| Cletus Kasady | |
|---|---|
 Cletus Kasady as he appeared prior to becoming the symbiote Carnage's host, inAbsolute Carnage #5 (November 2019). Art byRyan Stegman | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | The Amazing Spider-Man #344 (March 1991)[1] |
| Created by | David Michelinie (writer) Erik Larsen (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Full name | Cletus Cortland Kasady |
| Species | Human |
| Team affiliations | Carnage Family Astonishing Avengers[2] Poisons Symbiote Imperium |
| Partnerships | Shriek Demogoblin Doppelganger Carrion |
| Notable aliases | Carnage The Red Slayer Poison Carnage Prophet of the Void |
| Abilities | Alien symbiote grants:
|
Cletus Cortland Kasady is asupervillain appearing inAmerican comic books published byMarvel Comics. Created by writerDavid Michelinie and artistErik Larsen, the character first appeared inThe Amazing Spider-Man #344 (March 1991) as the first and most infamous host of theCarnagesymbiote, an offspring ofVenom. Originally a derangedserial killer, Kasady bonded with the symbiote while sharing a cell with Venom's human host,Eddie Brock, and broke out of prison using the super-human abilities granted by it. Since then, he went on to menace both Venom andSpider-Man, resulting in various unlikely alliances between the two to defeat him. Kasady and Carnage are a perfect match, as they both have sadistic personalities, and the symbiote only increases Kasady's already existent violent tendencies. After being separated from the redeemed Carnage symbiote inAbsolute Carnage, Kasady nonetheless continued calling himself Carnage, bonding withGrendel,Mania and several other symbiotes to becomeDark Carnage.
Since his original introduction in comics, the character has been adapted into several other forms of media, such as television series and video games.Woody Harrelson portrays Cletus Kasady in the live-actionSony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) filmsVenom (2018) andVenom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), bonding with Carnage in the latter film. In 2009, Kasady was ranked asIGN's 90th-greatest comic book villain of all time.[3]
WriterDavid Michelinie intended to have Venom's human alter ego,Eddie Brock, be killed off inThe Amazing Spider-Man #400 and have the symbiote continue to bond with a series of hosts. However, as Brock and Venom's popularity increased, Marvel would not allow him to be killed. Michelinie decided to create a new character: a total psychopath who, unlike Venom, had no sense of morality.[4] The human component of Carnage's first host, Cletus Kasady, was designed by artistErik Larsen, who modeled the character after theDC Comics supervillain theJoker.[5]
Kasady was introduced inThe Amazing Spider-Man #344 and first appears as Carnage in issue #361.[6] As the host of the Carnage symbiote, he is the main villain in the 1993 "Maximum Carnage"crossover, a 14-part storyline crossover that spanned through all theSpider-Man titles. In 1996, two one-shot comics centered entirely around Carnage were released, entitledCarnage: Mind Bomb andCarnage: It's a Wonderful Life, both of which expand on his character.
After a 2004 appearance inNew Avengers the character was presumed dead and was absent from comics for nearly six years. A 2010–2011limited series titledCarnage featured the return of Kasady as Carnage.[7] The comic was released as a tie-in to the "Big Time" storyline inThe Amazing Spider-Man.[8] This was followed by another five-issue limited series titledCarnage U.S.A. and published 2011–2012. Carnage was next seen in the 2012 "Minimum Carnage" crossover storyline betweenScarlet Spider vol. 2,Venom vol. 2, and twoone-shots titledMinimum Carnage Alpha andMinimum Carnage Omega. The character crosses over with theSuperior Spider-Man in the 2013 five-issue limited series calledSuperior Carnage, written byKevin Shinick.[9]
A newCarnage series, starting in November 2015, as part of Marvel's post-"Secret Wars" relaunch, was written by Gerry Conway and Mike Perkins.[10]
Kasady is apsychopath and a homicidal sadist. He is a deeply disturbed individual whose dark past known only through secondhand accounts and his own flawed recollections: he was born in a psychiatricprison at Ravencroft to a mother with paranoid schizophrenia, who died shortly after his birth.[11] Allegedly, his heart stopped for a few minutes untilKnull intervened, saving his life so he would be the one to free the eldritch god from Klyntar.[12] As a child, he killed his grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs either for being simply a fan of Mary Poppins[13] or downright abusive,[14] tried to murder his foster mother, Louise, by dropping a hairdryer into her bathtub, and tortured and killed his mother's dog, Fifi, with a drill. His mother died either by trying to kill Kasady, in retaliation for killing her dog, and then being beaten to the brink of death by Kasady's father, Roscoe, or by trying to defend Kasady from his father who was beating him, who then pushed her away- causing her to hit her neck against a table, killing her. Either way, Roscoe received no defense from him during the trial. As an orphan, Kasady was sent to the St. Estes Home for Boys, where his antisocial behavior made him the target of abuse from both the other orphans and the staff. Kasady gained revenge by murdering the disciplinarian administrator, pushing a girl (who laughed at him for asking to date her) in front of a moving bus, and burning down the orphanage. It was during his brutal years at St. Estes that 8 year old Kasady acquired his philosophy that life was essentially meaningless and futile, that "laws are only words",[15] and came to see the spreading of chaos through random, unpatterned bloodshed as "the ultimate freedom" and thinking that he was actually "freeing" people.[16]
Kasady became a serial killer, convicted of eleven murders though he bragged of a dozen more victims.[17] He was then captured and sent to Ryker's Island prison, where he shared a cell withEddie Brock, the host of the alien symbioteVenom. When Brock's symbiote soon returned to be bonded again, allowing Venom to escape prison, the symbiote unknowingly left its offspring in the cell; due to its alien instincts, the symbiote felt no emotional attachment to its offspring, regarding it as insignificant, and thus never communicated its existence to Brock via their telepathic link. The new symbiote then bonded with Kasady, transforming him into Carnage.[18] The bond between the Carnage symbiote and Kasady was stronger than the bond between Brock and the Venom symbiote. As a result, Carnage is far more violent, powerful, and deadly than Venom.[19] He escaped prison,[20] and began a series of murders, and at the scene of each crime, wrote "Carnage" on the walls with his own blood. He was found bySpider-Man, though the hero proved to be no match for Carnage's powers. In desperation, Spider-Man made a truce with Venom to fight Carnage.[17] The Carnage symbiote was defeated and apparently destroyed with sonic weaponry, but unbeknownst to them the symbiote's deeper equilibrium with its host helped to save it. After entering Kasady's body through a small cut, it bonded to his blood—which caused its red coloration, and enabled Kasady to ultimately regenerate the symbiote simply by bleeding himself.[21]
Kasady is taken to theVault, a prison for super-villains—then Ravencroft Institute, a facility for the super-human criminally insane. A doctor at the facility, hoping to find a "cure" for his madness, draws blood from him—unwittingly enabling Kasady to transform into Carnage—who goes on to recruit an army of psychopathic supervillains includingShriek,Demogoblin,Carrion, andDoppelganger to take overNew York City. Using Shriek's "psychic channel" powers, he also drives ordinary New Yorkers to attack one another. Carnage and his "family" are ultimately driven back by Spider-Man, Venom and a number of other superheroes and super-antiheroes, with Carnage and Shriek being remanded to Ravencroft.[21]
During a subsequent jailbreak, he made it his mission to kill his only childhood friend, Billy Bentime, hoping to refute the notion that friendship should be paid in kind. Carnage nearly defeated Spider-Man until Bentime tricked Carnage into reverting to human form enabling Spider-Man to knock out Kasady with a simple punch.[22]
Though bonded to Kasady's bloodstream, the symbiote found a way to ditch its host by travelling through the institute's water pipes, its absence leaving Kasady increasingly weakened. The symbiote initially took control of John Jameson before it eventually transferred itself to Spider-Man (currentlyBen Reilly). Reilly attempted to destroy the symbiote by subjecting himself to a potentially lethal burst of microwave energy, but the symbiote fled back to the weakening Kasady.[23]
Later, Kasady was able to escape his prison when a new governor at Ravencroft decided to try and save money by turning off some of the defenses around Kasady's cell, underestimating the level of awareness the symbiote had of its surroundings. During this escape, it was confronted by Spider-Man and theSilver Surfer. The symbiote—driven to panic due to genetic memories of Galactus devouring a planet of symbiotes—parted from Kasady and bonded to the Surfer to stop him while Spider-Man was forced to take Kasady to the hospital. Learning that the killer was dying of a stomach tumor that had been kept in check by the symbiote, Spider-Man was forced to help the Surfer return the symbiote to Kasady to save his life, but the Surfer then sealed Kasady in an unbreakable prison in an attempt to force him to reflect on his sins for eternity.[24]
Having tracked Kasady to a prison specially designed to hold him—how he escaped Silver Surfer's prison was never established—Venom eventually reabsorbs the Carnage symbiote into his own body "for good". Without the symbiote, Kasady attempts to re-assume the Carnage persona by costuming himself in red paint and continuing his killing sprees, claiming that he still possesses at least some of Carnage's strength and convinced that he only needs to kill Spider-Man and Venom to regain his symbiote, but Spider-Man nevertheless easily defeats him in a fight.[25] Kasady later ended in theNegative Zone, where he was guided by a strange voice to another symbiote that was kept sealed somewhere in the Zone. As Cletus bonded with it, the mysterious voice reveals itself to be the remnants of the Carnage symbiote, which absorbed the symbiote to regenerate itself and become Carnage once again.[26]
Carnage is one of severalsupervillains trying to escape from the Raft.[27]Sentry flies Carnage outside the Earth'satmosphere and rips him in half.
It is revealed that Kasady is alive (although both of his legs have been severed), his body preserved by the symbiote and repaired by Hall's prosthetics.[28] Kasady reclaims the symbiote and becomes Carnage once more, attempting to avenge his captivity while Spider-Man andIron Man struggle to stop him. It is then revealed that Carnage is once again pregnant, and the suit's spawn briefly bonds to Shriek before being torn from her. Scared of Shriek's malice, the symbiote arm then bonds to Tanis, creating a new hero,Scorn, who defeats Shriek and forces her to use her sonic shriek to weaken Carnage for Spider-Man and Iron Man. Carnage, however, escapes with the Doppelganger and swears to make a bloody comeback.[28]
In the aftermath of his return, Carnage sets off west to Doverton, Colorado.[29] He bonds most of the town to copies of his symbiote.Captain America, Spider-Man,Wolverine,Hawkeye, and theThing attempt to defeat him but all except Spider-Man are bonded to copies. With the Avengers team compromised and Spider-Man out of communication, they send in another team consisted of symbiote-enhanced special forces. Dr. Tanis Nieves as Scorn goes along with the separated parts of Hybrid which make up Agony, Phage, Riot, and Lasher, but they are heavily outnumbered since Carnage controls the entire town. Captain America breaks free of his hold long enough to make an emergency call for backup to none other than Venom.Flash Thompson in the Venom symbiote sets off to Colorado to kill Carnage. The enhanced special forces keep fighting but Carnage sends the controlled Avengers after them, that was when Spider-Man comes with the unaffected residents of the town. The melee is particularly fierce when Venom intervenes with sonic rounds. Venom is about to kill Carnage with a gun in the mouth but Spider-Man stops him. Before Venom or Carnage can recover, Scorn uses a construction vehicle to carry the two to a device she built. She reveals that her device is meant to permanently remove the bonds from Carnage and Venom, but the hosts are still in there, leaving Kasady alone with a legless Thompson. After the symbiotes fighting with themselves and the Avengers team, Venom finds its way back to Thompson while Scorn captures the Carnage symbiote. The series ends with Kasady being captured and dragged into the back of a prison vehicle.[30]
Carnage escapes prison yet again with the help of microns. Agent Venom is sent to the prison and discovers Kasady has escaped. Carnage flees to Houston, Texas, and causes havoc, attracting the attention of theScarlet Spider. Carnage takes the scientist Dr. Ketola, an expert in inter-dimensional transportation, as a hostage and escapes into the Microverse.[31] He is defeated by Venom and Scarlet Spider, who use a sonic bomb from the Microverse to temporarily separate Kasady from the symbiote. Scarlet Spider then impales Kasady through the eye, lobotomizing him. Carnage goes into a catatonic state: the symbiote is keeping his body alive, similar to a life-support system, but Kasady's brain and mind are believed to be irreparably damaged, leaving the symbiote in control.[32]
Kasady, now lobotomized, was later broken out of prison by theWizard andKlaw, who intend to recruit him into the Frightful Four and turn him into their own version of Venom. Carnage breaks free from Wizard's control and nearly kills him, but is subdued by Klaw. Taking Carnage into their hideout, Wizard tries to take control of Kasady's mind but fails due to it being too damaged. Wizard then transfers the Symbiote toKarl Malus, who dubs himself "Superior Carnage".[33]
Wizard blows up the hideout with Kasady still inside, seemingly killing him. While storming the city hall, Superior Carnage states that Kasady was a fool who wasted so much time on chaos while there was much more to be accomplished with a little focus.[33]
Ultimately, Spider-Man brings out Kasady's body to successfully draw the symbiote into it, which immediately devours Dr. Malus and then prepares to finish off the Wizard. However, Klaw's ephemeral spirit focuses his sound manipulation powers one last time for a split second to create a powerful sonic blast that disables Carnage, allowing the symbiote to be recaptured. In the epilogue, it is shown that the symbiote has managed to repair the Wizard's and Kasady's brain damage, followed by Kasady writing "CARNAGE RULES" on his cell wall.[33]
A piece of the symbiote (which had died in captivity) escapes containment and sets out in search of Kasady, who is bedridden due to having been stabbed by a fellow prison inmate. A doctor, anticipating that the symbiote will come seeking Kasady, smothers the killer in the infirmary, wanting the alien for himself. When the symbiote breaks into the facility, the doctor offers himself to the creature, but it rejects him and returns to Kasady after resuscitating him. Carnage proceeds to asphyxiate the doctor, rampage through the prison, and escape.[34]
During the 2014 "AXIS" storyline,Magneto starts to recruit villains in order to combat theRed Onslaught. He manages to convince Carnage by saying he'll cause more chaos by becoming a savior and so Carnage agrees. When he sees Deadpool he tells him that they are "going to have words after this".[35]
During the battle with Red Onslaught,Doctor Doom and theScarlet Witch cast a spell which alters the moralities of almost everyone present, Carnage included. Filled with the irresistible urge to be a hero, Carnage returns to New York and goes around "saving" people, largely oblivious to the fact that he is causing more harm than good.[36] This is proven when Spider-Man finds that Carnage had saved a family fromSquid and his gang, the Tentacles.[37] At the same time, a newSin-Eater is murdering journalists, which unscrupulous reporter Alice Gleason uses to try and boost her popularity by feigning severe distress over the killings. Believing Alice's crocodile tears and convinced that she is a kindhearted and empathic person, Carnage rescues her from Sin-Eater and abducts her with the intent of having Alice teach him how to be "a great hero".[36] However, after Carnage defeats Sin-Eater by overloading his foe with all his old sins, Alice turns on Carnage and convinces the police that he has been attacking her, but the inverted Carnage simply concludes that she is teaching him that a true hero must be alone to protect others and swings away.[38]
Faced with the threat of the morally invertedAvengers seeking to enforce their power and the invertedX-Men working withApocalypse to take control of Manhattan, Spider-Man and the aged Steve Rogers are forced to work with Magneto and the "Astonishing Avengers" of Carnage and the other inverted villains.[39] Although unable to destroy the X-Men's gene-bomb, which would have killed all humans in the blast radius, Carnage sacrifices himself to contain the blast with his own symbiote, Spider-Man describing Kasady's sacrifice as the worst man he ever knew doing the noblest thing he had ever seen.[40] With the crisis concluded, Peter Parker sets out to create a gold-and-rhinestone memorial to Carnage as he promised Kasady he would before his sacrifice. After the heroes and villains are inverted, a videotape is released in which the Astonishing Avengers—with Carnage as their "spokesman"—proclaim themselves to be the "Axis of Evil", taking responsibility for the Avengers' and the X-Men's actions during the inversion at the cost of their own brief time as heroes.[41]
Kasady is revealed to have cheated death again, though he lost the lower half of his body in the process, and went to Carefree, Arizona, to pay a visit to a new friend he made during the time he was inverted,[42] a friend he was willing to "help", Sam Alexander akaNova. Kasady left a message signaling his return in the form of murdering a random bystander who he had asked where to find the boy as proof that he was reverted to his more natural moral axis.[43]
After learning that Sam's mother works at a local diner, Kasady took her hostage there in order to get his attention, but, tired of waiting, Kasady decided to kill her. Nova arrived before he could do so and took him away from the diner to an empty area in order not to hurt anyone. While fighting, Nova tried to convince him that he was not Sam Alexander, but the maniac did not believe him. After being wounded by the Nova Force, Kasady fled in order to let his symbiote heal him as the police arrived. In the next day, already healed from his burns, Kasady attacked Sam again, this time at his school.[44]
While attacking Sam at school, Carnage saw Nova flying around the area, thus making it impossible for the boy to be Nova (unbeknownst to him, that was Sam's mother wearing his helmet). Enraged, Carnage followed the false Nova, but lost sight of her. He then started to attack innocent people to try to get Nova's attention, which he got. A new battle ensued between them both. Carnage was taken by Nova to the sky and then punched him into the parking lot below, the impact setting off the cars' alarms, dizzying Kasady, and his symbiote. Kasady was then thrown by Nova, who had already realized Carnage's weakness to high sounds, into anAnthrax show nearby. As the symbiote screamed in pain, Kasady fled from there to the road but was attacked by Nova again. He threw a car at Nova, who caught it midair, and took advantage of it to punch him. Ready to finish off his opponent, Carnage was hit by a truck. He was then tied in metal plates by Nova and left by his symbiote as he revealed he wanted to kill Nova because he wanted to erase any memory of his good deeds, from the time he had his moral axis inverted, from anyone who remembered it. He was left by Sam in Ryker's Island.[45]
When Cletus escaped, as usual, he found out that one woman had survived one of his first slaughters. Enraged he went after her only to find out that it was a trap orchestrated by the FBI agent Claire Dixon, John Jameson as Man-Wolf and Eddie Brock as Toxin. They started to battle, but the mine they were in started to crumble. He suddenly met a cult who worshipsChthon and told him that he is part of theDarkhold prophecy and spilled his blood on the book giving Carnage new supernatural powers.[46]
After that Carnage hijacked a boat, so he could resurrect Chthon and be rewarded. When Claire's team got to the boat, she got abducted by Carnage and he bonded her to his third offspring calling herself Raze. Then the team tried to kill Carnage by exploding the boat. Then Cletus got by a young girl named Jubil van Scotter, not knowing who he was. He tried to infect her with his symbiote, but she proved to be immune to him and she exploded her boat to get rid of Carnage and then she got saved by the team.[47]
Carnage survived and went to the island where he could resurrect Chthon. The team along with Jubil went to the island and found countless dead bodies. Then Carnage finally resurrects Chthon, only to pushed aside by him. Since Jubil had a piece of the power from Carnage, Eddie Brock gave his Toxin symbiote to her and absorbed the Raze symbiote from Claire. She with the symbiote took the form of an Angelic Knight and defeated Chthon, resulting in the apparent death of Toxin. Carnage now furious, tried to kill the team, until Claire who got rid of her symbiote, sacrificed herself to save the others. Then the team used the Darkhold against Carnage by separating the symbiote from Cletus.[48]
As thePoisons launch an all-out assault on the Marvel Universe, they are determined, since their last encounter with the alternate Carnage, not to leave such wildcard individuals which they designated as anomalies to be played against them. In that order, for his ability to summon monsters, they seek to consume Kid Kaiju whileThanos and his second-in-command,Doctor Doom, send Black Cat and others to fetch Cletus Kasady, so they can separate him from his red symbiote and replace it with one of their own. However, what they find is a Cletus Kasady who is no longer bonded with Carnage.[49]
As Thanos and Doctor Doom desperately want to bring Cletus into their hive, thereby making themselves stronger in the process, they discover for whatever reason, Cletus is resisting the symbiote bonding procedure.[50] The bonding procedure is eventually a success and Carnage is consumed by a Poison.[51] However, while he was consumed by a Poison, due to his mental instability, Cletus was able to resist being assimilated into the Poison Hive and his consciousness persisted, only pretended to be loyal to the Hive. He battled both Venom and Spider-Man, nearly taking the head of the former and impaling the latter. He was ultimately tossed into space by Venom and Danger, becoming one of the few Poisons to survive the death of the Poison Queen.[52]
In the last page ofVenom #8, a cult who worships Carnage, got hold of Cletus's damaged body inside a chamber and are planning to revive him by using theGrendel's remnants which they stole fromMaker.[53]
It is eventually revealed that Cletus returned from space because the Carnage symbiote was able to regenerate itself by destroying the Poison and then steered Cletus's body back to Earth. But despite its Darkhold-augmentations, Cletus's body was badly damaged and left him badly burnt but alive. After the cult dedicated to worshipping Knull, led by a corrupted Scorn, retrieved Cletus's body and stole a sample of the Grendel symbiote from the Maker's laboratory, they wanted to bond the Grendel symbiote to Cletus, so he could be psychically connected to Knull through the codex, trace remnants of Knull's leftover on the dragon's body. Cletus's body was restored when they successfully implanted the Grendel symbiote and escaped from the chamber resembling at first the Ancient Venom (Venom possessed by Knull), but this only lasted temporarily with Cletus ripping out Scorn's spine in order to consume the trace remnants of the Carnage symbiote leftover from her time as its host. Cletus decided to assume command of the cult and help free Knull, setting out to hunt down and consume the codexes of the other symbiote hosts, living and deceased.[12]
After infecting some homeless people with his "Mind-Worms" to make them do his bidding,[54] Cletus eventually reunites with Doppelganger and Shriek again and together reformed the cult with the citizens of Doverton who were infected by Carnage. They returned to Doverton and got the codexes from the citizens and animals by ripping all of their spines and turned John Jameson as their agent.[55]
Kasady then impersonated Eddie Brock in order to discredit him and returned to Manhattan and allowed himself to be imprisoned in Ryker's Island. He was later confronted by Lee Price—who had formerly hosted the Venom symbiote and was currently the host of theMania symbiote—in the prison cafeteria and Kasady ripped the Mania symbiote out of him and absorbed it, destroying the security cameras to frame Brock for the ensuing slaughter.[56]
It is revealed that Cletus's destiny to be one of Knull's hosts lies through his ancestor, Cortland during a colonial era. Cortland's downfall into a Knull worshipped serial killer was the reason behind Cletus's psychosis.[57]
As a result of its journey through the multiverse, Carnage has all the power that it wanted in its desire to be a god, but desires worshippers and a host. After it is transported back toRykers Island, he consumes an inmate, incorporating into its body the DNA, and the memories of Cletus, creating a younger version of him in order to become whole again.[58]
Cletus Kasady as Carnage appears in the one-shotSpider-Man and Batman: Disordered Minds.[59]
Cletus Kasady appears in the seriesSpider-Man: Heroes and Villains Collection.[60]
An alternate universe variant of Cletus Kasady from Earth-2301 appears inMarvel Mangaverse: Spider-Man.[61][62]
Cletus Kasady appears in films set inSony's Spider-Man Universe, portrayed byWoody Harrelson.[66][67] This version is a victim of extreme physical and psychological abuse dealt by his mother, father, and grandmother, the last of whom he eventually killed to escape the abuse, and became a serial killer because the media labeled him a monster and canonized his abusers. After being captured by authorities, he was placed ondeath row inSan Quentin Prison afterCalifornia's governor decided to end the state's moratorium on executions in light of the exceptionally horrific nature of Kasady's crimes.
Cletus Kasady / Carnage appears inSpider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, played by Collin Baja. This version was originally anOscorp scientist who theGreen Goblin manipulated into becoming a member of hisSinister Six.[78]
Artist Mark Bagley's era ofThe Amazing Spider-Man hit its stride as Carnage revealed the true face of his evil. Carnage was a symbiotic offspring produced when Venom bonded to psychopath Cletus Kasady.
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