So, I’ve had this idea in my head for a while now, and I thought I’d share it. First off, to set the stage, I like Venom 2 just fine. My main complaint is it felt too short and the gore was too subdued for my liking (I know they had a certain demographic they were going for, but I still found it weird that the movie with a character named CARNAGE wasn’t rated R). That being said, my idea is for how the prison scene where Carnage became a Tornado could’ve been an amazing scene instead of a kinda weird one. Fair warning, this idea would require Venom 2 to be rated R (which, again, I thought it should’ve been personally). Imagine this: Carnage turns into a tornado just like in the movie, but now, as more people get sucked up, the tornado slowly becomes more red with blood. We see a shot showing just a glimpse of the gore inside the tornado. A half torso flying by, maybe a decapitated head and some random organs, making the entire thing a Tornado of, well, Carnage. I’m not sure if this is a good idea, but I think it could’ve worked really well to set Carnage apart from the other Symbiotes we had seen thus far. What are your thoughts on my idea?

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Would everyone say Which Bedlam you think was most likely killed by Carnage and how come ?

So, I have started reading this series and while I enjoy it a lot, a few things are not making sense to me. I am on Issue 16, so no spoilers if possible.

1. Why did the symbiote take the shape of a pitbull for a few issues around 9-11? Just because it looks cool I guess, or is there an explanation for that?
2. After defeating Knull, Eddie reawakens to discover that his Symbiote suffered damages and is back to square 0, no memories, no personality, etc. But later on, on issue 111 or 12 when that Alternate universe version of Mr Elastic is experimenting on him, he has a 1 to 1 conversation with the symbiote in his head where the symbiote reveals Eddie has a son, and that he never had a sister or uncle with cancer. My question is: I thought the Symbiote had lost his memory. Was he pretending to lose it's memory, or did it regain it after a few days/weeks of healing? AU Mr Elastic made it sound like thebold symbiote was gone.
3. eventually the symbiote abandons Eddie. When he does it, did he shapeshift into a human, or did he attach himself to a new unknown host?

Thank you!

WARNING: What I'm about to post is particularly long, and it involves some particularly graphic content, so if it's not of your interest, feel free to skip it.

Peter Parker was a man of humble beginnings, but from a warm and loving home. An orphan but raised by his uncle and aunt as if their own son. While not without his faults, Peter was raised to always strive for responsibility, something he tries to live up to ever since the tragic death of his uncle, which was something he blames himself for. He's driven to do the right thing not just for its own sake, but to compensate for this egregious failure of his adolescent days.

Venom was created to be his foil and in spite of the great changes done to his character, remains as such to this very day. Eddie Brock was someone who came from an upper class family, but raised poorly. His mother died giving him birth, leaving him to be raised under the gaze of firm and uncaring single father. Eddie spent his entire childhood having to deal with feelings of guilt for merely being born, and so became driven to prove his worth to others(most of all his father)and to himself. Therein lies the root to his denial of responsibility as a coping mechanism in adulthood: For a long time, to admit being in the wrong meant admitting there was something wrong with himself, which was something Eddie was just not willing to face. The terrible accident that he went through on Venom#10, coupled with his father's own reaction to it, only helped to root such traits more deeply in his psyche.

If Peter Parker's arc about guilt and responsibility, Eddie's internal conflict was about guilt vs the denial of guilt for most of his life, which is what turned Venom into such a twisted creature on his initial years. Venom is in large part about parentage, generational abuse and projection. But about Carnage?

As pointed out by his creator, he came to be right around the time Marvel decided to turn Venom into an anti-hero, something that he initially was against due to being against his original plans(to kill Eddie Brock and pass the Symbiote onto others), but came to see as an opportunity to highlight his secondary trait, that he fancied himself a protector, therefore making the shift more organic.

Joe: Was it an organic process for you to come up with Carnage then? Or was that an editorial request, because Venom was so popular?

Dave: No, no, that was me, because I wanted to point out–because some people missed this–that one of the important elements of Venom is that he‘s a moral character. It‘s twisted morality, it‘s insane morality, but he has this ethical, moral code, and a lot of people missed that. They just thought he was insane and wanted to kill people. So I figured if I introduced someone who was like Venom, which I normally don‘t do–I agree with you that if you have too many Spider-men, then Spider-Man is no longer unique. But if I introduced a character who was the 180° opposite, of Venom, someone who had as much power and similar abilities but no sense of morals, no sense of ethical behavior, who simply worshiped chaos, that contrast would make Venom”s “morality” stand out more.. So that‘s why Carnage came along, that came out of me thinking about the characters.

Joe: Right, and he also becomes a foil for Venom himself in certain stories, right?

Dave: That was one of the things I liked, and I thought readers would like it. Y‘know, they’re thinking that Venom wants nothing better than to kill Spider-Man, so those two are never gonna get together. But what if there was a threat even nastier than Venom, one that Venom himself couldn’t abide? I thought readers would love that, and it was fun to write, fun to play with.

What I'm about to say is conjecture, but I also believe it's worth remembering not only the slasher trend in the 90s, but also the AIDS Epidemic faced in the US during this period. Yes, I am suggesting Carnage is an allegory for AIDS, not to the degree of the X-men's Legacy Virus, but to a degree.

Cletus Kasady stands as a foil for Peter and Eddie in that he came from a humble home but raised under terrible values. It can a bit inconsistent given Cletus himself remembers it poorly at times, but what is shown consistently is that he faced extreme forms of abuse under his father and grandmother, and emotionally neglect under his mother. Still as a kid, he would murder his grandmother, and torture and kill his mother's as revenge. His known wickedness is a product of nature but mostly nurture, as we see later when he murders his grandmother, tortures and kills his mother's dog to punish her for not paying attention to him. She'd try to kill him on a fit of her own, only for her husband/Cletus' dad to interfere and beat her to death, which would lead to him being arrested. The only person who could save him was Cletus, who would say he killed her for no reason. His father would be executed and Cletus would become an orphan. He would be bullied by other kids in the St. Estes orphanage, which would worsen his anti-social tendencies, leading him to murder the headmistress and burning off the orphanage with everyone inside. That would be the start of his serial killer career, leading to him getting eleven life sentences, becoming Brock's cellmate and eventually Carnage.

Cletus was "sick" as in not only possible having in his genes a predisposition for psychopathic traits that were awakened by his experiences, but became "sick" from the moment Eddie "infected" him. The Other's offspring bonded to him through a wound in his hand and spent its formation period within it, which is why it's red, because it merged with his bloodstream. It's why they're technically inseparable, and even if separated, it's why hosts are subjected to great changes, because they're literally wearing Cletus' blood, as in being infected and changed by him. It's also why Carnage pretty much can't die, because as long as there's Cletus' blood around, whether on his body or somewhere, there's a chance of the symbiote rebuilding itself, not to mention the possible of having more than one monster around. It also means, as finally exemplified with recent stuff, that Cletus too can return through his symbiote.

In short, Carnage is both a disease and the face of Evil itself. Unending, unwilling to change and uncompromising, driven by blood and hate, determined to spill the former, spread the latter, and corrupt us all.

Think of that as you go to sleep. But seriously, the AIDS thing remains a conjecture in spite of whatever panel I may be pulling. The most crucial themes for Carnage's character are the same as Venom’s, which are projections and generational abuse.** The blood motif works well under the latter, since you can argue that Carnage is what he is today due to what he "inherited" and was subjected to by his parents, as in Roscoe Kasady and Venom.

Apart from his original appearance and Maximum Carnage, there are two other books which I consider crucial for understanding the character: Mind Bomb and It's a Wonderful Life. Both have the same premise of literally delving into Cletus' mind, but the former is about how he sees himself and presents himself to the world, and the latter is about his real self that he hides from the world and from himself.

On It's a Wonderful Life, we see how Cletus' mind is populated by senseless violence, one even self-inflicted, yet also have a recurring "audience" that root for him. He even remembers the death of his parents as both claiming to be proud of him. He also remembers a time he was rejected by an (ex)girlfriend of his and made a vengeful vow. All of this implies there's a repressed self-deprecating, emotionally fragile and resentful side, masked by the self-congratulatory, glory-seeking and carefree Cletus Kasady we usually see.

Most of all, a recurring figure in his fantasies is a little boy different from himself yet never harmed by any of the monsters in his mind, who calls Cletus a friend. That boy is Billy Bentine, a character originally introduced on ASM annual#26. He was the one person who treated Cletus well at the orphanage, even willingly taking the blame for one of Cletus' misgivings. He's the one person who truly was Cletus' friend. In adulthood, Cletus would try to kill him "because it's unexpected", yet here we see that Cletus can't bring himself to kill the memory he has of Billy. The reason why was best put it by Dr. Kafka:

Don't ignore what we've seen. You're hugely scary, we're rolling in your toxic waste imagination. But so what? Here, where you don't want us to be, you want what we want! Acknowledgment, acceptance, a kind word from a friend. Your worst, darkest secret, Kasady, is...that you're incredibly ordinary, you sick joke!

I'll kill....Billy! I will...I...

What's to kill? We are the dead. But I know this––You need people, not victims. Long as you can keep 'im in the closet! "It's real if you think it's real", remember? You sad, lying bastard! You can't face the chaos of seeking out real human interaction.

Cletus' character is to an extent one of subversion: He wants to be seen as like this mythical embodiment of evil, when he's unfortunately a very common type of human tragedy. He claims to love chaos but is actually a control freak, who tries to deny that to himself in an attempt to shield his own fragility. Almost everything he does can and should be read as opposite of what he says. He kills not entirely out of randomness, but out of anger, jealousy, even a twisted form of love. A great example of it is Billy Bentine himself. It can be argued that he wanted to murder him not "for chaos' sake", but because he missed the guy and knew no other way to express it other than violence. To murder him would be to share one last intimate moment and a way to preserve his memory of him forever.

In his inhumanity we find his humanity. He's someone driven by a rage against himself, that he projects onto everyone else, much like Venom does it to Spider-Man. Therein lies what makes him such a great foil.

Spider-Man is the kind of guy who fights for everyone yet struggles with seeing something good on himself. Venom was this selfish beast who hid from himself his hate under the pretense of "selflessness". A a man who desperately latched onto his own humanity out of fear of facing the monster he had become. Carnage is the final step is that he's a Spider-Man and a Venom who chose not to care anymore, someone who willingly separated himself from humanity out of a belief it made him weak, which made him blind to how much his humanity still defines him. Venom couldn't see he's a monster, Carnage can't see he's a man.

When Spider-Man looks at them, he sees dark versions of himself that he's responsible for. Both of them test him to his limits, physically, mentally, morally most of all. And Venom sees the same on Carnage, which is what approximated him from Spider-Man eventually, left him with room for growth while also giving Carnage this karmic role. It approximated them through the reluctant alliance, which made them learn more about the other and slowly see each other in a better light. It left room for Venom to grow in that he becomes a lesser evil and, through Carnage, gets to maybe become the hero he always dreamed of being. It's also Karmic in that Carnage embodies to an extent how Venom himself is seen by others, Spider-Man most of all, so in a sense, through Carnage he gets to see himself at his worst, which maybe, just maybe, encourages reflection, as exemplified on Conway's Carnage. He probably wouldn't have grown as far as he did if it Carnage never existed.

When Carnage looks at them, he sees the supposed hypocrisy of humanity, but Venom does it in a way that ticks him off more because Venom is a killer like him yet insists in a moral high ground. It can be also argued that there was a twisted sense of kinship between at first, since while passive-aggressive, he was never too unfriendly with Eddie, even trying to convince him to adhere to his nihilistic philosophy, and as you saw earlier, inviting him to team-up against Spider-Man. It can also be died such kinship died in prison and the team-up moment was just a ruse, since on Conway's Carnage run, Jubulile found and felt through her psychic connection with him that Eddie brutalized him in prison, meaning there's a personal vendetta component to the rivalry. But overall, when he looks at Venom, he's reminded of the worst parts of his past and therefore of himself: Of his father's beatings and the bullying, of feeling weak and powerless. It also doesn't help that Red had his personality shaped like Cletus', and so shares the same feelings of resentment over its progenitor, doubling on the parent projection. But as Carnage, they're more powerful than Venom and Spider-Man combined, and so by avenging himself of Venom, Cletus gets revenge for everything else in a form of catharsis.

And to a large extent, a lot of this remains today even with Dylan as Venom, as per Venom#31. Rather than a parent, this Venom is a "brother" to Cletus, and one who got to experience a much better life. As such, Cletus is jealous but trying to be "altruistic" by showing him the truth about their parents and sparing him of the pain of remaining alive. He may want him to be "saved", but he wants most of all to make him, all of them, feel pain.

After all, such is their relationship. It's a conflict of ideologies, a conflict of generations, a conflict of families, and a conflict of twin mirrors. A deadly dance where nothing can come out of it other than tragedy, blood and pain, for such is in their nature as the Hero, the Hatred and the Horror.

Venomverse Reborn #2

"ACROSS THE VENOMVERSE! Venom:THE END RETURNS

Symbiotes have long taken hosts all over the multiverse, and this issue brings a mix of the all-new with the returning favorites! First up, Phillip Kennedy Johnson brings us a brutal take on Venom born in the age of Vikings! Then, Adam Warren brings us the return of the final biological life in his universe, the Venom of Venom: The End! Plus, Chris Giarrusso brings us a tale of Mini-Marvels Venom! And of course, it’s all framed up by current Venom mastermind Al Ewing with artist Danilo S. Beyruth!"

https://twitter.com/Skiz0h/status/1781034301569819030?t=fpu0XiWfzpqcI0yt2Xs_kg&s=19

They just seems so big and huggable. How would they even react to a hug? What kind of hugs would they give? Are they warm? I’m talking about the symbiote specifically, not any of the hosts btw. Also, None of this is romantic or sexual. Purely Platonic hugs.

So I’m really tired of the main timeline comics. After 60+ years of lore, everyone has done everything. Every side character is also a hero/villain, every villain has had a redemption ark at some point. Even the symbiote that started off with Venom, everyone has had one. It’s too hard to know everything that has happened for every hero. I think it would be really fun to see an event set us back to the 1980’s before the first Secret Wars event. I think it’d be fun this time to see someone else bond with the symbiote, or the symbiote not bond to anyone and touch a different side of the fandom.

Then Scorpion can be the Anti-Spider-Man villain he was meant to be before Venom came in and made that connection. So my question, if Spider-Man never brought the symbiote back to earth with him, resulting in Venom, how would everyone want him introduced to this new Timeline?