Friday, May 12, 2017

Maximum Carnage part 13: Spectacular Spider-Man #203

The end is near!! This issue should just about wrap this story up. The heroes have rallied, while the villains have fought among themselves and weakened their numbers. I'd guess Carnage's crew gets defeated here, leaving Carnage to battle the heroes in the 14th and final part of this event. Why I'd want to read that considering Carnage would have to beat like 10 heroes, I don't know, but maybe this issue will do a great job on selling me on the final part.

Maximum Carnage part 13: Spectacular Spider-Man #203:

Summary: This issue opens with Dagger telling the heroes how she returned to life. She became a being of pure light and lived in Cloak's... um, cloak, blah, blah, blah. Shriek is uber pissed to see Dagger alive, and challenges her. Both sides stand by and allow Shriek and Dagger to go at it in what I guess is the co-main event of the evening. Dagger ends up downing Shriek, and tries to pacify Shriek's madness, but is unable to reach through. That leads to Shriek almost blasting Dagger to death(again...), if not for a timely save by Spider-Man. Carnage's team regroups and quickly realize that all of the heroes save for Spidey had turned tail and run off. Spidey tells the villains that the others may be afraid of Carnage and company, but the he wasn't and would defeat them alone if he had to. The villains then batter Spidey to near unconscious, which is kind of hilarious after his speech. Before Spidey can get hit by the killing blow, swerve!, the rest of the heroes return with a really big gun, and blast the bad guys.
Giant robot-looking dude shooting a massive gun?  Yep, it's the 90's alright. 

The gun forces the bad guys to... be good? I guess that works. So yeah, the gun makes the villains feel good thoughts instead of evil, which freaks Carnage out, causing him to strain against the blast, which leads to an explosion. When the dust clears, Carnage is dead, although his symbiote is conveniently covering his face... Dun dun dun!! A bit later on, Venom confronts Spidey alone and yells at him for stealing the glory of killing Carnage. Luckily for Venom, Carnage emerges from a nearby pond, giving Venom his shot at revenge.
This event...  Must continue!!!

Thoughts: This issue was kinda on the dumb side. Let's start with Spidey's plan first. So Spidey was the one who came up with the concept of the “good gun” to counter Shriek's evil psychic energy. The gun was put together at Rand Industries, which is Iron Fist's company. So far so good, although I do take issue at the whole “good gun” thing. Now here's where it gets dumb. Why did ALL of the heroes have to go to get the gun, especially since it was Deathlok who was going to fire it. Couldn't Deathlok and maybe two other people go to get the gun while the others remained behind to battle Carnage, instead of Spidey playing the martyr? As usual. No wonder MJ was always mad at him back then... So the good gun leads to an explosion due to Carnage fighting the good waves that were coming from it. Just that last sentence tells you how dumb this issue was. Anyway, the gun explodes and the heroes find “Carnage” dead. “Carnage's” body has barely any symbiote on it, except for the face, which has a totally intact Carnage mask on...
Clearly that's Carnage, and clearly he's dead.

And the heroes brought that this was Carnage?! Ugh... And so this entire event ends up as a threeway fight between Spidey, Venom and Carnage, exactly how the first Carnage story ended... This was a whole lot of story just to get us to where we were the last time Carnage fought Spidey and Venom...  

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