Extreme Carnage: Alpha #1

[cyberghostface]

"As we learned in the Venom series and the King In Black event, nobody who’s ever bonded with a symbiote completely dies; their consciousness is imprinted forever in the symbiote hive. Plus, we’ve seen that a host who had an especially close bond with their symbiote can have a lasting effect on that symbiote, and there’s never been a closer symbiotic bond than the one between Cletus Kasady and Carnage. I don’t want to spoil Kasady’s role in Extreme Carnage, but I think readers will agree that it’s pretty hard to imagine Carnage without him." -- Phillip Kennedy Johnson

Comments

[dan_ingram]

God forbid they give Carnage any kind of rest

[tcampbell1000]

Some folk'll never hog the stage,
But then again, some folk'll
Like Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel!

[tinygaylaura]

"Hey ah can call Shriek while ah'm up here

HEY SHRIEK

Get off tha' dang roof!"

Some folk'll never eat space goo

But then again some folk'll

Like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel!

*Banjo music*

[tcampbell1000]

(claps)

[tinygaylaura]

22 Short Films about the Spiderverse

[zachbeacon]

I never got the appeal of Carnage.

I mean, I was never the biggest fan of Eddie either but at least I understood why others were.

Carnage is just a mass murderer who is his own knife.

At least the equally boring early Sabretooth (also a mass murderer who is his own knife) has a long history with Wolverine and various other mutants to draw on.

Cletus is just some guy who briefly shared a cell with Eddie and even less of a connection to Peter.

[silverhammerman]

Beyond sick of seeing Carnage get dragged back to Cletus Kasady. Ditching Eddie Brock ended up being the best thing they ever did with Venom, leading to the symbiote eventually being fleshed out and becoming a much more dynamic character, and yet Marvel refuses to let Carnage turn into anything beyond the most boring kind of cackling murderer.

Which gets to my other problem with this, that the symbiotes aside from Venom and I guess Sleeper, haven't been treated as much beyond monsters in ages, so doing a story about anti-immigrant hysteria with them doesn't really work. It's like if Senator Kelly had shown up talking about mutant registration but the only mutants we'd ever met were the old school, supervillainous Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and like, one sort of decent anti-hero. I'd love if this meant they were finally going to flesh out some of those other symbiote characters since Marvel insists on treating Venom as a franchise, but this direction feels unearned at the moment.

Also, weird to do a story about bigotry where seemingly the hook is that it's a member of that group stirring up bigotry against their own people. I mean, I get it that Carnage is clearly going to like, probably eat the other symbiotes and become a new symbiote god or something silly like that, but it's a weird look.

[phantomfo]

Also, weird to do a story about bigotry where seemingly the hook is that it's a member of that group stirring up bigotry against their own people. I mean, I get it that Carnage is clearly going to like, probably eat the other symbiotes and become a new symbiote god or something silly like that, but it's a weird look.

Not that weird. Sebastian Shaw once took over a program building Sentinels. Grayson Creed, original head of the Friends of Humanity, was the son of Sabertooth and Mystique and ran around with the Upstarts. "Evil bigot organization secretly led by something they despise" is a common trope.

[silverhammerman]

Oh yeah, I don't mean that it's an uncommon trope, it's just one that I personally find somewhat uncomfortable, because it essentially blames (fictional) marginalized groups for their own discrimination. It's like when prominent homophobes are accused of being closeted, sure that's been the case a handful of times, but usually those sorts of people are just hateful, and to suggest otherwise feels like an attempt to evade the culpability of widespread cultural prejudice.

I just feel like if you're gonna do a story that's a thinly veiled metaphor for anti-immigrant hysteria, it's a little dishonest to pretend that's something that would need an outside bogeyman to stir it up, much less one acting against their own group for warped purposes. Anyway, this is early days for the storyline, it's just a trope that I really don't care for.

[tinygaylaura]

I can't stand the trope of "The prejudice against this group is actually being deliberately stirred up by a member of said group" both because it's absolute bullshit and actively harmful for all tthe reasons you said here

In real life racism is not a plot by black people. Homophobes and transphobes are not secretly gay and trans. Stories that spout tropes that go along with this crap exist to basically pat the reader on the back and say "See you don't need to stop and think about/confront the fact many cishet white people are racists, anti-semites and bigoted against anyone LGBT. Everything is actually The Other's fault and cishet white men are Doing Just Fine"

[tinygaylaura]

Abigail Brand or Beast really need to make "Handling" the situation of this new infestation of the Friends of Humanity a priority

I mean if ever there was a group of "People" where you really WANT to see Beast be his cold blooded bastard self in how he gets rid of them it's the Friends of Humanity

[zachbeacon]

I mean, is there any acronym organization less effective than SWORD? I'm a little fuzzy on how long they've existed but I do know we've seen a LOT of alien invasion forces make it to Earth since they were introduced in Astonishing X-Men.

Also, when Alpha Flight is stealing your thunder you're doing something wrong.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I actually kind of appreciate this change in focus for the FoH. I don't like them, never did (not that I think we were ever supposed to), but this at least seems a little more interesting than their usual anti-mutant stuff.