Deadpool vs. Carnage #1-#4 (miniseries)
April-June 2014
Well this was a fun little romp of oddness. Not necessarily one for the Comic Book Hall of Fame, but neither is it disposable. Seeing as how I've only really been reading comics a short while, I've never really read any Deadpool. I've seen a few random pages here and there (like his "Yo mama" joke battle with Spider-Man), so I at least understand the basic gist of the character, but this is still pretty much my first real introduction to him. Haven't read all that much Carnage either, but I at least know enough. Regardless, when I saw the title, I just had to hit "download".
What seems like a completely arbitrary mash-up actually works pretty well, as the basic premise of this seems to be figuring out just which one is more whacked in the head. You'd think Carnage would have the edge, just by virtue of being the villain, but this is not so. Carnage may be a homicidal maniac, but as far as the nuts and bolts of being a fruitcake, Deadpool is in a league of his own. At the beginning, Carnage has just recently escaped from prison, and in order to evade the law he decides to commit only completely random acts of murder and mayhem. Whether it be in a roadside diner or a pawnshop, there is no method to his madness. No great, evil plan. No "And now I shall finally destroy Spider-Man!" scheme. Just arbitrary violence without any pattern to be traced. Or so he thinks.
Enter Deadpool. He is likewise out of his gourd, but seems to be able to tap into some kind of pattern laid down by an unnamed, higher power by using clues that any sane person would overlook or dismiss. He sets out on a hunt for Carnage, not because he's being paid, or out of a benevolent sense of duty, but because he was channel surfing and the various sentence fragments he heard from the split second he paused on each station seemed to form a message telling him to go find the symbiote. So, Carnage is crazy enough to shed reason in the name of chaos, but Deadpool's crazy is so advanced that it can actually interpret this chaos. Hijinks ensue.
That's pretty much what makes this series work too. Any other day of the week, Carnage is so unpredictable that everyone else is forced to play catch-up. But not Deadpool. He starts his search by following an arbitrary butcher who just happens to be carrying a bleeding package of meat, which leads him to a convenience store where he sees a kid playing a Mortal Kombat knockoff arcade game which, purely coincidentally, says things like "Massacre!" and "Maximum carnage!", and wouldn't just know it, there's a magazine rack with a magazine with Cletus Kasady on the cover. Underneath
that is one with a ghost town on it's cover. So naturally Deadpool decides this ghost town must be where to find Carnage. **** me if he isn't right, too.
Carnage does not know how to deal with this, or Deadpool's off-the-wall fighting style. He always somehow manages to elude Deadpool, and yet, like Frankenstein, there he is again. And again. One of my favorite things about this miniseries is that they kind of humanize Carnage a bit. Not to make him sympathetic, or develop his character, but just to make him look almost like a poor, hapless chump being subjected to the whims of a madman.
My favorite scene in the series is one in which Carnage, now in his human form after having recently evaded Deadpool for the first time, is riding along the highway with his girlfriend, Shriek (from
Maximum Carnage), Bonnie and Clyde-style. They seem to have a legitimate, mutual affection for one another that makes them seem weirdly domestic at times, so rather than evil crazies on the way to their next atrocity, it just feels like a wholesomely-criminal couple out for a drive.
Enter Deadpool. Without warning, out of the CB radio in the backseat comes the voice of Deadpool. Carnage, one of the most fearsome villains in all of comic bookdom, whose rampages horrify even the stoutest of superheroes, is stupefied, for there is absolutely no reason why Deadpool should have been able to find him (how he did find him was even more convoluted than the magazine rack thing). Carnage and Shriek don't even have any idea where Deadpool is until they see him in the grain harvester strapped to the tractor trailer directly in front of them. The expression on Cletus Kasady's face is one I can only describe as wide-eyed-"WTF?!".
I imagine this is about as light-hearted a series as you can have with Carnage in it. Aside from him having a girlfriend, they also take the piss with him by playing up him being a redneck, his name being Cletus and all. He has a mullet, walks around in his underwear, hawks loogies, and uses "ain't" and other Southernisms on a regular basis. Imagining symbioted-up Carnage's voice with a distorted, hick drawl is surprisingly amusing. And of course Deadpool zeroes right in on this. Another highlight is during their first encounter, when Deadpool offers to have a long chat about their issues, "Maybe over a beer... or your pappy's favorite moonshine...". Not that there isn't more blood, guts, and graphic violence than you can shake a stick at, of course. This is still a series co-starring Carnage after all.
I'd also like to think that, while Carnage is obviously a Spider-Man villain, that he may also develop an equal rivalry with Deadpool. While Spider-Man may beat his body, Deadpool somehow manages to shatter Carnage's entire belief system. I'll leave you to interpret that statement.
So, if you dig violence, stupid, and either Deadpool or Carnage, then I'd definitely give this a shot. It won't redefine your concept of what a comic book can be, but it's a fun way to pass an afternoon.
Oh, and while doing a Google image search for "deadpool vs carnage", I found this. I must hunt.