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Quote1 Maybe if my host had a little more filial sentiment... a little more human love for his own daddy... some of it would have crossed over to me. As it is, I feel nothing but cold empty contempt. I hate you daddy. Quote2
Carnage Symbiote[src]

History

Birth

After a battle with Styx where the Venom Symbiote was presumed dead, former host Eddie Brock was incarcerated in a prison for "normal" humans.[1] His cell mate was Cletus Kasady, a psychotic murderer serving eleven life sentences.[2] However, the Venom symbiote was not dead, merely incapacitated for a time. Eventually it re-bonded with Eddie and the pair broke out.[3] However, in the hurry it left behind its spawn which bonded with Kasady to make Carnage, the 999th naturally-born symbiote. Over a period of months Carnage went on a killing spree and would leave the message "Carnage Rules", written in blood.

Savage Grace

File:Carnage Origin.png

First contact with Kasady

Eventually Carnage fought Spider-Man, and the wall-crawler was defeated.[4] Realizing Carnage was another Symbiotic-powered villain, Spider-Man enlisted the aid of Venom (who had retired to a deserted island),[5] to defeat Carnage.[6] After enlisting Venom's aid against Carnage, Spider-Man later used loud noises in an attempt to defeat both father and offspring.[7]

Maximum Carnage

The Carnage symbiote was apparently killed. However, it is revealed that during his first fight with Venom and Spider-Man, the symbiote used a cut on Kasady to alter his metabolism to create a perfect copy of the symbiote.[8] Carnage teamed up with Shriek, Spider-Man's doppelganger, and later some other villains to go on a murder spree throughout New York. They were eventually stopped by Spider-Man, Venom, and a team of other super-heroes.[9]

Planet of the Symbiotes

After a later confrontation with Venom[10], Cletus is knocked into a catatonic state. When the Venom symbiote unleashes a primal scream, summoning all of the symbiotes to Earth, Cletus and his symbiote wake up. Carnage starts absorbing the other symbiotes, making himself stronger and much, much larger than ever. He is taken down by Spider-Man, Venom, and the Scarlet Spider, and the Venom symbiotes screams even louder for all of the extra symbiotes to commit suicide.[11]

Twice Killed, Twice Survived

The symbiote has been "killed" at least twice. Once mentioned above and later when Venom, in an attempt to end the threat of Carnage once and for all, ate its spawn. However, both times they have been replaced. He found a copy of his suit in the Negative Zone. This would mean that Kasady has not worn the original for a very long time. However when she gave birth to his son Toxin, Venom claimed the spawn was his grandchild, which would indicate that Kasady has been wearing the original all along, implying that the original symbiote either regenerated or assimilated its Negative Zone counterpart, which has not been mentioned since.

Other Hosts

File:Ben Reilly (Earth-616) from Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 410 0001.jpg

Spider-Carnage

However, even though the bond between host and symbiote is strong, it has left Kasady several times to find more powerful hosts. It has bounded with John Jameson, Ben Reilly (at the time referred to as Spider-Carnage) and the Silver Surfer (forming The Carnage Cosmic) but it always ended up back on Kasady. Klaw theorized its motive behind doing so was to become more powerful with each subsequent host, and to mold Kasady into an ideal host.[12] Eventually it and Kasady met their apparent end while escaping The Raft, a prison for super powered people. He was ripped apart by Sentry in outer space. The symbiote survived by becoming dormant, putting Cletus into a coma, and returned to Earth, but was found by Michael Hall, who used the symbiote to create prosthesis and super-guards. The Doppelganger and Shriek return, hoping to repair the symbiote.[13]

File:Carnage Vol 1 3 page 22 Carnage (Symbiote) (Earth-616).jpg

The symbiote bonded to Doctor Tanis Nieves and went to Hall Corporation headquarters, only to debond from Nieves and rejoin Cletus Kasady, who was given prosthetic legs. Carnage battled Iron Man and Spider-Man upgraded with the cyborg "symbiotes" of Hall's super-guards, the Iron Rangers. Then, Nieves' prosthesis resulted to be a new spawn of Carnage, which turned her into a new symbiote called Scorn. Scorn obligated Shriek to use her sonic attack to debilitate Carnage, who later escaped with Doppelganger.[14]

Carnage U.S.A.

Cletus arrived to Doverton, Colorado and over took their population, controlling them with the Carnage Symbiote's copies, proclaiming this city the new capital of a new Symbiote sovereign state. Some heroes arrived to stop him, but where possessed by Carnage Symbiote's copies, letting Spider-Man the only hero standing. After Scorn used a sonic weapon to debond Carnage, it also affected Venom and it left Cletus against an invalid Flash Thompson. The two rogue symbiotes started fighting using animals. After the Carnage symbiote was defeated, it was captured by Scorn, while Cletus was taken into custody in a Quinjet.[15]

Minimum Carnage

While Cletus was put into custody in the Thunderbolts Mountain, the symbiote was presumably destroyed. Actually, it managed to use the traces of itself in Kasady's DNA to replicate itself and become Carnage once more. Kasady was contacted by beings of the Microverse, who managed to see inside his mind and offer him a deal: they would give him the Microverse to get a whole new universe to kill in exchange for his services. After escaping to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Texas, Carnage and his new allies used new technology to escape to the Microverse, even after Scarlet Spider tried to stop them.[16]

Agent Venom, who was tracking him down, and Scarlet Spider followed Carnage into the Microverse,[17] where he betrayed his allies, who wanted to bring him to their master, Marquis Radu, in order to create a symbiotic army, and killed most of them.[18] When fighting the Scarlet Spider, Marquis Radu's army appeared and took Carnage prisoner along with Venom, who was captured along with his allies, the Enigma Force in another place.[17]

The symbiotes of Venom and Carnage were replicated and merged with the Body Banks to create a powerful army which would destroy the Microverse. Cletus managed to take control over the symbiotic army[19] and used it to escape to the regular universe, where he was finally defeated by the combined efforts of Venom and Scarlet Spider, and a special weapon given to them by the Enigma Force. After being stung by the Scarlet Spider, Cletus cured his wounds, but was left in a catatonic state, meaning that the symbiote was now in full control of his body, although it was put in custody once more and sedated.[20]

Superior Carnage

While Cletus was in a catatonic state, the symbiote took full control over his body, but it didn't have any intelligence. The Wizard and Klaw freed him from prison, and The Wizard tried to mind control him into becoming his ally, but failed due to Cletus' brain damage.[21] He decided to instead transfer the symbiote to Karl Malus, someone he could control.[22] Along with his new "superior" Carnage, The Wizard and Klaw attacked the City Hall, only to find Superior Spider-Man waiting for them.[23] During the battle, The Wizard lost control over Carnage, and the symbiote gained full control over Malus. Carnage proceeded to stab Klaw with a Vibranium blade, but this caused a massive explosion which separated the symbiote from Malus.[24] The symbiote bonded to The Wizard, and Spider-Man decided he could use the symbiote's preference for Cletus in order to make it abandon the Wizard, by taking Kasady to the scene, and contain the alien before it could merge with its original host.

File:Cletus Kasady (Earth-616) from Superior Carnage Annual Vol 1 1 001.jpg

Carnage

However, the mission failed, and Cletus became Carnage once more as the Spiderlings failed to contain the symbiote. Carnage rampaged through the scene until Klaw, whose sonic body had been dispersed, managed to redirect lightning to Carnage and separate him from Kasady. Both beings were taken separately to custody. Unknown to Spider-Man, the symbiote's rebonding with Kasady fixed the villain's brain, who was now no longer lobotomized.[25]

Superior Spider-Man sent a chemically neutered sample of the symbiote to Morse Laboratories while Cletus was imprisoned at Kramer Penitentiary, where he was reintroduced into the general populace as a model prisoner. When Cletus was stabbed by a prisoner hired by his psychologist Dr. Jenner, who wanted to become Carnage's new host, the main body of the symbiote weakened and perished. A portion of the sample sent to Morse Laboratories escaped and jumped from host to host, rejuvenating by consuming them from the inside out until it reached the prison. The symbiote vehemently refused Jenner's request and bonded to Cletus' corpse, resuscitating him and becoming Carnage once more.[26]

Magically Altered

Following Cletus's blood, which contains its biomass, being spilled onto the pages of the Darkhold, the Carnage symbiote was altered by the eldritch magic.[27] As a result, it lost its vulnerability to sonics and gained an altered version of its former ability to control others by infecting them with offshoots of itself,[28] as well as a vulnerability to Chthonic magic.[29]

Personality

Unlike its parent, the Carnage symbiote is both submissive and fiercely loyal to its host, to the point of usually operating as little more than an extension of Cletus Kasady's body and will. However, it possesses a mind of its own, occasionally bickering with Cletus on the rare occasions they disagree.[30][31] It is utterly devoted to Cletus and his nihilistic ideology, to the point that when it is bonded to someone other than him it will forcibly take control of its new host and often forces Cletus' memories onto them as a form of psychological torture.[32][33][34]

The symbiote considers Cletus to be its ideal host, calling him its family, and loathes being separated from him.[35] Despite this, it has willingly abandoned him on multiple occasions, usually to bond to more powerful hosts like Ben Reilly and Norrin Rad. However, these instances were temporary, with the symbiote willingly returning to Cletus -- even abandoning the cosmic powers of the Silver Surfer when it learned he was dying without it. If forcibly separated from Cletus, the symbiote seeks to reunite with him at all costs and punish those responsible, killing anyone who gets in its way.[25][26] For instance, when the symbiote was removed from Cletus' body and transferred to Doctor Karl Malus by the Wizard, who seemingly killed the comatose Cletus, Malus told Klaw that the symbiote was full of rage and the moment the Wizard's control slipped it would take over him to exact revenge, which it later proceeded to do.[36]

Disembodied by the rampaging symbiote, Klaw hypothesized that its behaviour is like a human teenager, striving for independence from its host while at the same time craving attention and affection, though he later realized that the symbiote was actually separating from Cletus of its own volition to become more powerful and mold Cletus into the truly perfect host.[25]

Attributes

Powers

The symbiote covers its host in red and black biomass and grants them superhuman strength, reflexes, and agility. It also grants its wielder the ability to stick to walls, create web like substance, tendrils and (hypothesized to be a result of its incubation on Earth) to create bladed and blunt weapons from its own biomass. It also grants limited shape shifting, demonstrated by its above abilities and the ability to mimic any form of clothing. As it is bonded to Cletus Kasady's bloodstream, it is extremely difficult to forcibly separate them. Like the Venom and Toxin symbiotes, Carnage can heal its host, as shown when it repaired The Wizard's and Cletus Kasady's brain damage, and also seemingly regenerated the latter's lower body.[25] The Carnage symbiote has shown the ability to convert ingested organic materials such as flesh and blood into additional biomass.[37] It is also able to somehow convert negative emotions into biomass,[38] enabling it to fully regenerate from a few cells.[26] Following being experimented on by Hall Industries, the symbiote developed the ability to create duplicates of itself that could be controlled by its main body or Cletus,[39] but seemingly no longer possesses this power after being "chemically neutered" by the Superior Spider-Man.[26] After the symbiote came into contact with the Darkhold and was augmented by the eldritch magic, it partially regained the ability to spread itself to other people and control them,[27][40] though it needs to be in the vicinity of an alter to Chthon for this to work properly.[29]

Abilities

As its father was bounded to Peter Parker, Carnage and its siblings are immune to Spider-Man's Spider Sense. At one point it granted Kasady the ability to "see" through its costume, but this ability seemed to be lost. Cletus Kasady is a schizophrenic enabling him to activate extra-terrestrial episodes of paranoia and delusion to transform into the demonic alien symbiote of Carnage.

Weaknesses

Like most other Symbiotes, sound and fire. However Carnage doesn't mind heat as long as it's the one making it.[23] After being exposed to the eldritch power of the Darkhold, the symbiote has lost its vulnerability to sonics,[28] though it is still vulnerable to heat and has gained a vulnerability to Chthonic magic.[29]

Trivia

  • The Carnage symbiote's only goal in life is to destroy and kill. Kasady is the perfect host for the symbiote because he seeks destruction as much as the symbiote itself.
  • The symbiote has a considerably stronger bond with Kasady than its father has with its hosts. This is indicated by the fact that Kasady has predominantly used the term "I", as apposed to his father's use of "we".
  • Carnage had an offspring, called Toxin. Carnage despises Toxin because of being asexually pregnant with him and fear that, as it became stronger than Venom, its child would be stronger than it. Carnage tried to kill Toxin, but failed due to Spider-Man and Black Cat.[41].
  • Following it giving birth to Toxin, Cletus began affectionately referring to the Carnage symbiote using female pronouns.[42][26] He has more recently reverted to referring to it with male pronouns.[40]
  • The Symbiote is presumably a fan of the thrash metal group Anthrax, often making Cletus listen to it with headphones.[43]

See Also

Links and References

References

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