Saturday, June 20, 2020

Scott's Take: Absolute Carnage by Donny Coates


Absolute Carnage by Donny Coates with art by numerous artists is an event graphic novel. Event graphic novels are cross over reads that include multiple teams and titles. This trade collects the main story while there are several more trades that collect the various tie ins. To read this tale one should probably read the current Venom series by this author as well, but one could start here and follow along.

In this book Venom and Spider-man have to again combine forces as allies despite their history of being enemies to deal with their mutual enemy, Carnage. For those unfamiliar with him, he is a serial killer that wears the child of Venom’s symbiont. Venom produced a child and the alien creature was driven insane by being bonded to such an unstable host. The human known as Cletus Cassidy became the host and he lived to kill people. That alien symbiont bonded to him and together they are known as Carnage.

The goal of Carnage is to kill anyone who has anyone who has ever worn an alien symbiont and extract DNA from them to free an evil alien god. If Carnage succeeds in recovering enough DNA to free the evil god he worships, the survival of mankind is next to impossible.

Carnage is a sadistic monster who is now even more powerful then he has ever been before. Carnage plans to kill Venom, Spider-man, Captain America, Wolverine, Deadpool and many others including Venom’s son as well as Spider-man’s godson. That is not going to happen if Spider-man and Venom can stop it. It is a race to save as many lives as possible from Carnage and stop his insane killing spree across the world.

This book is very violent. I do not know how this book got approved as being safe for teens and up. Obviously, it depends on the child, but I have a hard time accepting the idea that this suitable for twelve and thirteen-year-old kids.

Spider-man provides a lot of humor that contrasts nicely with Venom’s dry sense of humor. The book does a good job of exploring their enemies turned allies relationship. They are the key players alongside Carnage in this tale.  There are a number of small roles for certain heroes which work very well. I especially liked the small role that Captain America plays. As a big fan of Captain America who appreciates when writers decide to use him outside of his other books, I enjoyed that Donny Coates did not have Captain America act out of character. Often the writers choose to have Captain America play an antagonist role in these event books, but instead he gets to play a mentor role. In other books, Captain America has recently been acting in the role of a hero that represents the broader hero community that is willing to give Venom a second chance despite his criminal past. That angle continues here where Captain America continues to be supportive and a mentor figure. There are a lot of villains and heroes that play a role in this event read, but most of their stories are collected in other trades and this are only briefly explored here.

This a good book for an adult that likes books with action, horror elements, and lots violence. This tale explores secrets and history and how these play a role in shaping a family then and now. Included in this trade paperback read are some variant covers, psych evaluations of certain characters, and a newspaper article that is written from this universe.

My one problem with this book is that it is event comic that clearly sets up another event comic in the future. This book sets up things for the future that will not conclude in this book. At the end, things are left far too open and are not tied off which make the conclusion somewhat unfulfilling.

Absolute Carnage by Donny Coates This book is really good despite that flaw.  Carnage is expected to make his movie debut in the Venom 2: Let There be Carnage that is supposed to come out in October. Carnage is to be played by Woody Harrelson.


My reading copy came from the Central Branch of the Dallas Public Library by way of their just started “Library to Go” curbside pickup option.

Scott A. Tipple © 2020

No comments:

Post a Comment