Cult of Carnage: Misery #1: Like Mother, Like Son

The world of Marvel Comics has enough Symbiote and Goblin themed villains to build up an entire stand-alone universe based around just those character groups. Creating new ones in this day and age requires enough marketability, ingenuity, and craftsmanship to keep the character afloat for at least five issues. While I found that the team on Misery #1 definitely has its act together in terms of writing and art, the story itself poses a lot of stop gaps for new readers to truly carry this semi-new character past their debut mini-series.

There is an attempt to bring the reader into Liz Allen’s long storied history in Marvel Comics, the issue opening with an emotionally painful recounting of her relationship with Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin. While constructed with grace and beauty, it lacks a level of context surrounding Harry’s time as a super villain to truly enforce why Liz feels the way she does. As a longtime Spider-Man reader, I can fill those gaps with ease, but this series is introducing Liz for the first time on her own with a super powered moniker, and as such its almost a narrative courtesy to fill in more about Liz’s history. That is the only criticism about this book that one can have whilst remaining constructive, as everything else in this issue is really impressive.

From the introduction we dive into Liz’s goals as the CEO of Alchemax. She’s overseeing a program that intends to use symbiote organisms as a form of regenerative treatment that would occur instantaneously. This places her into the cross hairs of Carlton Drake, a sketchy business mogul in his own right with a long history pertaining to symbiotes. As she weaves between the trauma of losing her husband, raising two children, and running a company, her project is attacked by a  mercenary named Corwin (supposedly) on Drake’s behalf. In that scuffle, she bonds with a symbiote hybrid that contains both a Carnage and Anti-Venom strain, and explodes into action as Misery.

Thematically speaking, this series is taking on a science/horror tone that’s still intrinsically tied with life here on Earth. It speaks to the symbiote’s roots in Marvel Comics more so than the space god shenanigans that have been the focus of Venom since 2018. The book is focused on working through Liz’s emotional trauma and state of, well, misery in life. Doing this through the lense of dystopian science fiction and symbiotic body horror makes for a book reminiscent of later games in the Resident Evil series. There’s big action, big themes, and a lot of horrific, supposedly humanitarian science at play.

Mortirino’s art is great, and brings every panel in this issue to life with both an illustrator’s beauty and a clear cut, concise visual storytelling style. Their depiction of the human form is fluid and believably in motion, Mortirino one of the few comic artists that can actually draw kids as kids. Normie Osborn has never looked his age quite like this before in the modern day. There are some really well done bits of visual storytelling used to keep the plot engaging whilst keeping secrets as secrets, such as Corwin’s origin. Mortirino also brings the story to life by committing to the atmosphere of a scene’s setting.