Deadpool vs. Carnage is a 2014 comic book limited series from Marvel Comics. It's written by Cullen Bunn with art by Salva Espin and color art by Veronica Gandini.
Set in the shared Marvel Universe, it's a crossover pitting the fast-talking, regenerating mercenary Deadpool against Cletus Kasady, the super-powered spree killer Carnage. Both of the characters embrace chaos and madness, although in very different ways — and now that connection seems to be drawing them together.
Can Deadpool actually stop Carnage's killing spree? Or will it take more than wisecracks, guns and a Healing Factor to bring down a monster like Kasady?
The series followed Cletus' return as Carnage in Superior Carnage Annual, and led into Carnage's involvement in AXIS.
Deadpool vs. Carnage contains examples of the following tropes:
- Back for the Dead: The Mercury Team, introduced in Carnage USA, return in the third issue, at least briefly. Carnage finds their base, catches them unawares, and kills them all.
- Battle Couple: When Deadpool has Carnage on the ropes in the first issue — ambushing him with a rocket launcher and then feeding him a grenade — Shriek shows up to save her boyfriend, allowing Carnage to get a second wind. Later battles, facing both of them, go much worse for Deadpool. Deadpool eventually pays Shriek back by shredding their getaway vehicle, knocking her unconscious, and later using the Hybrid symbiote to trick Carnage into almost killing her.
- Despair Event Horizon: By the end of the miniseries, Deadpool breaks Carnage by out-crazying him, revealing that — for all his insistence that he lives and breathes CHAOS — his actions are dictated by a higher power... the person writing the comic. Cletus ends up so devastated that he breaks into a prison and locks himself up until he can find himself again.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: Deadpool incapacitates Carnage using illegally downloaded dubstep.
- Feed It a Bomb: Deadpool stuffs a live grenade down Carnage's throat, he gets his hand bitten off and eaten in the process.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Deadpool's insanity is key in finding out the inner workings of Carnage's mind, which makes him the perfect candidate to track Carnage down.
- Heroic Host: After the members of Mercury Team are slaughtered, the Phage, Lasher, Riot, and Agony symbiotes bond to the dismembered Deadpool and merge back into Hybrid to get revenge on Carnage. Once Deadpool is finished with Cletus, he passes the symbiotes onto the German shepherd that was Lasher's primary host.
- He's Back!: Fully recovered from the lobotomy he suffered at the end of Minimum Carnage and reunited with the Carnage symbiote, Cletus Kasady decides to celebrate "the cataracts being peeled from [his] eyes" by giving up on his megalomaniacal ambitions of conquest and godhood, and going back to basics with a random killing spree.
- Hillbilly Horrors: The comic introduces the concept of Cletus being Southern, with Deadpool mocking him for being a hick.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: As usual, Carnage uses his symbiote to form blades and spikes to impale anyone who annoys him.
- At the start of the first issue, a Kansas cop is unknowingly sitting next to Cletus in a diner, reading newspaper coverage of Carnage's killings. When he comments that someone just needs to kill the guy, Cletus responds by extruding a spiked tentacle from his face and skewering the cop's head.
- Deadpool gets impaled repeatedly in almost every battle against Carnage. On a couple of occasions Carnage skewers him through the chest with a tentacle, then uses it to hold Deadpool aloft so that he can't fight back.
- Laser-Guided Broadcast: Deadpool's prompted to hunt Carnage when rapidly channel hopping after news coverage of Carnage's latest massacre. The fragments of dialogue form a message hinting at how he can find Carnage. It crosses further into The Television Talks Back when Deadpool asks if he's really understood the message and the next snippet of dialogue confirms that he has.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Carnage is horrified when he sees he's almost killed Shriek, thinking she was Deadpool.
- Take That!: The first issue has Cletus lambaste his megalomaniacal Character Development from Zeb Wells' Carnage U.S.A. and Cullen Bunn's own Minimum Carnage, saying he doesn't know what he was thinking trying to take over cities and tiny dimensions when all he needs is a good old-fashioned killing spree.
- The Television Talks Back: In the first issue, Deadpool's watching TV coverage of Carnage's rampage and then starts rapidly channel hopping, getting what seems to be a Laser-Guided Broadcast of dialogue fragments, instructing him to find Carnage. When he queries whether it's really a message, the next snippet of dialogue seems to confirm that it is.Deadpool: Am I the only person crazy enough to track Carnage?
Sound effect: [on television] DING DING DING
Game show host: [on television] Congratulations! You're right on the money. - Versus Title: It's Deadpool vs. Carnage, and it lives up to the title. There's no Enemy Mine alliance or common ground, just Deadpool doing his very best to halt Carnage's rampage.
- Would Hurt a Child: Carnage's murder spree is implied to extend to children, although they're Killed Offscreen.
- Two young girls are part of the crowd trying to flee the diner massacre at the start of the first issue. Carnage seals the door, trapping everyone inside, and the TV doesn't mention any survivors.
- In the third issue Carnage hijacks a family's car. There are two kids in the back, one playing with a Spider-Man toy. When Deadpool finds the abandoned car the chairs are shredded, the inside's splattered with blood, and the Spider-Man toy is dismembered and bloodstained.
