Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage [Paperback]

Tom DeFalco (Author, Editor), Mark Bagley (Editor)

Book Description

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 enemy becomes his uneasy ally in the battle to halt Carnage's mad rampage. But when he finds himself at odds with a number of his allies, who want to finish Carnage and his cronies once and for all, Spider-Man must decide whether to violate his personal code of honor to rid the world of pure evil. Can the web-slinger find an alternative before it's too late? Either choice carries dire consequences! Collects AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Vol. 1) #378-380, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #201-203, SPIDER-MAN #35-37, SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED #1 and #2, and WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #101-103.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Marvel Enterprises (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785100385
• ISBN-13: 978-0785100386
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,990,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not as excellent as it could be., July 30, 2006

By 

J. Dollak "Nice lil nobody" (Oceanport, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage (Paperback)

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.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an epic saga that falls short of what it could be.., January 12, 2005

By 

Hype Currie "scholar of pop culture" (Detroit, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage (Paperback)

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..

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too dated for someone first being introduced to comics, August 31, 2011

By 

Anthony DiSanti (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage (Paperback)

I had read a few comics recently (Batman: Long Halloween, Batman: The Killing Joke, The Watchmen) and decided to check out this classic. The dated art, simplicity of the storyline, and limited depth to the characters made the book painful to read. Eventually a gave up. I don't recommend this to readers that are new to comics.