Talking about burying the lead. Minimum Carnage was supposed to be a team-up between Scarlet Spider and Venom, as they join forces to take down the super-villain serial killer Carnage. But the two characters haven’t even been in the same room together since the start of the crossover. Instead, this is one big space alien story that just happens to involve Scarlet Spider and Venom on the side. It’s as if writers Christopher Yost and Cullen Bunn were huge fans of the Micronauts back in the day, and Marvel agreed to let them write the ultimate Microverse story, but only if they could slap some existing characters into the tale. Then someone came up with the pun ‘Minimum Carnage’, and they were off!

Scarlet Spider #11

This story is turning out to be a weird, convoluted political tale about characters we’ve either never heard of before or haven’t heard from in decades. No thank you.

Comic rating: 3/5: Alright.

I can’t even be sure if this story has anything to do with the Microverse of the past. I’m only vaguely familiar with the Micronauts, but who is the Redeemer? What is the Enigma Force? Or Marquis Radu? I imagine these are all characters and concepts thought up by Yost and Bunn to tell their story. But none of it has anything to do with Scarlet Spider or Venom, and very little to do with Carnage. They might as well have used any combination of heroes and villains in this story. Nothing that has happened so far, at least as far as I can see, has any direct impact or importance to either hero, especially Scarlet Spider. He is just along for the ride, and doesn’t even particularly want to be there.

The decision to set this tale in the Microverse was the completely wrong decision. Nobody cares about the Microverse anymore. Nobody is interested in that kind of story. A comic where Scarlet Spider and Venom team up to fight Carnage is a good idea for a comic. But Yost and Bunn have instead buried that cool seed of an idea into tainted soil, and as a result, a crummy story has grown. And that’s my metaphor of the month!

Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review.

To get you caught up in the story, we last left Kaine meeting a mysterious hooded figure, and they were about to be attacked by a giant monster. Venom, meanwhile, had hooked up with the Micronauts, who wanted to take him to meet the Redeemer, an important religious/political figure in the Microverse. Well it turns out that Kaine’s hooded figure is the Redeemer, and they defeat the monster and team up to find the Enigma Force, who are the Micronauts, a team of freedom fighters. Only Kaine and the Redeemer are ambushed by Carnage, who has slaughtered all those mini-bad guys who brought him to the Microverse in the first place.

So Kaine is fighting Carnage, while Venom and the Micronauts are attacked by the evil forces of the mysterious Marquis Radu. Venom loses control when attacked by sonic weapons, and the symbiote goes nuts, attacking friend and foe alike.

And that should catch us up, as best as one could even begin to understand this overall story.

Scarlet Spider’s fight with Carnage is actually pretty badass.

The brawl to bloody them all

Neither Kaine or Carnage is holding back, both planning to kill the other. It’s a brutal, bloody, toothy fight, with the Redeemer and reporter Katy Kiernan watching from a distance.

Elsewhere, Flash Thompson has lost control of the Venom symbiote, and it goes wild, attacking the Micronauts. He’s about to beat them all when one of the faeries uses her special music to soothe the savage beast, and Flash regains control. But they don’t get time to enjoy the calm before their spaceship is attacked and a door is blown off, sucking them into darkness. Flash passes out and thinks of his girlfriend Betty.

Over in the Carnage/Scarlet Spider battle, both are getting pretty hardcore with this fight. But it’s interrupted when the moron of a Redeemer suddenly falls of a cliff. Why he was standing on such a precarious cliff in the first place is anyone’s guess. Though the rock seems to have broken because Fatty McGee (i.e. Katy Kiernan) climbed up there with him for no reason.

‘To make the plot happen’ is a reason

So, of course, Scarlet Spider dives after him.

Best way to get him out of the story for a few pages

Radu’s men arrive next and take Carnage into custody without a fight.

Venom is already in custody in Radu’s lair with the rest of the Micronauts. They explain to him, as they’re being led through the hall in shackles, that Marquis Radu is trying to kill God. They get led into a big room, where we meet Radu – and he’s just some dude in a big purple cloak, with green insectoid armor. His face is hidden by a hood. He’s rather talkative, and boasts about all the people he’s defeated to get where he is today. Carnage is brought in, and Radu easily dispatches him when he tries to escape. Radu then orders the Micronauts be taken to the cells, while the symbiotes are taken to the bank.

Then, for some reason, Radu goes on a walk with Kiernan. He equates being a reporter with being a historian, and he doesn’t see her as a threat, so Marquis Radu decides to give Kiernan (and the reader) an exposition dump about his master plan. Because why not.

He has a thing for blondes

So the Enigma Force is, possibly, something more than just a band of freedom fighters. Apparently, it’s somehow connected to the god of the Microverse, whoever or whatever that is. And some time ago, a bunch of symbiotes found their way to the Microverse – somehow, it doesn’t say – and they very nearly destroyed this god before they were stopped by the Micronauts. Something about the symbiotes’ very existence is like a cancer to the Microverse. Not that symbiotes have ever had anything to do with the Microverse before, but whatever. This is the reason why Carnage was brought to the Microverse in the first place, but it’s such a stretch.

Anyway, Radu wants to kill the current god so that he can become the new god. But he can’t do it himself because it’s against his religion. Seriously. That’s what he says. So he brought Carnage to the Microverse to kill god.

Elsewhere, surprise surprise, Scarlet Spider survived.

Oh man, and here I thought he was really dead

The Redeemer says that he is the living embodiment of the Enigma Force, so he’s probably this god that Radu is going on about. Scarlet asks why he can’t just take off and go home, and the Redeemer explains that if the Microverse is destroyed, so to is the Macroverse, or the normal ‘verse. So looks like Scarlet Spider is stuck there and has to help.

Elsewhere, Venom and Carnage aren’t getting along.

Not a deep conversationalist

They’re brought to the a large laboratory where Venom realizes that Radu plans to create an army of symbiotes out of the two of them!

Ho hum.

Seriously, who cares? Nobody cares about the Microverse. Nobody cares about the Micronauts, the Redeemer, Marquis Radu or any of this crap. It’s just phoned in, generic space alien crap. An evil warlord wants to defeat the good guys. Huzzah. Welcome to 99% of all science fiction. All of this stuff about symbiotes being a cancer to the Microverse or the destruction of the Microverse leading to the destruction of the normal world is just forced tension. It doesn’t have any precedence, at least as far as I know. And it doesn’t raise the stakes at all. Because, surprise surprise, the world is not going to end and none of these main characters is going to die.

And speaking of the main characters, could they matter any less? At least they have the ‘symbiote = cancer’ thing to justify Venom and Carnage in this story, but why the Scarlet Spider? This has no bearing on his life, there are no lessons to be learned, and none of this is going to matter to Kaine next issue. I don’t see how it can. I doubt we’ll ever see or hear from these Microverse characters ever again in this Scarlet Spider comic.

I would much prefer to actually see Scarlet Spider and Venom interacting. They actually have a chance of meeting each other again in the future. This could be a good chance to build a friendship or something between them. Anything! Instead, they’re forced to interact with these boring extras. And Carnage isn’t helping. He’s nothing but a mindless killing machine making bad jokes. I don’t think he says a single sentence without the word ‘kill’ in it. We get it, he likes to kill people. But he could have some depth of character.

This isn’t a bad story, but it’s an incredibly boring and pointless story. Thankfully, Scarlet Spider should go back to normal next issue.