Carnage #1: A Star is Reborn

Writer Torunn Gronbekk, having recently taken the helm of Venom, now secures her hold over both patriarchs of Marvel’s symbiote family with Carnage #1. The two rivals sharing a singular creative voice presents interesting opportunities for narrative cohesion, and makes a future crossover inevitable. This fresh start softly scrubs Carnage’s slate clean, revamping his status quo by reeling him in from the ocean of multiversal mysticism he has spent the past year wading through. The psychotic symbiote’s feet are now firmly planted on solid earth, but the gymnastics performed to get him there results in a rushed opening.

Carnage is found tearing his way through the guards of Omnipotence City’s library before he is sucked into a black hole by a wise old wizard. Said black hole conveniently plops Carnage into a cell on Ryker’s Island, his original birthplace. He makes quick work of the cell’s unlucky inhabitant, chewing him up into a fine genetic paste that he remolds into a copy of his former host, Cletus Kasady.

Pere Perez, having displayed his talent as an action-oriented artist in Spider-Woman, expands his portfolio with excellent gore and body horror. The nude fluid-covered body of an adult man being birthed from the gaping maw of a monster is undoubtedly the most striking image he conjures up in this issue. It’s a fascinatingly bizarre and alien sequence with little build-up, catching the reader off-guard in the best way.

From this point on, the comic’s perspective switches entirely to the Cletus clone as he adjusts to the modern world. He’s imbued with the memories of his predecessor, yet his motivation and goals are Carnage’s, bringing into question where the line is now drawn between their two minds, or if they have merged into an entirely new being.

Despite all the power he has gained, the Cletus/Carnage hybrid struggles to be recognized as a god and wishes to cement his status with the creation of his own doctrine. He seeks out troubled individuals who have at some point wished for death and delivers it to them, all the while reciting cultish dribble. Another gift Perez brings from his prior work is a detailed and diverse range of character expressions, which comes in handy when penciling terror onto the faces of Carnage’s victims.

Interspersed with these events is a subplot following former high school bully Flash Thompson, who is passively drifting through life while seeking purpose through his vigilante exploits as Anti-Venom. Through the symbiote hivemind, Flash detects the return of Carnage and jumps at the chance to stop him. With the scarlet symbiote at near-godhood and Flash at rock bottom, it is a true underdog story that Gronbekk has set in motion, one that makes for a captivating start to this new solo series.