Minimum Carnage Alpha review

THE STORY: Cletus Kasady says “Yes.” Soon, Venom is tearing into Thunderbolts Mountain Maximum Security Prison with agents in tow to find lots of bodies and violence, and Cletus’ empty cell, seemingly blown from the inside. Roadblocks are thrown up, and when Cletus drives through, he makes reference to his “new pals,’ which is followed by a cop getting sliced across the neck and the cop cars blowing up – but for no visible reason. Agent Venom examines the footage closely, and upon a close-up, finds a tiny bug-like thing holding a scepter on one of the bodies. He calls his reporter friend Katy Kiernan to see if she knows anything about “really tiny killers,” and she points him to a story she wrote about a Prometheus Pit in Houston, Texas.

Cut to Houston, Texas, home of the Scarlet Spider, who is swinging into a burning building because, well, he figures he’s supposed to. Inside he finds eviscerated old lady parts and a cowering man who’s terrified of his scarlet costume. He takes the man to his friends, Dr. Donald Meland and Officer Wally Layton, and finds out the old woman was the man’s mother-in-law, and the assailant wanted the man’s wife, not him. SEGUE! Cut to the man’s wife, Dr. Ketola, being interviewed by Katy Kiernan at a Houston NASA base about the Prometheus Pit, which Katy asserts is something they’re using to try to plunder the resources of another world. Dr. Ketola is less than cooperative, but nobody cares since Carnage shows up, and so does the Scarlet Spider! FISTICUFFS! Carnage initially mistakes Kaine for Spider-Man, but the neck snapping and stingers start to tip him off that it’s not. Strange tiny people show up and tell Cletus they have to get to the pit! Carnage is going to kill Kaine anyway, until Katy shoots him, prompting Carnage to grab both Dr. Ketola and Katy as he gets the hell out! Everybody makes a run for the Prometheus Pit, which Dr. Ketola is telepathically forced to open before she is either killed or hurt by Carnage in some rather unclear art! Carnage, his tiny people, and Katy all go through the pit, but Kaine is told to get down on the ground and put his hands on his head by Agent Venom!

SYMBIOTE SCRUTINY:

CrazyChris, speaking. Minimum Carnage leaves a minimal impression so far. I hoped to have strong feelings going into my team-up review with Kevin, but . . . sorry, guys. This story pushes my apathy buttons. The boredom starts with the team of tiny enemies we meet this issue. All the work went into making them visually varied and creative, but we see no hint of personality from any of them. Given that they have apparently enlisted Carnage’s help in exchange for granting him free reign to terrorize their own miniature universe, I can at least deduce that they are probably stupid. Or maybe they are just as arbitrarily sadistic as Carnage himself, but how many characters like that does one story need?

And what help has Carnage given them, exactly? They seem perfectly able to slaughter people on their own, and they hijack the science device using their own mind control abilities. Carnage is just sort of present, stabbing people but not really doing anything that progresses the plot except taking Katy as a hostage. Speaking of that, if he’s trying to escape to a universe where the heroes won’t bother him, why is he guaranteeing that the heroes will follow him by taking a prisoner?

I only have one thing left to say about Carnage in this issue, and it’s that Lan Medina has apparently never seen any picture of Cletus Kasady and has no idea what he’s supposed to look like. 

Now that I’ve said my piece on the villains, I’ll move onto the heroes. In this issue, Agent Venom is “freaked out” that his role as a super hero has positioned him as a leader of ordinary humans going after Carnage. I like it. As a military officer, Flash should be used to having lives in his hands, but going after super villains while responsible for other people takes it to a new level. Then again, why are the Secret Avengers sending their least experienced member against a notoriously dangerous villain with no super-powered back up? And why does Flash call Katy the tabloid journalist for information instead of his own team? He had to do that in “Monsters of Evil”, too, because of some stupid writing contrivance, and this time its just blatantly a way to put a damsel in distress in the story. Anyway, another Flash Thompson character beat is that he’s creeped out by Carnage, especially the way Carnage’s symbiote has bonded with his bloodstream. I do like the idea of Flash learning to be more scared of himself by seeing the worst case scenario of symbiotes embodied by Carnage.

Frankly, though, Scarlet Spider steals the show. He gets all the best lines (“You’re about to see how much I’m NOT Spider-Man”), he gets all the heroic moments, and he gets the most badass move by twisting Carnage’s head 180 degrees. Kaine’s fight against Carnage is by far the highlight of this issue, except when the art becomes unclear as Kevin’s plot summary aptly points out.

Overall, part one is uneven, but predominantly I feel disinterested. I don’t really care about anything that’s happening, so I cannot endorse Minimum Carnage yet. Kevin, you got anything to say that’ll make me care?

RATING: 2 out of 5.

CLONE CRITIQUE:

Not a whole lot, Chris!

I really like the aesthetics of Lan Medina’s art, but like Chris I was struck in the face by a guy that looks absolutely nothing like Cletus Kasady. I honestly first thought he was disguising himself with the symbiote until it occurred to me, “Well, then how are these officers recognizing him? …oh, and now they have a picture of Cletus that looks the same.” It’s strange because Medina is clearly a capable penciler, drawing some very good looking panels throughout the whole issue, and other main characters look like themselves. So I have no idea what happened. And there are those unclear panels. Not just where I won’t know if Dr. Ketola is dead or just wounded until it’s mentioned in a later issue, but scenes like Kaine in the fire have such extreme close-ups that I had to examine the panels for awhile to figure them out, and even then would not have known it was a sliced up old woman until the dialogue told me later.

The Scarlet Spider is handled well as always, though. When Kaine first appears, we’re treated to a little inner monologue about realizing he needs to go to this burning building a little late because he’s a super hero now. It seems a bit redundant as a regular Scarlet Spider reader, but for readers that are coming in as purely Venom or Carnage fans who may not be familiar with Kaine and his new status quo, it’s a good, quick little introduction that I think works pretty nicely. It’s also cool that we get to have a little bit of Kaine’s supporting cast in Dr. Meland and Officer Layton in a way that makes since and furthers the story quickly. When Kaine and Carnage collide, Kaine has a quick thought of having tried to kill Carnage once before, which is a nice little nod to some obscure Clone Saga memories and establishes that Kaine knows what he’s dealing with without getting bogged down in details of a story that has absolute jack to do with this one, so again, handled nicely. And as Chris pointed out, the Kaine/Carnage fight was great, with full use of Kaine’s savagery against someone he doesn’t need to hold back against at all. Going right for the neck snap was killer (no pun intended, I swear).

In the end, though, none of the story really got me going for a lot of the reasons Chris mentioned. True to its title, the story definitely revels in the 90s with reckless abandon. We have a rather nonsensical Carnage jailbreak (there was some symbiote left in his blood, and that’s all the explanation we need) and a Carnage plot that, well, Chris is right about the lack of logic going on with the little people there. And it’s apparently all leading up to a big super fight because of Venom making some false assumptions. Where’s my die-cut cover, boys?! (Oh yeah, that’s right – it’s over at DC getting ready for the Batman crossover!)

So the main characters are handled well and the art looks good in general with some glaring omissions, so it’s fine, but as a $3.99 special one-shot issue to kick off a crossover, it doesn’t really leave you excited and wanting more.

RATING: 3 out of 5.

As the crossover moves to the solo books, Chris and Kevin will move back to reviewing our regular titles. Follow this story into part 2 with Kevin’s Scarlet Spider #10 review next week, followed by part 3 in CrazyChris’ Venom #26 review the week after!