Eddie Brock: Carnage #4: Cleansing Fire

Eddie Brock and Carnage’s partnership was destined to go up in flames, but few could have predicted it would happen so soon and so literally. Tracking a lead to the city of Chicago, Illinois, the duo has set their sights on a new target: the enigmatic Muse. A serial killer with an artistic flair hailing from the Daredevil mythos, Muse was long thought to be dead but has reemerged to kill again.

Juanan Ramirez steps in as this month’s penciller, his work in tandem with colorist Matt Hollingsworth, maintaining the comic’s grim atmosphere with a style all their own. One can almost feel a switch being flipped between the book’s A and B plots, the podcast studio of Eddie’s employer having warmer lighting and cleaner compositions. When the focus shifts back to Brock’s manhunt, colors dull and even the line art takes on a shiftier messy quality, possibly reflecting his strained mental state. And while some readers may be disappointed to learn that Muse never makes an appearance, his presence is certainly felt through viscera left in his wake. Seeing the aftermath of his “artworks”, bodies left in a warehouse to rot, is arguably more impactful than seeing him commit the murders. His full-page-sized visage splattered onto a seedy brick alleyway winds up being the visual highlight of the issue.

Writer Charles Soule doesn’t underplay the resourcefulness and sheer willpower of Eddie Brock. The previous issue left readers with the impression that Brock was out of hands to play, outwitted by the ruthless amorality of Carnage’s game. But Eddie has always been smarter and, more importantly, crazier than he seems, willing to throw himself into a death trap if it means killing the symbiote once and for all. Using Muse as bait to distract Carnage, he lights the abandoned warehouse on fire to torture the location of the symbiote’s hostages out of it. His gamble works and Carnage is seemingly defeated but, as the smoke clears, Eddie is left a charred husk of a man. His sacrifice can’t avoid being undercut by the meta-knowledge that this can’t possibly be the end of Carnage’s story, but it does raise plenty of head-scratching questions as to how the comic will evolve from here.