Eddie Brock Carnage # 1

By Mark Rodriguez

While there's an All-New Venom running around and there are several suspects as to who the new host is, one thing we knew for sure was that it wasn't good ol' Eddie Brock. Somehow after the Venom War, Eddie now finds himself bonded to the Carnage symbiote!! 

The issue opens with Eddie on a plane, planning to kill someone on the plane. Carnage is in his head, telling him to choose anyone and just do it. Carnage asks if he's getting cold feet and it reminds him of a time he held someone over a vat of liquid nitrogen and lowered him down little by little. Eddie screams 'ENOUGH!' which startles the woman sitting next to him. 

Eddie apologizes and tells the woman he's not feeling well but it's not contagious. He takes some pill. He checks his phone and gets messages from Bailey, asking if he's OK. Eddie says that Hopscotch is on the plane and he tells her to get the ID and tells the cops where to live. Bailey says he's stuck on the plane with a killer. Carnage agrees.

Bailey is concerned about the other people on the plane and Eddie says he'll be fine. Eddie says its time to find the killer. Small tendrils crawl out from Eddie's shoes and slowly creep along the plane floor. Based on Bailey's description, the Hopscotch killer was a white male, late 30's early 40's, a seasoned traveler flying on business alone. He was called the Hopscotch Killer because he leaves victims all over the country and left distinctive marks on their bodies.

Cops thought it was a truck driver, but they all happened the same day with distances between them that were too far to get to by car. Eddie figures this killer was doing this during layovers. Carnage's tendrils crawls into the ears of the passengers and Eddie is able to see all of their memories. Eddie eventually looks into the minds of every passenger on the plane and none of them are the killer. Eddie determines that it has to be the pilot.

Eddie walks towards the cockpit as he retracts the tendrils out of all of the passengers. The door is locked but Eddie is easily able to break it apart. There are two pilots, and Eddie doesn't know which one is the killer. Carnage, as you'd expect, wants to just kill them both.

 

Suddenly, one of the passengers turned out to be an armed Air Marshall who is authorized to use deadly force. Eddie doesn't move, and after a final warning, the woman fires.

Carnage's tendrils grow out of Eddie's back and catches the bullet, letting it fall helplessly by the Air Marshall's feet. Eddie shows off his symbiote self and tells the pilots that he knows what they've been doing and that it's over. One of the pilots pulls a knife and says he's the only holy thing here and he's not done yet. He stabs the co-pilot in the throat. Carnage says it's beautiful work. The Air Marshall fires a few more rounds on Eddie, which don't affect him. Eddie tells her that he's a little busy now.

The pilot says he will bring the purifying flame and cleansing fire. He says his holy work will be done and he will kill all the demons. He grabs a bunch of wires and cuts them all. He tells Eddie that he isn't going down alone. Eddie realizes he just killed everyone on the plane. Carnage says he likes this guy.

Carnage slices the Hopscotch Killer to ribbons. As the plane is going down, Carnage rips the door off and is ready to escape and leave everyone else to die. Eddie says this wasn't part of the deal. Eddie leaps off the plane, using Carnage's abilities to form huge wings, while also carrying all of the passengers in a huge web of symbiote tendrils.

Carnage is livid that Eddie is using his powers to save lives, and says he's sullying his legacy. The symbiote yells out threats, saying he will kill Eddie and he'll never see his son again. Carnage then decides to tempt him, pointing out how good it felt to kill Hopscotch and how much better it would feel to kill all of those people. He tells Eddie it'll just be this once and then they can stick to the deal. Carnage completely envelops Eddie (turning fully into Carnage) and we fade to black as we see some of the passengers losing their grip.

Eddie wakes up in a hotel, some time later, and has a faint memory of the passengers losing their grip on Carnage's vines. His phone goes off and he sees that Bailey has been worried about him. Eddie asks her what happened to the passengers and she was hoping he'd know. She says the plane he was on crashed and they only found the pilot and co-pilot. She asked if Hopscotch was on the plane and he says he turned out to be the co-pilot. Eddie ends the call, saying he'll get back to her as soon as he can. Eddie demands to talk to Carnage.

Within his mind, Carnage is looking dapper in a Frank Sinatra suit, saying he's there for whatever Eddie needs. Eddie says what he needs is to know what happened to the passengers and how he got back to the hotel. He blames Carnage for the missing time.

Who knew Carnage could be so dapper?

Carnage refuses to answer. Eddie charges towards him, dishing out threats. Carnage wraps him up with his tendrils and drops him to the ground. Carnage says the only thing he can do to him is kill himself, since which would also kill the symbiote, but he knows he won't do that. Carnage wonders why he isn't suicidal considering that he's broke and alone and his son doesn't want to see him. Carnage says he's all Eddie's got but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Carnage isn't as independent as he once was, after his fight with Meridius during the Venom War. Carnage needs a host and Eddie wants to prove he's a good person. 

Eddie says Carnage doesn't just want a host, he wants to kill people. Carnage tells Eddie that he wants the same. He says that Eddie misses the power he had when he was Venom and when he was the King in Black. He reminds him that them joining together was his idea. Carnage says that Eddie wanted to make that sacrifice, to carry him so no one else had to. He wants to control him and his powers and go after serial killers. Carnage says he bets they'll meet some very interesting people.

Eddie says their deal was not to go after innocents. He wants to know what happened to the passengers and how he blacked out his memory. Carnage says he won't tell him and feels insulted he even had to ask. The symbiote says he should have expected things to get bloody since he is Carnage. 

Carnage says they should get back to work and find someone else to kill. He wants to go after someone with powers this time. He's evaluating potential hosts. He wants someone with powers or else it wouldn't be a fair fight. Eddie asks who he should go after. Carnage says he has some ideas but it's not really his choice. In the real world Eddie is steering the ship. Carnage shows Eddie several portraits and asks who their next kill will be. The portraits show several potential candidates including Bullseye, Hela, the new Elektra Daredevil, Bushwhacker and Venom.

 My Thoughts-

So this little team up is going as I expected. Eddie trying to use Carnage to do good while trying to keep the symbiote's murderous impulses under control. So after some research I found out that Carnage would evolve from just mindless mass murder to wanting to achieve godhood and become a god butcher. This would even turn Cletus off who wanted to stick to mindless murder and they parted ways. Carnage would be able to function without a host until his fight against Meridias, an evil future version of Eddie Brock because comics. With both Carnage and Eddie dying after the end of the Venom War, Eddie decided to bond with the symbiote, saving both their lives and leading up to the events of this issue.

The first half was pretty cool, though I can imagine trying to be a good guy while carrying around the Carnage symbiote of all things in a plane full of innocent people. With Carnage jamming his tentacles into everybody's brains, I'm glad I missed that flight... as well as what happened afterwards. I liked the part with the Air Marshall as her bullets were nothing more than an annoyance and brought a bit of levity to the situation.

I liked the part where what happened to the passengers was left up in the air with Carnage refusing to tell. I would say he let the passengers drop, but that would be too obvious. I can't really see Carnage actually not letting the passengers fall to their deaths, but he might not have done so and act like he did just to mess with Eddie. Also I didn't think I needed to see Carnage with all that swagger, but I'm glad we got to see it.

So it's clear Carnage is set to leave Eddie the moment someone better comes along, so we'll see what happens when we get there. Carnage has an interesting hit list, though it seems he picked random names out of a Marvel Comics encyclopedia. I have no idea what he thinks he could do against the likes of Phoenix, Hela, Silver Surfer and Galactus of all people. I found out that Silver Surfer had Carnage locked away for a while, so I'm sure he wants payback. But wanting payback and actually carrying it out are two different things. I guess we'll see what happens next issue. I liked the letters column page where the writers tell us that we better be sure to send letters if we want to stay off of Carnage's hit list. I hope they actually publish them since they seemed to have stopped doing so for the Spectacular Spider-Men series.