absolute Carnage #5:
Meanwhile, Norman Osborn is still on the sidelines believing he’s Cletus Kasady – and with the help of the OG Carnage, he takes on a more classic look – though it’s still pretty confusing for the likes of Spidey and Deadpool.
Eventually, Eddie takes on a whole load of other codices (taken in a far more ethical way) and defeats Carnage, using a symbiote necrosword to cut his offspring in half.
As Eddie absorbed the remaing codices, he inadvertently brought Knull back to the waking world – leading to the recent King In Black event (I have yet to read it). Cletus’ consciousness survived in there, tormenting Eddie’s mind and attempting to corrupt him from the inside.
After Eddie rids himself of Carnage’s control, this small remainder of Cletus took a portion of the symbiote and escaped Eddie’s control on the back of a shark…
The latest series is the semi-canon anthology series Carnage: Black, White & Blood from this year, in which this shark and its Carnage-ized symbiote is seen to be devoured by a powered-up Venom.
And so we come to the present point in time and the end of the line for Cletus Kasady and Carnage. But as is always the way with comics, death isn’t really permanent – and the announcement of a new series title Extreme Carnage on the horizon suggests we’re in for more in the near future.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Remember to check out our podcast on Carnage’s comic history here, and make sure to check out our other episodes on the 90s Spider-Man cartoon – including the Carnage and Venom episodes of that!
Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt if you checked out our Patreon – where you can hear us in a bunch of bonus episodes including our X-Men retrospective.
That '90s Spider-Man Show 