Carnage U.S.A. #4 of 5
March 2012
This issue basically opens with Spider-Man making an
Army of Darkness speech, shotgun raised aloft, as he convinces the resistance to go help him kick some symbiote ass (cause they have tranquilizer guns from the zoo or something). This scene is worth the price of the book just to see Spider-Man standing on a pickup truck with a shotgun.
If life were fair, this would be what the zombie apocalypse looked like.
Spider-Man and his boomstick are sorely needed, as the symbiote special forces dudes are having a time of it being surrounded by the Carnage-enslaved townspeople. Not only are they running out of ammunition (natch), but now Carnage himself enters the fray, not to mention his buddies the Avengers: Captain America, Hawkeye, Wolverine, and the Thing.
Threat Level = Completely ****ed
One good thing would be for the entire team to be there so they could fight as one, but instead, Scorn/Dr. Nieves is in the meat packing plant talking to herself about ball bearings and gigahertz. I mean, she does have a symbiote in her head that's half machine and can bond with other technology, but that still counts as talking to herself.
But no sooner is their **** about to be wrecked than Spider-Man and his pickup truck posse show up with molotov cocktails and shotguns (unfortunately Spider-Man doesn't have his anymore). It's looks like
Mad Max in pajamas.
Vaya con Dios.
The series is pretty much just a superhero free-for-all from this point on. Every few panels somebody is fighting somebody else, and it's ****ing awesome. Oh yeah, then Venom shows up with a big ****ing grenade launcher and just flattens Carnage's ass with... sonic grenades or something. They never really mentioned what those were, but they were badass anyway.
Spider-Man: "Oh crud. The Punisher is dressed like me."
So, obviously at some point the tables
return on the heroes and the villains are about to win and you've seen a movie so you know what I'm saying. This is when Scorn hits Carnage with a bulldozer. For most of the series she's been pretty much in the background, but now she hits Carnage with a bulldozer. It's ****ing awesome. I know I already said that about something else, but I don't care. She hit Carnage with a ****ing bulldozer and it ruled.
And if that's not enough to show what an underrated badass Scorn is, hitting Carnage with a ****ing bulldozer was just a way to get him into the meat packing plant, where she'd rigged some kind of sonic doohickey to separate Kasady from his symbiote. Constructing a device that basically looks like it shoots down a giant column of pure sound out of meat packing equipment sounds like building a radio out of a coconut, but I guess her command of machinery is just that awe-inspiring, so I'm willing to go with it. Besides, it sets the stage for Kasady and Flash/Venom's cripple fight in the next issue (Venom kinda got bulldozed too... by accident... maybe). And I'll explain why they're both crippled next time.
Unfortunately I can't find any scans of either the bulldozer or the sonic... disruptor... meat packing... thing, so you'll have to use your imaginations. The best I can do is a pic of the outside of the meat packing plant in the next issue. Oh wells.
Yeah, if Scorn can do that to a meat-packing plant in less than a night, she's gonna be giving Reed Richards a run for his money soon. Perhaps some anti-fun individuals might say that turning a meat packing plant into a... sonic thing, is dumb. **** them. The bulldozer at the beginning forgives all. Besides, this isn't a series where I was particularly concerned with the brilliant culmination of the protagonists' master plan. Carnage did bad, bad things, and however they actually managed to beat him would have been secondary regardless. Zeb Wells used Cletus Kasady masterfully and, with Clayton Crain's moody artwork, created a truly unsettling glimpse into just what Carnage is capable of. The tooth thing... man. That **** was ****ed up.
And the last battle is still to come anyway...