Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage
The perennial fan-favorite collection, back in print! Carnage, the spawn of Venom, has assembled an army of Spider-Man's criminally insane adversaries to spread his message of hostility, chaos and wholesale slaughter: Carrion, Demogoblin, Shriek and the Spider-Man Doppelganger! Outmanned and overpowered, the wall-crawler must recruit his own band of super-beings to combat the rising tide of evil: Black Cat, Cloak & Dagger, Firestar, Captain America, Deathlok and ... Venom?! Spider-Man's worst en
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Carnage
- Delphine Gleize's award-winning debut feature traces the bizarre, often magical effects a 1,000-pound Andalusian bull has on a disparate group of characters Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN Rating: NR Age: 720917541228 UPC: 720917541228 Manufacturer No: FLV5412
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Good, but not as excellent as it could be.,
I read the storyline when it was initially published across the Spider-man titles. I was entertained by it then, but upon re-reading the story this time, I’m much more conflicted.
The story has very little development, and it is effectively the same thing over and over – Carnage and friends go out on a killing spree, Spider-man and friends feel a need to stop it.
In a certain way, I feel like the story raises a question – when a person is dangerous enough, do they warrant a death sentence? In Spider-Man’s mind, he wants to avoid killing at all costs. This is a major character trait, and confronting him with that issue is really the highlight.
I like a little bit of the interplay within Carnage’s team, but otherwise, don’t feel like the storyline was as great as it could be. Perhaps if there were more events than just confrontations at different locations.
On the plus side, I’ve always had a soft spot for Bagley’s artwork, while Sal (I think that’s his name) of the Spectacular Spider-Man issues has a much more interesting style than I remember. And it’s very nice to have the storyline arranged in order, unlike the Infinity War book.
Worth picking up, but only if you like Carnage.
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|an epic saga that falls short of what it could be..,
published back in 1993, this was a major ‘crossover’ event in the various Spider-Man affiliated titles that were being published by Marvel comics in the early 1990′s. The concept followed a murderous plot to terrorize the city of New York by the psychotic serial killer Kletus Kasady, aka Carnage– a man whose body has been possessed by an alien parasite, giving him spider-man’s powers combined with weapon-morphing abilities like Terminator 2′s T-1000, creating blades & spikes with his hands.. Carnage forms alliances with an assortment of gruesome Spider-Man foes, including the DemoGoblin, the Doppelganger, Carrion, and others..
Spider-Man, meanwhile, reacting to the crisis, forms a loose-knit team of allies including Firestar, Captain America, Cloak & Dagger, Iron Fist, Deathlok & Nightwatch, to combat the riotous mayhem that is unleashed.. However, the last, and most reluctant ally of Spider-Man is his sworn foe, Venom– who also possesses similar abilities given by an alien “symbiote” parasite.. Failed reporter Eddie Brock (who was embarrassed and fired after Spider-Man caught a wanted killer, “the Sin eater” and exposed a fraud posing as said killer who had given Brock an exclusive interview) was contemplating suicide in a church when the alien ‘costume’ (which was rejected by Spider-Man when he found out of its parasitic nature) sensed his hatred for spider-man and bonded with him, thus creating Venom– Despite Venom’s irrational hatred for Spider-Man and repeated attempts to kill him– not to mention the maiming/and or murders of several innocents and law enforcement– Venom fancies himself a “lethal protector” of the innocent, and grudgingly joins forces with Spider-man’s band.. Spider-Man knows that Venom’s symbiote spawned the one that bonded with Kasady, and thus he has an edge in both finding him and defeating him in battle..
In my assessment, the serial nature of this story was perhaps a good idea in theory, but the execution, which crossed over into several monthly and quarterly titles with different writers and artists– makes the visual transitions somewhat awkward to adjust to, and the resolution is ultimately somewhat lackluster..
The early 90′s were a hotbed of ultra-vigilantes in both independent and mainstream comic books, as well as the trend of multiple-chaptered crossover stories between different publications– including multiple covers, and covers enhanced with colored foil and other experiments that quickly became tedious..
By this time, traditional do-gooders with clear-cut moral centers like Spider-Man and Captain America had become quaint to certain fans, especially younger ones, who helped to make the X-Men’s Wolverine a top-tier favorite, whose frequently lethal tactics gave him a rebel/punk edge over hsi more stern predecessors.. And in the case of Spider-Man, Venom became a dark mirror-image of the wall-crawler– his popularity as a villain had become so intense that apparently corporate and/or editorial powers-that-be decided to make him the protagonist of his own book, which first began publishing in 1992.. To bulwark the obvious objections that many would have in promoting this clearly mentally unstable character as a ‘good guy’, the character of Kasady/Carnage was created, as an unrepentant serial murderer, to give both Venom and Spider-Man a common foe– but Spider-Man still had to watch his back whenever Venom felt like having a little payback.. At one pint, Venom’s popularity genuinely rivaled Spider-Mans, and his sympathetic portrayal and promotion, despite his obvious dementia and documented killings of non-criminals, was, in my opinion, unforgivable.. I wasn’t even 20 at the time and I was already feeling a generation gap between myself and kids that were clearly enamored with Venom, and the even more psychotic Carnage.. In fact, in the vast majority of their conflicts, Spider-Man never seemed to enjoy a clear-cut physical victory over Venom– he always seemed to ‘beat’ him via some odd trick or the 11th hour intervention of someone else– sometimes just as Venom was about to deliver the death blow.. it was sickening..
by the late 90′s, it seemed as if both characters had run their course, and they were slowly phased out of the books.. only to return circa 2003/4..
In my opinion,
collecting this story was perhaps necessary, especially since there are current venom and carnage stories in recent print by Marvel, and the company is combing its publishing archives more aggressively nowadays..
I just think there are plenty of better volumes of Spider-Man out there, and the legacy of Venom and Carnage have left a bad taste in the mouth of this longtime comics fan..
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|Nostagia conquers all…,
My opinion may be a tad biased since this was the mini-series that got me in to collecting comics, but I think Maximum Carnage towers over many other collected volumes of Spider-Man simply because of its ambition. It featured several fantastic covers, detailed yet clear artwork, and an array of uniqe characters. The story may be simple, but effective. Think about it. You have an unbalanced serial killer with an alien power that basically allows him to become a living set of gnsu knives who recruits several other psychotic superpowered-villains to go on a murder rampage in New York. That’s a superhero’s nightmare. It’s up to 2 unlikely allies (and Carnage’s parents, so to speak) Spider-Man and Venom to bring it to a close. Each will be motivated by their guilt and responsibilty for making Carnage what he is. Only through determination, an occasional helping hand, and a lot of luck will they be victorious – hence it requiring 14 issues to tell.
Bottom line – essential for Venom and Carnage fans, a must for die hard Spider-Man nuts, and a good read for anyone waiting for Spider-Man 3 to come out!
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|Trajectory: The Pulsing Global Balls of Coincidences,
CARNAGE is a stunning film – though from the outset it should be made clear that it is not a film for all audiences. For those who cringe at gore, those who are frustrated by nonlinear storyline, and those who feel uncomfortable with magical realism – beware. This is a two-hour plus journey that demands concentration and suspension of belief to glean all of the multilayered meanings it holds.
Stylishly opening with the elegant dressing and preparation of a handsome young bullfighter discussing his incipient time in the ring with his father, the film moves into a the bull ring in Spain and while the young bullfighter is gored, a young girl watches in horror on a television in France. Thus the sequence of coincidences begins. The dead bull is dragged from the ring, butchered, and his various parts (meat to restaurants, horns to a taxidermist, testicles, eyes, etc) are sent to unrelated places in Spain, Belgium and France. Along the way we meet the child who observed the goring on television and discover she is epileptic and draws pictures where dogs are larger than humans (because her’s is!), an actress searching for her center, a therapy group bonding and yielding primal screams while nude in a pool, a taxidermist who lives with his mother (the wondrous Esther Gorintin of ‘Since Otar Left’) and his estranged anatomist brother married to a woman pregnant with quintuplets (neither brother speaks to their damaged father), and so many more. Each of these characters encounters one form or other of the dead bull as food, souvenirs, gifts, etc: each time the consequences of these coincidences add greatly to the story.
Meanwhile our gored bullfighter lies in coma in need of a liver transplant and it is one of the various women touched by the bull’s demise in some way that dies in an accident and becomes the saving liver donor to the young bullfighter. The manner in which all of these myriad coincidental effects of the original bullfight mesh (altered relationships, rejoined parent/child schisms, deaths, altered lives) are sewn tightly together by the end of this apparent conundrum of a story.
The cast is uniformly exceptional. The camera work and pacing are mesmerizing, making the willing eye of the viewer see far more than previously thought possible. Writer/Director Delphine Gleize is truly a talent to closely observe. The audience for this artwork may not be large, but for those souls seeking unique films this one is Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 05
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|Insert standard bull joke here.,
Carnage (Delphine Gleize, 2002)
The last thing I expected from Carnage was that it would be such an amusing little movie. Gleize’s conceit is a now-familiar one– take one item and show the lives through which it passes– but instead of taking one item and passing it whole (as in Robert Altman’s famous series Gun), Gleize takes a bullfight from the movie’s opening scenes, in which the bull himself is killed and the enthusiastic young toreador is horribly gored, winding up comatose and needing a new liver in the hospital. The bull is rendered, and the movie follows various pieces of the bull’s remains, and the intertwining stories of the characters who end up with some of them.
Much has been made of the initial bullfighting scene, which is choreographed and shot in a beautiful, almost dreamlike manner. And while all the praise of that scene is justified, it eclipses the scene of the rendering a bit farther into the film. It has the same qualities, but they are applied to a much more mundane setting, and they are almost intensified in the application. It’s an utterly fascinating, if short, scene, that gives some insight into Gleize’s talent as a director.
As for the rest of the film, it’s almost on, but not quite. It never seems to get a handle on what it wants to be, and thus pinballs from tragedy to silliness, with hefty doses of cleverness and with thrown in for good measure, as well as more than a modicum of coincidence (one can explain this away by the sort of magic-realism trope that seems inherent to this subgenre); while watching Carnage, you get the idea that there’s a great film buried somewhere close to the surface, but that it is never quite realized. Still, what’s here is usually fun; it’s not a failure by any means. ** ½
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|Great film, new cinema,
With this film, I had to work through it, but the reward is well worth the effort. Magical coincidences connect people that seem so distant from each other, characters so different, and yet so similar. The film is full of symbolism. I especially liked the scene when the mother in the trailer dies and the captured animals escape, the trailer is bursting with life that the mother had freed by her death. The film is full of misterious connections, and it is well worth exploring these connections.
The style is not continuous, but still descriptive. I can only compare it with CODE UNKNOWN by Michael Haneke. If you liked CODE UNKNOWN there is a big chance you will like this one as well.
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