Iä! Iä! Carnage fhtagn!
Carnage (Vol. 2) is a 2015-2017 comic series written by Gerry Conway with art by Mark Perkins. Part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel initiative, the series is noteworthy for plunging the symbiotic serial killer into territory more familiar to the likes of Doctor Strange.
FBI Special Agent Claire Dixon, head of the new Anti-Symbiote Task Force, is on a mission to bring Carnage to justice dead or alive. Assembling a squad comprised of Manuela Caulderon — sole survivor of the slaughter at St. Estes, John Jameson — decorated soldier-turned-alien werewolf, and Eddie Brock — host of the Toxin symbiote; Claire sets a trap at the Grey Ridge Mine... only for things to go horribly wrong due to the intervention of the Darkhold Cult, leaving Carnage in possession of the Darkhold — a powerful grimoire — and empowered by the dark elder god Chthon.
Now Claire and her team — AWOL and bankrolled by Victoria Montesi of the Sons of Midnight — must rush to stop the Red Slayer before he can bring about the apocalypse by unleashing the eldritch deity from his interdimensional prison
Carnage (2015) contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Claire Dixon is fully conscious while her body is puppeteered by the Raze symbiote, which is in turn enthralled to Carnage's will. The experience leads her to empathize with Eddie Brock, who she'd previously treated with utter contempt.
- Bio-Armor:
- Eddie Brock evidently took a leaf from Flash Thompson's costuming department, sculpting the Toxin symbiote into black-and-red body armor.
- Raze's symbiote mirrors the appearance of Claire Dixon's body armour.
- Black Speech: The text of the Darkhold and Chthon's dialogue are written in the eldritch language of the Cthulhu Mythos, enabling them to be parsed through a R'lyehian dictionary to provide a rough translation.Chthon: Shagg shogg chtenff, y'uln sgn'wahl-og! Y'uln sgn'wahl-og! note
Chthon: [to Jubulile] Mnahn'hlirgh kn'a? note - Bizarrchitecture: The Temple of Chthon on the island was built using Lovecraftian non-euclidian geometry, and its lower levels contain a network of M. C. Escher-esque staircases.
- Brought Down to Normal: In preparation for him becoming Venom again, Eddie Brock gives the Toxin symbiote to Jubulile van Scotter.
- Bullying a Dragon: The Darkhold cultists and Broodlings of Chthon try to sacrifice Carnage to summon their eldritch god. Carnage returns the favour and succeeds where they failed.
- Character Development: Eddie finally admits that he's not a good person and had culpability in the criminal acts he committed as Venom, rather than insisting that the Venom symbiote was solely responsible, though he states he's trying to better himself. He also reveals he's started questioning his previously ironclad faith in God.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Carnage Vol. 2 plunges Carnage, Toxin, and Man-Wolf into Marvel's expy of the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Cthulhumanoid: Chthon is depicted as a blatant stand-in for Cthulhu, and while he lacks the typical octopus head he has tentacles for hair.
- Death Equals Redemption: Claire Dixon sacrifices herself to save her team from Carnage, invoking this trope when she refuses Eddie's suggestion to use the Darkhold to heal her.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Jubulile does so pretty much literally, using her Darkhold-augmented symbiote to prevent Chthon from crossing over.
- Eldritch Abomination: Chthon — in contrast to his prior appearances as a black-cloaked grey-skinned humanoid entity — appears as a navy blue expy of Cthulhu. Once free from his prison, he tries to summon other eldritch horrors, but is thwarted by Jubulile.
- Eldritch Location: Carnage summoning Chthon turns the lower levels of Chthon's temple into an interstice between Earthspace and Chthon's prison-realm of K'lay, where the laws of physics have no sway.
- Expy:
- In a deviation from his past depictions, Chthon is depicted as an expy of Cthulhu and is referred to as a Great Old One in addition to an Elder God — which are treated synonymously.
- The Broodlings of Chthon are a species of Humanoid Abomination created by Chthon, being similar to the Deep Ones from the Cthulhu Mythos in both appearance and modus operandi.
- Incompatible Orientation: Eddie Brock develops a crush on Manuela Calderon, but it turns out that she's a lesbian and hooks up with Victoria Montesi.
- Lovecraft Lite: Despite Carnage succeeding in summoning Chthon, the good guys are able to punch him out with minimal losses.
- Magic Enhancement:
- After the Darkhold Cult tries to sacrifice Cletus Kasady to resurrect Chthon, the Carnage symbiote is altered and augmented by the eldritch magic of the Darkhold, replacing its weakness to sonics with a weakness to eldritch magic and giving it a modified version of its Asteroids Monster ability.
- After Jubulile assimilates the Toxin and Raze symbiotes in order to empower her own symbiote, Victoria Montesi uses the Darkhold to infuse her with psychic energy and blast Chthon with a beam of light magic.
- Noodle Incident: It isn't shown exactly how or when the FBI captured Eddie Brock, just that they'd been monitoring his activities in Philadelphia following the events of Venom (Vol. 2) #35.
- Not Quite Dead:
- Claire Dixon was presumed dead after the freighter she was on exploded. After being impaled by Carnage, she dies but makes a comeback in Venom (Mike Costa).
- Despite apparently being vaporized by Jubulile, Chthon is revealed to have survived in Secret Empire.
- Although he appeared to be vaporized alongside his sibling Raze, Toxin managed to come back in King in Black.
- Psychic Link:
- As a result of being exposed to the Darkhold, Cletus is left with a psychic link to Chthon that enables him to read the eldritch script and compels him to journey to the Chthonic Temple to unleash the dark god.
- As a result of Jubulile van Scotter being infected with a Darkhold-augmented offshoot of the Carnage symbiote, she and Cletus Kasady can sense each others' presence and are forced to relive each others' memories.
- Power Incontinence: Before he gets the hang of his new mystical powers, Cletus' attempts to infect people with offshoots of his symbiote either kill the subjects outright or turn them into grotesque human-symbiote hybrids. Aside from the Darkhold cultists, Claire Dixon and Jubulile van Scotter are the only successful test subjects.
- Monstrous Mandibles: After being augmented by Chthon, Carnage sprouts several tooth-lined mandible-like appendages on his lower jaw that make him appear even more monstrous than usual.
- More than Mind Control: After Carnage is exposed to the power of the Darkhold, he slowly realizes that Chthon is manipulating him to escape his prison... and goes along with it because he wants to be responsible for the apocalypse and expects Chthon to reward him with godhood.
- Shout-Out: The chant used to summon Chthon is word-for-word identical to the chant used to summon Cthulhu in the Cthulhu Mythos, substituting "Chthon" for Cthulhu and "K'lay" for R'lyeh.
- Series Continuity Error:
- Prior comics had established the Midnight Sons as having been established by Doctor Strange to combat Lilith and the Lilin — being comprised of Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch), a depowered Johnny Blaze, Morbius, Louise Hastings, Victoria Montesi, Sam Buchanan, Blade, Frank Drake, and Hannibal King. Carnage Vol. 2 establishes the organization as being much larger and at least four decades older than previously established, with Victoria being a high-ranking member.
- Cletus had taken to referring to the Carnage symbiote with female pronouns after it gave birth to Toxin, but in this series he inexplicably reverts back to referring to it with male pronouns.
- The Elder Gods are described as being one-and-the-same with the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, with Chthon in particular being nigh-identical to Cthulhu. However, Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones already exist in the Marvel Universe, being affiliated with Shuma-Gorath and the Many-Angled Ones; and the Elder Gods were previously established as being something completely different.
- A misprint has Eddie state that Jubulile removed the Toxin symbiote from Claire Dixon, though Claire's symbiote was called Raze.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Claire Dixon makes it abundantly clear that she hates Eddie Brock and would like nothing more than to lock him up and throw away the key, recognizing that he's addicted to the power of the Toxin symbiote and refusing to unleash it unless as an absolute last resort; seeing him as a murderous sociopath little better than Carnage, and even trying to kill him alongside Carnage by collapsing the mine. It doesn't help that Eddie constantly tries to trick others into setting the Toxin symbiote free.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Darkhold, a grimoire written by Aelfric the Mad Monk based on Cthonian scrolls and tablets, plays a significant role in the series' plot.
- Tragic Monster: After becoming Raze, Claire Dixon doesn't want to do Cletus's bidding, but being enslaved to his will causes her to undergo a Despair Event Horizon.
- Uncertain Doom: After Jubulile fries Chthon, her symbiote — which was merged with the Toxin and Raze symbiotes — evaporates into pink mist, leaving it unclear if any of them survived. Though Toxin appears a few years later in King in Black, Raze's survival is left in the air.
- Vague Age: Yuvraj Singh mentions Victoria Montesi was the same apparent age — her mid to late 30's — when he was a child as she is in the the present day, to Eddie Brock's incredulity.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Chthon callously discards Carnage the moment he's no longer needed, enraging Cletus, who thought he'd be rewarded for his services.
