The Batlord

Just got a few graphic novels/trade paper backs recently.




Now, the reason I'm mentioning this, aside from just being happy about showing off my new comic porn, is that I feel good about myself for supporting the comic industry. I've actually already read those Hawkeye comics, and "have" The Black Mirror, but I still just had to have them for real. I really am just a truly grand and wonderful person. But in all seriousness, I think it really is even more important to spend my money on real comics than music albums, even though the vast majority of what I'm reading is... shall we say, creatively obtained with electronic assistance of a dubious nature. It's like listening to music on the internet. Sure, I'm technically ripping someone off, but without access to these resources, I'd probably never be giving things like Thor: God of Thunder, Hawkeye, or Uncanny Avengers the time of day, yet now I'm lusting after books I never would have otherwise, which means a net gain for my local comic book store (and yes, even Barnes & Noble).

A rationalization? Certainly. But it's still true. The reason I feel it's even more important to buy comics than CDs though, is that buying an album puts a lot less money in the pockets of an artist than if I go to one of their shows and buy a t-shirt, whereas comic book creators actually have a lot more ownership, and get more money from their works than music artists, not to mention that, so far as I know, there aren't any other ways to support them. And it's not just the artists and writers either. The local comic book stores are the backbone of the industry in a way that independent record stores no longer are for the music industry. Most of my albums are bought from soulless chain stores who I could give a **** about. Borderless Comics though (holla for free advertising!), not to mention the many other places in the area, are a much bigger component of their respective industry, and so are even more important to contribute to, so it would be far more unconscionable to stiff them as far as I'm concerned.

So, rationalizing, self-righteous thief or not, I still feel a legitimate responsibility to spend money on comics that I don't feel towards music, or at least not quite as much, since I definitely make a point to buy actual albums too. I doubt that anyone else here is as prolific as I am about the less honest ways of obtaining comics (and if you are then you desperately need a life), but I still like to put all this out there.

/End douchey diatribe.

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The Batlord

Well, after Deadpool vs. Carnage I've been on a Carnage kick. Heard good things about this and the sequel mini-series, and the covers were the last straw. From tongue-in-cheek we go to the other end of the spectrum to horror. I haven't read Carnage's old comic appearances, but looking at covers and single pages I got the feeling that he was generally used without much subtlety or class for the kind of exploitation-masquerading-as-gritty-maturity that plagued the nineties. A fun villain, but without the awesomeness of the symbiote just a poor man's Joker. Luckily with Carnage they definitely go a long way to doing him some justice.

The basic premise of this story is that an unscrupulous business man, named Michael Hall, has captured Carnage, who was presumed dead in space, and is now using the symbiote to produce symbiote-infused cybernetics that respond to thought, for use in everything from medical prosthetics to weaponry. As I'm sure you might guess, this ends well for all the parties involved.

Spider-Man and Iron Man are the heroes of the story, but they really play more of a supporting role here. The real protagonist is a psychiatrist named Tanis Nieves (apparently "Tanis" is a woman's name), who is treating Carnage's old Maximum Carnage girlfriend, Shriek. Nieves becomes involved when the company keeping Carnage captive has Shriek moved from her care to a secret facility in order to use her ability to produce negative emotions in those around her to power the symbiote, as it feeds off of these negative emotions. As I'm sure you might guess, this ends well for all the parties involved.

Dr. Nieves attempts to stop the armored car transporting her patient, but only succeeds in getting her arm shot off by one of the Iron Man-lite enforcers working for Hall Industries during a riot caused by Shriek. Hall Industries gives her one of their nifty little cyborg arms, and she ends up being taken to their facility as Shriek's doctor.




Long story short, the symbiote takes control of Nieves' arm and uses her to help it escape before bonding with her. And so proceeds a series of bitchin' fights that, as I'm sure you might guess, end with the final return of Cletus Kasady.

The best thing about this series is definitely the horror movie atmosphere. The art is a big part of this. You see a lot of this kind of art style that tries to look painted these days, which can be cool, but often just looks awkward. No matter how well it's done, it always takes away at least some of the visceral quality of an action scene, and if done poorly it can really take the life out of a comic. Done well though, while still making a panel look a bit static, it adds a unique sense of drama. I was a bit dubious when I saw the first page, as I've seen this done brilliantly (Thor: God of Thunder), and I've also seen this done horribly (new Uncanny X-Men), but for the most part I was very impressed. Use of dark and muted colors really add an eerie quality as well, as you can see...




The funny thing about this comic though, is that this dark vibe isn't so much about Carnage, as it is about the psychological horror of the symbiote itself. Cletus Kasady doesn't even appear until the end of issue #3. Which is also when the quality takes a slight dip. As cool as the fight scenes are, a redneck giddy about murder kind of ruins the more subtle tone of the earlier issues. Subtlety being relative of course. I'm being a tad unfair though, as the climax has some truly epic action sequences, and Nieves and Shriek's final confrontation is plenty emotional. But this series is definitely at its best when exploring the mind of the symbiote through its attempt to control Dr. Nieves.




They certainly keep the creep factor pretty high for a while. And Dr. Nieves is definitely being set up to possibly play some kind of a part in the greater Marvel universe, as, while she eventually loses the Carnage symbiote, it leaves behind a little bundle of joy in Tanis' cybernetic arm. A bit of a spoiler I suppose, but it's important for the next Carnage mini-series, so I kind of have to mention it.

Another thing I like about this series is that, while there is plenty of violence, the gore is kept to a minimum, which makes the truly horrifying moments all the more effective. I don't have the heart to spoil the coolest moment in the comic, but suffice it to say that Carnage uses his control of Hall Industries' cybernetic weaponry to make some rather unique kills. And even then, the art is too blurry to really make out what's going on, so your imagination has/gets to fill in the blanks.

I highly recommend Carnage. Violence with a brain. And it's made even better since the follow-up series is just as good, if not better. Get's you this mag, dudes.


Oh, and I don't have anywhere else to put this, but it's just too cool to leave out.

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The Batlord

Alright, I was just gonna do this series as one post, but pretty soon I realized I wanted to do it issue by issue. I dig this series. I dig it a lot. I'm even reading it all the way through again as I'm writing this. So, seeing as how this is going to be a lot more detailed than the above entry, this is going to be spoiler-filled. If you don't care, then please continue, but if you intend to read this series and don't want anything ruined then just take my enthusiasm as my recommendation. Love Carnage? Love violence? Love horror movies? Love cripple fights? Then read Carnage U.S.A. and get outta my face. So, on with the actual review...

One could be forgiven for thinking this was a more light-hearted series than the previous one, what with that cover, which is actually the least delightfully goofy cover of them all. You would however be mistaken. This is as dark and merciless a comic as Carnage was and, since it focuses much more on Cletus Kasady, even more gleefully sadistic. The same team, writer Zeb Wells and artist Clayton Crain, is working on Carnage U.S.A. as well, so it really is a direct sequel, in tone and art style as well as the storyline. Not that this is a retread mind you...

The most significant difference to me is the greater realization of Cletus Kasady as a character. Carnage was really more of a side character in his own series last time around, but now he takes center stage in a big, "Oh, God, what has that sick **** done now?!" kinda way. I get the feeling that Wells may not have known exactly what to do with Kasady last time around. Scratch that. I don't know if he knew what to do with Kasady as Carnage, since the couple scenes with just him were certainly on the creepy side. When he's all suited up though, Carnage tends to come off as not much more than a psychotic thug. He's fun, but far more interesting in human form. A big reason for this is the simple fact that Cletus Kasady is a Joker ripoff. Excuse me, Joker "inspired". Chaos, murder, crazy laugh, etc. I tracked down a Spider-Man/Batman crossover a few days ago, and the one good thing about it was that the Joker and Carnage team-up for a short time, until discovering that their two philosophies, while similar, are actually too different to be reconciled. You see, the Joker likes to spread chaos and mayhem through convoluted, flamboyant schemes. Carnage thinks this is bull****. He likes to spread chaos and mayhem through immediate, random violence. Not surprisingly, regardless of the fact that the Joker was terribly written in that story, he still came off looking like the bigger badass in that particular scene, cause let's face it, Carnage's modus operandi is good for an issue or two before getting stale, whereas the Joker... well, he's the ****ing Joker, god damn it!

Zeb Wells seems to understand this. Before these two series, the most in-depth storyline I'd heard of from Carnage was Maximum Carnage, which, if word-of-mouth is any indicator, got repetitive and boring after a while, since all Carnage did was show up somewhere, kill a bunch of people, scamper off, repeat. Not so this. My boy Cletus has taken a lesson from his big bad daddy and committed a large scale atrocity so devious that it would make even the Clown Prince of Crime jealous. Is it possibly sacrificing a bit of his previous interpretation to make him into even more of a Joker clone? Probably. But who cares? Sex and pizza, man.

Our tale of woe begins like any Carnage tale does: in a small town in Colorado...



I generally don't make a habit of posting four full pages like that, but it's just such a perfect opening to the series and says everything you need to know right up front. The very first panel, where we see that the population count on the town sign has been crudely added to, presumably in blood, works perfectly as both black humor and foreshadowing. You pretty much know what's going to happen for the rest of the series right there, even if the devil is in the details. Then we go from a picturesque American dream town, to what is one of the creepiest panels I've yet seen in a comic book. And then Carnage's final declaration and the caption beneath him drive home the point of this series even further.

In case you're wondering why it is that Cletus Kasady seemed to be eating raw cow (at least we hope it's cow) from a meat processing plant, it was to provide sustenance to his symbiote so that it could increase its mass to the point where it could assimilate the entire town.




The brilliant thing about this development is that Carnage doesn't kill anyone. Well... that's not really true, but for the most part the town is alive, just controlled by Kasady. He even lets them keep their own minds rather than having them be mindless slaves. Otherwise, how would he psychologically terrorize them? Another nice touch to this series is his southern accent. When sitting down on a porch swing with a horrified elderly couple, lazily watching the clouds go by this picturesque slice of smalltown Americana, Kasady's good ol' boy way of talking goes from amusing to terrifying. The seeming normalcy of it all creates this ironic tension that does far more for my love of this character than any amount of wanton brutality ever could.




Of course there are the good guys. When word of this gets to the government, thanks to the town sheriff who is sent to the neighboring county with Kasady's list of demands carved into his flesh, the Avengers are sent in. Honestly, even though the "demands" basically amount to a declaration of a new "sovereign symbiotic state" and an allusion to potential world domination, I don't really know that Carnage's motives are actually anything more than a confrontation. He's Carnage after all. This time around the Avengers team consists of Spider-Man (naturally), Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye, and the Thing. They probably play an even smaller role this time around than Spider-Man and Iron Man did in Carnage, but they still give you a nice little scene to introduce the personalities of the protagonists: Spider-Man trying to convince Wolverine to let Hawkeye shoot an arrow off of his head, before being interrupted by Captain America. And Hawkeye's annoyance at the Thing's constant mentioning of Yancy Street, his aunt, and his "ever-lovin' blue-eyed schtick" reminds me of why I'm now a Hawkeye fan. "It's clobberin' time!" "Of course it is..."

At this point the comic basically becomes a quasi-zombie movie. The Avengers enter what appears to be a ghost town, walking down a deserted main street. Eventually they find the townspeople, who are just standing around, seemingly only able to say "Big smiles. Big big smiles." They are then confronted by Kasady, shielding himself with a baby.




And in case you think this is just a cheap ploy to get around the fact that the Avengers could otherwise beat Carnage's ass into the sidewalk, think again (although they did exclude Thor). Carnage's symbiote has increased its mass to the point where it soon overwhelms the entirety of the team, except for Spider-Man, and possesses them as well.




So, Carnage has now taken control of over a thousand people, and still has the juice to put down the Avengers like they were red-headed step-children. At this point I'm wondering if he might actually have been able to take down Thor as well. Maybe not head-to-head, but as soon as those tendrils hit you, you're kind of done. If Wolverine's healing factor can't fight them off, then Thor being a god may not save him either. Carnage pretty much comes off as Satan in this issue. He's just so, so deliciously evil. He may not quite have the Joker's twisted, serpentine imagination, but he certainly shows the promise that he can be further developed given the right chance. And Marvel seems willing to give him that chance too. This is his second mini-series in little more than a year. Too bad his third series didn't get nearly as good reviews. Still, I'm now waiting for a worthy follow-up to Carnage U.S.A., and I get the feeling I'm not going to have to wait all that long.

We're left with this cliff hanger, with the last panel revealing the inside of a military facility where a general is gazing at a screen showing a number of symbiotes aligned on the side of truth, justice and the American way, including Venom, Anti-Venom (smh), and a certain doctor you might remember from the previous series, now going by the name of Scorn.

An excellent start to a series that deserves the praise it gets. If this isn't the definitive Carnage story, then somebody please tell me what is, cause I'm sure it'll cause me to need to change my underwear.



Edit: Yup, new Carnage series already coming soon. Apparently he plays a part in the new Avengers/X-Men crossover event, Avengers and X-Men: AXIS, and will get his own spin-off, three-part mini-series in October called AXIS: Carnage. It'll be written by Rick Spears, and drawn by German Paralta. Paralta's art looks somewhat similar to the style of this series, with that painted look, so they may be going for a similar tone. Rick Spears seams to be more of an indie writer, so I imagine Marvel isn't looking for just another violence fest like the newest Superior Carnage, which, while I have only read the first issue, I was not really impressed with. Not sure what to think of him though, a year or two ago I read the first volume of a series he did a called Black Metal, which was basically a Metalocalypse-inspired series about two black metal fans conquering hell or something. I seem to remember it being fun, and if the new Carnage writer is a black metal fan, then I'm cautiously stoked.

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The Batlord

I don't know if this is my favorite cover of this series or if it's the one with Carnage crossing the Delaware. Either way... awesome.

With the Avengers now out of commission, we are introduced to Mercury Team, a special forces group made up of American soldiers controlling catatonic alien symbiotes. They're not nearly as powerful as Carnage or Venom, but they also don't have the danger of being bonded to their symbiotes and losing control. For the most part, their other halves mainly give them the ability to make better use of traditional weaponry, but the guy who controls the symbiotic dog is pretty bitchin'.




And then of course there's the return of Dr. Tanis Nieves, still sporting her new symbiote, Scorn, from Carnage. She's now under US control, and being trained as an agent. Since her symbiote was "born" in a cybernetic prosthetic arm, it is part machine, and gives Nieves the ability to bond with other technology. She isn't entirely pleased with being Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole, but appears to have accepted her new lot in life if only because she's too numb to really deal with what's happened.




I kind of love her. Her arc in Carnage was definitely the most interesting thing about that series. She started as an idealist intent on helping even the most damaged of individuals, but was disillusioned by her experience in the mind of Carnage and witnessing her former patient Shriek's relapse into a murderous psychopath, and not entirely because of her bonding to her symbiote. Now the former doctor is playing the role of assassin, willingly throwing away her Hippocratic oath. If I don't quite consider her a hero, it's not so much because of her symbiote making her a Venom-style anti-hero. She's fully in control of her sanity, but while she is following her conscience to an extent, she's seems to be going along with the flow more than anything. I think that's pretty interesting, as I imagine that's how many would react to becoming a "superhero"; she doesn't quite know what to do with herself at the moment, but has a vague notion that she should make like Superman, and letting the government point her in a direction is as good a plan as any. I don't know how much of a role she's going to be playing in the Marvel universe, but I'd definitely be happy to see them develop her further. She's had only two appearances after this series, one in Venom #15, and again in Superior Carnage #5, which was released in November 2013, so she's been inactive for almost a year. Since she's been associated with Carnage in three separate series, maybe she'll make an appearance in AXIS: Carnage. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Aside from Mercury team, Spider-Man has made contact with a resistance movement operating out of some guy's private zoo. Yeah, you read that right. So, what with an imminent special forces strike, partisans, and a deadline of morning on the following day before the Air Force turns the entire town into a fireball, this is setting up a warzone that will engulf the rest of the series.

But Carnage hasn't been idle. He doesn't so much seem to be preparing for war, as he is devising new ways to torture his captives. His current little game is that he's decided to "adopt" two children.




And that Spider-Pet is Doppleganger. It's like a four-armed, monster version of Spider-Man. He's sort of like Carnage's dog. Anyway, Kasady is unfortunately not particularly impressed with the loyalty of their mother. So he orders her to kill her husband while the children watch, or else he will make her watch as he kills the children. The only problem is that the father is one of the resistance, so he gives them some... equipment...




Kasady really is turning in one of my new favorite Comic Book Psycho performances. His sadism is low key. Rather than turning his hands into axes and racking up as high a body count as possible, he's concerning himself mostly with spreading misery in more insidious, psychologically damaging ways. Hell, he only wears the suit for a few pages in the beginning of he book. There are more shots of the townspeople and the Avengers wearing the symbiote than him, and that's the rule for most of the series. Seriously though, if anyone knows a better Carnage story then I need to know.

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The Batlord

Good God this series has bitchin' covers. Well **** finally hits the fan in this issue. I mean, ****'s been kinda hitting the fan the whole time, but now the big, bad symbiote showdown finally begins. It starts with the symbiote special forces squad, Mercury Team, infiltrating Doverton. At this point, Nieves separates from the group to do... something that will become more important in the last two issues.




Meanwhile, Cletus Kasady has found God. And by "found God", I mean he's put on a priest's outfit in the town church and is making each of the townspeople remove one of their teeth with a pair of pliers. It's about this time that you realize that he doesn't really have much of a plan. He's set up his little "country", but doesn't have any grand vision for what to do with it. He's just kind of doing the first thing that comes to his mind at any given time. I mean, is it just me, or does it sound like Carnage just pulled that out of his "Evil Acts to Perpetrate Upon the Hapless Townies" hat completely at random? I want that hat. I imagine given time he'd probably end up killing them all once he got bored in a week or a month or whatever. But until then we get treated to delightfully wanton cruelty such as this...




I suppose if you're one of those people who likes their plots to have some greater meaning, then you might not be so into this, but if you're a terrible person like me, who loves a bit of mindless sadism in his entertainment, especially if that sadism is aesthetically creative, then this is your cup of tea. I really want one of those hats.

And yeah, that's Captain America going, "Nnnnnnnyaahh!" while trying to break free of the symbiote's control in the middle ground of that panel. Kasady pretty much keeps the Avengers around all the time as bodyguards/unwilling witnesses whenever he's not making them play pool. Now Kasady gets his rocks off by telling "Captain Flag Face" of the wife and children who he's sent to kill their father. Speaking of...

Back at the resistance compound/private zoo, Spider-Man is awoken from sleeping in full costume to find the father in question driving his truck through the surrounding fence in order to get back to his family, who is waiting for him outside. Obviously this doesn't go as he planned, as his wife tearfully tells him that she has to kill him. Luckily, Spider-Man manages to save the day (natch), but Kasady takes remote control of the wife and children through the symbiote and they run back to the church, while Kasady gloats about how he will kill them with the wife's own voice. A bad, bad man.

Also luckily, the symbiote team has tracked Kasady down to the church, but are then confronted by the townspeople, now completely possessed by Carnage. The scene pretty much turns into Aliens meets Night of the Living Dead.




The battle outside distracts Kasady, just long enough for Captain America to momentarily break free from the symbiote's control, and just long enough to get a message to an unknown person...




Oh yeah, Flash Thompson is Venom now. It's a lot more awesome than it sounds. But yeah, this series rules. 'Nuff said.

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The Batlord

This issue basically opens with Spider-Man making an Army of Darkness speech, shotgun raised aloft, as he convinces the resistance to go help him kick some symbiote ass (cause they have tranquilizer guns from the zoo or something). This scene is worth the price of the book just to see Spider-Man standing on a pickup truck with a shotgun.




Spider-Man and his boomstick are sorely needed, as the symbiote special forces dudes are having a time of it being surrounded by the Carnage-enslaved townspeople. Not only are they running out of ammunition (natch), but now Carnage himself enters the fray, not to mention his buddies the Avengers: Captain America, Hawkeye, Wolverine, and the Thing.




One good thing would be for the entire team to be there so they could fight as one, but instead, Scorn/Dr. Nieves is in the meat packing plant talking to herself about ball bearings and gigahertz. I mean, she does have a symbiote in her head that's half machine and can bond with other technology, but that still counts as talking to herself.

But no sooner is their **** about to be wrecked than Spider-Man and his pickup truck posse show up with molotov cocktails and shotguns (unfortunately Spider-Man doesn't have his anymore). It's looks like Mad Max in pajamas.




The series is pretty much just a superhero free-for-all from this point on. Every few panels somebody is fighting somebody else, and it's ****ing awesome. Oh yeah, then Venom shows up with a big ****ing grenade launcher and just flattens Carnage's ass with... sonic grenades or something. They never really mentioned what those were, but they were badass anyway.




So, obviously at some point the tables return on the heroes and the villains are about to win and you've seen a movie so you know what I'm saying. This is when Scorn hits Carnage with a bulldozer. For most of the series she's been pretty much in the background, but now she hits Carnage with a bulldozer. It's ****ing awesome. I know I already said that about something else, but I don't care. She hit Carnage with a ****ing bulldozer and it ruled.

And if that's not enough to show what an underrated badass Scorn is, hitting Carnage with a ****ing bulldozer was just a way to get him into the meat packing plant, where she'd rigged some kind of sonic doohickey to separate Kasady from his symbiote. Constructing a device that basically looks like it shoots down a giant column of pure sound out of meat packing equipment sounds like building a radio out of a coconut, but I guess her command of machinery is just that awe-inspiring, so I'm willing to go with it. Besides, it sets the stage for Kasady and Flash/Venom's cripple fight in the next issue (Venom kinda got bulldozed too... by accident... maybe). And I'll explain why they're both crippled next time.

Unfortunately I can't find any scans of either the bulldozer or the sonic... disruptor... meat packing... thing, so you'll have to use your imaginations. The best I can do is a pic of the outside of the meat packing plant in the next issue. Oh wells.




Yeah, if Scorn can do that to a meat-packing plant in less than a night, she's gonna be giving Reed Richards a run for his money soon. Perhaps some anti-fun individuals might say that turning a meat packing plant into a... sonic thing, is dumb. **** them. The bulldozer at the beginning forgives all. Besides, this isn't a series where I was particularly concerned with the brilliant culmination of the protagonists' master plan. Carnage did bad, bad things, and however they actually managed to beat him would have been secondary regardless. Zeb Wells used Cletus Kasady masterfully and, with Clayton Crain's moody artwork, created a truly unsettling glimpse into just what Carnage is capable of. The tooth thing... man. That **** was ****ed up.

And the last battle is still to come anyway...

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The Batlord

Carnage U.S.A. #5 of 5

Alright, one little teeny, tiny nitpick that will probably mean absolutely nothing at all whatsoever to anyone but me. That hand salute is ****. There is a very precise way to perform a hand salute. First of all, you don't curve your hand like that. Your fingers are to remain straight, so that your forearm, wrist, and hand form a line, with your thumb tucked to the side of your palm, NOT UNDER IT. Plus, even from this angle I can tell he's holding his palm sideways. Not so. It should be tilted slightly downward, so that if someone is in front of you they can only see the back of your hand and not the inside of your palm. And his hand placement. Yeesh. If not wearing a cover (hat) with a brim, the tip of your middle finger should just touch the corner of your right eye. It should not be touching your goddamn forehead. ****ing redneck.

I'm just going to quit now before I start in on what he's doing wrong with his left arm.

So, I believe I mentioned a cripple fight last time. Well, a while back Flash Thompson/Venom, was a soldier fighting in Iraq, and lost his legs, but now he has, like... symbiote legs. And before the events of the first Carnage mini-series, some guy called sentry straight ripped Cletus Kasady in half at the waist (Sentry apparently has a bad habit about this).



That isn't from this series, but it's still pretty ****ing cool. Anyway, so they're both missing their legs, but their symbiotes have given them replacements. Except now Scorn's meat packing sonic doohickey has separated them both from their symbiotes... so they must cripple fight.




This is actually a pretty ****ing trippy issue. Zeb Wells obviously wanted to go all out with this one. He'd created some sick stuff for the earlier books, so I suppose he didn't want the ending to be overshadowed by being just another superhero fight. Having two uber-powered freaks with alien parasites fight each other without the use of legs has definitely gotta be a first in comic books.

Another first has to be the symbiote-possessed zoo animals the rest of the Avengers are doing battle with outside. Yeah. Not much to explain. The zoo animals that were chillin' at the private zoo got loose, and then when the symbiotes became separated from Flash and Kasady they found the closest living hosts (the townspeople having been freed when Kasady was separated from Carnage).




There's a rather delightful scene where a gorilla taken over by the Venom symbiote tries to get to the meat packing plant to help Flash, but is attacked by a Carnage-possessed lion. All looks hopeless until Spider-Man kicks the lion and the gorilla goes loping off toward the meat packing plant. I have a tendency to be oblivious to just how weird things can be the first time around, so I'm glad I'm going back over all of this, as the entire issue is really quite odd.




The ape has good timing too, as Flash is sort of hanging from a meat hook at this point.




And thus ends the cripple fight as Flash gets his symbiote back and grabs Kasady by the neck. Then the air force drops napalm on all of the symbiote-controlled animals and we're pretty much done. There's one last bit of niceness though. Not surprisingly, when the heroes defeat Carnage and capture the symbiote, rather than chainsawing him into several pieces and dropping them into various parts of the ocean all across the world, they arrest him. Cause that's what heroes do. Now, the whole "Why are we arresting him when we could remove this threat to the world forever?" trope has been done, but given the level of Carnage's depravity in this series it feels like a particularly relevant question this time around. He may not have almost destroyed the world, but I highly doubt anyone who would force over a thousand people to each remove one of their own teeth is worth saving.

While Kasady is being marched onto the Avengers' plane, the man whose wife and two children had been ordered to kill him by Carnage walks up with a shotgun. He fires one round at Kasady that accidentally hits (and bounces off of) the Thing, before being disarmed by Spider-Man. After a couple conversation bubbles giving the ol' "Do you want to become him?!" thing, the man shuts Spider-Man up by telling him that he'd had three children before Carnage showed up.




The thing that makes this scene ring true for me is that it just makes the heroes look so impotent. Most of them have just spent the majority of the series being forced to watch as this sadist had his way with an entire town. And now they have to put him back in his cage to wait for the next massacre. There's usually some moral that ends up justifying this though, at least to some extent, but when Spider-Man tries he finds himself speechless when confronted by the depth of this man's tragedy. Who knows how many people are dead, half the town has been destroyed, not to mention the psychological trauma on all of those still alive, and Cletus Kasady gets to fly away with a smirk on his face to three square meals a day in some prison. Again, not a terribly original concept, but it's very appropriate here.

God this series was fun.

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The Batlord

I haven't read the actual comic book, only seen the animated adaptation, so this is only about that. If that scene in the comic is anywhere near as emotional as the movie then I have to read it. I'm serious about the crying thing. I don't mean straight-up bawling. I don't think I've done that in over a decade about anything. But that part puts a lump in my throat and brings an honest to god tear to my eye every time I think about it, which is more than I can say about most real life ****. I'm sure that as I write this the same thing will happen, just as it did when I watched the video a second ago.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, the Flash has the ability to run so fast that he can go back in time. He doesn't do this for the most part for obvious reasons, but this time he goes back in time to save his mother, who originally was murdered when he was a child. When he gets back to the present the entire world is different (some crap about ripples in the space-time continuum that affect even things that have nothing to do with what was changed): his mother is still alive, but there is no Justice League, Superman crashed in Metropolis instead of Smallville and is a prisoner of the government, Wonder Woman and the Amazons are waging a war with Aquaman and Atlantis that is devastating the Earth, Hal Jordan never got his ring, and many other things. But the most important one for this post is that instead of Bruce Wayne witnessing his parent's murder, his father and mother watched Joe Chill kill Bruce. This caused Thomas Wayne to become Batman and Martha Wayne to snap and become the Joker.

In order to restore the timeline to its rightful place, Barry Allen (or the Flash if you're stupid) seeks out Batman. When he finds Thomas Wayne things don't go so well though. I suppose the loss of a child is even more traumatizing than the death of a parent, as this world's Batman is far more nihilistic than "ours". He uses guns, isn't afraid to kill, doesn't seem to give much of a **** about what's going on in the world, outside of waging a war of vengeance against crime in Gotham, and just seems to be in general a broken man with nothing to live for. The only way that Flash even gets him to agree to help him is by telling him that restoring the time line will save his son. Then blah blah blah, epic awesome **** happens, watch/read it cause it rules, and an hour and a half later the timeline is restored. It's during the final battle that a critically-wounded Thomas Wayne gives Flash the letter to give to his son, which you saw if you watched the clip.

There's no way anyone with a soul can't be even a little bit touched by this. If Bruce Wayne is around forty as I've been given to understand, then it's been thirty years since he last saw his parents. Thirty years where he's likely thought about them and that moment every day of his life. This is an event that had such a profound effect on him that he gave up his childhood to travel the world alone while training his mind and body to a peak that quite possibly no man has ever reached in all of history, comic book or otherwise. Even after all of this time, this event so profoundly rules his mind and his heart that he's given his entire life to righting this wrong. I imagine he likely secretly pictures his parents' murderer in the face of every criminal he fights, a little boy just hoping to wake up and see his mother and father by his bed (*).

And now, after three decades (not to mention seven decades of real life time), his father is speaking to him. This isn't a letter he'd written years ago that Bruce had just discovered in an old trunk in the attic; these are words written by a living man who has felt the same loss, who has lived through the same private hell, whose words carry the same emotions that Bruce himself feels. This is a little boy's closure.

If this makes you feel nothing then I don't even know what to say to you. It says everything about the power of Batman's story that in a series dedicated to the Flash, Bruce Wayne's moment steals the show, even though Flash is pretty much going through exactly the same thing. And thank God they got Kevin Conroy back for that little "cameo". No voice actor who's played Batman since could have made that scene what it is.

* That right there is where I got choked up again. Actually needed a tissue.

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The Batlord

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Unknown Soldier

It always surprised me just how both Venom and Carnage maintained their popularity as major villains in Marvel for all these years, because when they first came on the scene they looked like they would blow themselves out, as writers overused both of them.

Also have you read any of 1980s Flash, I always remember this being one of the best DC comics of that era?

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History