In the 2000s, Marvel rebooted Spider-Man and gave him and many of his villains a new look. One becomes even scarier than before and goes too far for MeinMMO editor Nikolas Hernes.
Between 2000 and 2011, the comic series Ultimate Spider-Man by writer Brian Michael Bendis ran. It was a reboot that showed Peter Parker completely in high school this time and provided many of his villains with different backstories. This makes the series still feel fresh today.
However, one villain has stuck in my memory: Carnage. For the first time, I was genuinely scared in a Marvel comic, and not just because Peter had to suffer in the fight against the monster.
In the latest movie, Peter has to fight against the Hulk:
A New Version of the Symbiote
Which villain is it about? Issues 60 to 65 of Ultimate Spider-Man deal with the villain Carnage, who in most versions is a symbiote like Venom, thus an alien slime creature that infects a host. Usually, this host is the serial killer Cletus Kasady. That alone makes him one of the scarier Spider-Man villains since he has no morals and his only goal is death and chaos.
However, in Ultimate Spider-Man, this origin story was changed. In this universe, Venom is an experiment by Peter’s deceased father that was supposed to cure cancer. Dr. Connors (Lizard) mixes Peter’s DNA with Venom under the pretense of continuing his father’s research.
But this resulted in a horrific being that escaped and drained people to nourish itself. Tragically, this also happens to a person Peter Parker loves. Just the design and these story points created a truly eerie atmosphere.
Carnage is a true monster, but Ultimate Spider-Man manages to give the villain another layer that caught me off guard.
You can see Carnage’s design here:
A Representation of Peter’s Suffering
Why is Carnage as a villain in Ultimate Spider-Man so effective? To answer this question, one must look at what Carnage actually is here. He is, on one hand, a result of Peter’s father’s research, one of the few things that Peter has left from his dad.
On the other hand, Carnage consists of the mutated blood of Peter himself. This creates a perversion of science and Spider-Man
that shows Peter how his DNA corrupted his father’s research. This becomes even clearer when Carnage suddenly takes on Peter’s father’s face and confronts him in battle.
This alone would already be traumatic for a boy who is still in high school and deals with the responsibility of his powers daily. However, Brian Michael Bendis does not leave it at that. Peter struggles throughout the series with the danger to his loved ones. This leads to the emotional conflict of blaming himself for occurrences involving villains.
The most tragic incident involving Carnage is that he kills someone very close to Peter. That would already be bad enough, but Carnage is not just a villain; he exists only because of Peter’s DNA and his father.
Carnage is not scary because he looks like a deadly slime monster – he is scary because he inflicts so much suffering on Peter. Every time something good happens to him, it is taken away again. This not only hurts Peter but also me as a reader, who thought to myself while reading about Carnage, like in a good horror film: Please don’t do that.
On paper, Carnage hasn’t done much, but he achieved something that even Thanos couldn’t: I was scared and didn’t want to turn the page.
But what about you? Do you know of a comic villain that really scared you? Feel free to let us know in the comments. Over time, Spider-Man has been given many variants from different universes: 7 absurd variants of Spider-Man that will never get their own Marvel movie
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