Absolute Carnage #1 Jam Review: A Symbiote Story

A path of slaughter across the Marvel universe and all the signs point to Carnage! Can Venom and his Amazing Friends (All one of them!) stop Carnage before summoning Knull, god of the Symbiotes?

Absolute Carnage #1 (of 5)

Writer: Donny Cates

Pencils: Ryan Stegman

Inks: JP Meyer

Colors: Frank Martin

Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles

Editor: Devin Lewis

EiC: C.B. Cebulski

Recap:

For those of y’all not reading Venom (Why aren’t you, it’s good stuff) Knull is the recently-retconned Symbiote God who the other Symbiotes trapped within Klyntar-ville. (Because we gotta get rid of Bendis’ Not-Green Lanterns somehow, right?) Eddie Brock has been running around, finding new allies (Including the Maker and his recently-discovered son, Dylan) in between fighting Grendel (Which I guess was a Symbiote dragon, but Cates got impatient with Aaron getting off of Thor and just decided to put him in here.) and the War of the Realms. Eddie and the Symbiote have been separated for a while, and I guess Eddie never had a sister or cancer.

Also everybody who ever wore a Venom symbiote (Gotta keep the Bunn Venomized stuff outta here, otherwise that’d be everybody ever) is a target of the resurrected Cletus Kasady, who is running around with Knull’s personal Symbiote.

We good? We good.

And now, for something else.

After the events of the Free Comic Book Day issue, where Cletus killed all the inmates (Including Lee Price, who everybody forgot about after Venom Inc.) Eddie and Dylan are on the run, but are tripped onto a train by Carnage, only to be saved by the Venom Symbiote. (Who had been separated from Eddie since Issue #12.) After a near-death encounter with Carnage, who looks like a Doom character, Eddie and Dylan meet up with the one folk who inexplicably they know the secret identity of: Peter Parker.

The three hear about the mass grave in Doverton on Plot Convenience News, and move on to meet the Maker, who has built a machine to extract the codexes of previous Symbiote hosts, but in order to get a test subject they’re more comfortable with, Peter, Eddie and John Jameson head on over to Ravencroft to retrieve Norman Osborn, who has been there since ASM 800. John, unfortunately, is taken over by Carnage (Who consumed him in Cult of Carnage) and turns on an alarm as Carnage storms Ravencroft, taking over the residents and turning them into Symbiote Dopplegangers. Despite their best attempts to get away, Peter and Eddie are cornered as Cletus takes over Norman, seizing his lieutenant for the oncoming offensive.

Summary:

After a year and a quarter, Donny Cates and his faithful partner begin the Symbiote event of the… year? (I dunno, they’ve been making one every three months for the past year) It’s been promising to be an amazing event, and frankly it’s the only one in the past ten years that I think has managed to captivate me and keep me engaged for the entire thing, even if I’ve only read just the first issue.

I think the main credit goes to Ryan Stegman and his art team of JP Meyer and Frank Martin. Stegman’s pages have this perfect and seamless reflection of the 90s style of art drawing (Which is perfect considering that this book and the lead-ins have more or less been a tribute to the murder-happy tone of the 90s.) that would make Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld (Eh… maybe not that last one) proud that their legacy carries on. Meyer’s inks are sharp, concise and don’t waste any page space; and finally, Frank Martin has an exceptionally solid use of blacks, grays and reds that makes the reds pop and stand out among the darker and dredging colors.

Unfortunately, much like Secret Empire requires you to read Steve Rogers: Captain America and, to a lesser extent Sam Wilson, this book does require an in-depth knowledge of Cates’ Venom run and the Web of Venom one-shots to know every single detail of what’s going on (Especially the stuff regarding the mass grave in Doverton) Thankfully, if all the precise details are not a must-have for you, having those background details is more icing on the cake than required reading universally, as Cates does a solid job of introducing the readers to the main concept of the book in the first three pages. And within three chapters and a total of sixty pages, I think that the pacing has been totally nailed down with pinpoint precision.

Despite Eddie being the main character, Peter serves as something of a deuteragonist and he’s nailed down as well as Cates handled him during Marvel Comics #1000. He doesn’t betray his morals for the greater good, but also emphasizes how strong and durable he is, even in the face of impossible odds; this is further doubled-down on by Stegman’s dynamic art, especially when he tries to brute-force his way through a concrete wall.

All that said? If you want sixty pages of Stegman kicking ass with his art, this comic is well worth the $7.99 to spend, and it might even be worth picking up the digital director’s cut to see the process of how Cates and Stegman put this book together piece by piece.

Final Grade: A+

But don’t just take my word for it! We have two guest reviews from our very own Javi and Dark Mark’s own Grant Alford!

Grant’s Take:

Over all, I really enjoyed it! I’m a Carnage fan (this is a prime opportunity for Carnage Swarm by the way!) and having Spider-Man be one of the main characters was nice. Having Miles make an appearance was AWESOME and completely unexpected! AND HIS CARNAGE VERSION LOOKS AWESOME!!!!

I’m not the biggest Venom fan in general, I really don’t care about all this Knull stuff, I just want to see Carnage going on a rampage and an epic fight. I think Deadpool v. Carnage did this very, very well and I think this series is doing it well too. For me Deadpool v. Carnage is the bar and this gets pretty close (also, considering Deadpool wore multiple symbiotes, that means we get a rematch!). 

I was a bit skeptical walking in because I was afraid it wasn’t going to be good like Maximum Carnage, and/or be all about Venomverse which i couldn’t care less about. While I’m assuming the Knull stuff is from Venomverse, there’s not much riding on it. I was half expecting to have to have read Venomverse to understand whats going on but I don’t which is nice.

All in all, definitely worth a read.

Grade: A-

Javi’s Take

Hey, Crawlspacers! Javi here!

I was a teen when Maximum Carnage came out. I loved the first arc featuring the villain, but my young budget being what it was, I didn’t invest in this sprawling crossover. This left what chapters I did read feel disjointed and very bleak. While I was happy to have a tie-in game, the overall event is not something I am terribly nostalgic for.

So, when I heard that Absolute Carnage was announced, I rolled my eyes and asked why was it even necessary. Having heard good things about Cates and Stegman on Venom, I decided to pick up the first trade and was stunned by how entertaining it was. Based on that reaction, I said to myself, “Maybe I’ll give just the first issue of Absolute Carnage a try…” and try I did.

Turns out, it was a great decision! Ryan Stegman first caught my attention with The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows and I quickly fell in love with his detailed and energetic style. As fantastic as he was on that book, he has gone to the next level on this title! His art has a strong Todd McFarlane influence, but it’s so refined that it looks like the culmination of McFarlane drawing a Spidey comic once a month since the ‘90s! You might think it’s hyperbole (and maybe it is), but every page is simply magnificent. Expressions, layouts, energy-everything is interesting and dynamic.

Spider-Man may be involved in this title, but this is a horror comic, through and through. JP Mayer on inks enhances Stegman’s work with the appropriate amount of depth and shade. There are moments so black and detailed in this book that you feel like you’re sinking into the panel. Frank Martin is the color artist, carefully treading the line between gloomy alleys and rain soaked cityscapes with blood-red backdrops and symbiotic minions. This is not a glamorous New York that’s depicted, but its dark, seedy underbelly, with monsters just waiting to crawl out of the shadows and rip your spine out.

All this serves to bring out the terror in the story Cates has conjured up. At 60 pages, there’s a lot of material to go through, but it’s a page turner so engrossing you really feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. Broken into three chapters, each act sees the situation get more dark and dire. There’s A LOT of backstory that Cates has to unpack, but he does it in a clear, concise way that someone like me could get by having only read the first six issues of Venom. A lot has changed for Eddie since his “I want to eat your brains” days and Cates has him as far more sympathetic in his new Lone Wolf & Cub status quo as he darts around New York with a son that doesn’t know the truth of their relationship.

Cates does a fantastic job with the Spidey side of things, too. Peter’s own sense of loss over not knowing his father growing up came off very earnest. You also get the feeling of Spidey’s back being against the wall as they enter Ravencroft, but he’s still hanging on to his ethics, even though it may cost him his life. Running into a Norman who thinks he’s Carnage was chilling, especially the way Stegman had Spidey laying at Osborn’s feet. Spidey smashing his fists repeatedly into a three-foot-thick concrete wall was a great way to show off the character’s determination without resorting to the “let me lift something heavy off myself” trope.

So, if you think Carnage belongs in the ‘90s, or horror and Spidey shouldn’t mix, I definitely recommend you check this comic out, if for nothing else than the art. You might just change your mind!

Javi’s Grade: A