Carnage U.S.A. #5

Background

Mercury Team, Scorn, Spider-Man and Agent Venom all fought back against Carnage and his mind controlled denizens. A helpless Flash Thompson was left with Cletus Kasady.

Story 'Part Five: The Dawn's Early Fright!'

Spidey and the Avengers looked at the facility that Scorn had built to separate Carnage from Kasady. However, it had also removed Venom from Thompson, meaning that there were two symbiotes running loose. At that moment, Venom and Carnage arrived at the zoo.

At the meat packing plant, Kasady stood over the helpless Thompson. He had the advantage as his legs were mechanical and only the circuits were symbiotic. That's when his legs collapsed and he realized that his circuits didn't like the machine either. Flash lunged at him with a knife, stabbing him through the wrist as Kasady giggled. He bit Flash and said he tasted like book learning, his favorite.

As the heroes reiterated that they needed to catch Kasady by sunrise, the symbiote possessed zoo animals arrived. A gorilla was bonded to Venom and Carnage was bonded to everything else. The heroes were surrounded by the Carnage critters when Scorn showed up with a sonic gun. She used the gun to push back the animals and a soldier called in to not destroy the whole town, only certain coordinates. The person on the other end denied his authority to do so and Cap took over. Soon the revised strike was carried out.

At the packing plant, Kasady was stringing up Flash when the gorilla arrived. Venom returned to Flash and Kasady was immediately beaten. As a portion of Doverton burned, Scorn collected a surviving piece of the Carnage symbiote, telling it that things were about to get much worse for it. When Spider-Man asked what she was carrying away, she called it the secondary objective. Agent Venom dragged Kasady back to the transport, saying he couldn't bring himself to kill him. Cap said he should be proud, he brought one in alive. That's when Eric arrived, refusing to let Kasady live. He fired a shotgun at him but it was blocked by the Thing. Spider-Man yelled at Eric, telling him that he was acting like Kasady and to think of his wife and two kids. Eric told him that before Carnage arrived, they had a third child, Stephanie.

Wolverine wondered what the point of being there had been, if people were stopped from doing what needed to be done. Hawkeye told him that they'd accomplished their goal and they'd done enough. Wolverine wasn't sure. He looked around at the damage as Kasady sat safely in a containment cell on the transport.

General Comments

I can't say that there was anything wrong with this series but it was kind of pointless. Nothing was added to the characters and nothing was advanced. The one liners were entertaining, especially the Thing trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he was fighting a giraffe.

A lot of the story was a empty fight scene, either between the Avengers and symbiotes or Thompson and Kasady. I'm not sure how Cletus stood up so well against a professional soldier but there we are. Scorn remained badly out of character. She built a huge complex to remove the symbiotes from their hosts awfully quickly. Keep in mind, there are sonic guns and sonic knives that can do the same thing. I need to re-read the first Carnage series where Dr. Nieves was introduced because I thought she was a therapist, not an engineer.

I'm a comparatively long time Spider-Man reader but I'm recent enough to have different reactions to a story than even older readers. They complain that they don't like how violent and bloodthirsty the villains have become, and I remembered that complaint when I saw Thompson stab Kasady's wrist. To me, Spidey comics have always been violent, if maybe not to that degree. Still, after recently reviewing comics from the 1970s, I can see their point. No one ever got hurt too badly in those days. They were certainly more innocent but I don't know if that's good or bad. Spidey has a violent life and violence has consequences. It's unrealistic for nothing bad to ever happen.

Overall Rating

Definitely forgettable.