Essential Stories: Deadpool vs. Carnage.

I can't honestly say who is going to cause
more damage.

Here we are, Deadpool vs. Carnage. Pure evil vs. a Goodish hero. In case you don’t know either character too well, there will be blood. Lots and lots of Blood. Pools of it. Also, no Deadpool will not be giving his two cents with this one, I sent him on a wild goose chase to keep him busy for a while. I can't have guests for every post, it'll get tiresome. Now, on with the show.

We begin at Kramer Penitentiary in New Jersey. Cletus Kasady, after his most recent run in with Spider-man, was sent here after the Carnage Suit repaired his brain damage. Why the suit didn’t do that when they were bonded before when they were in the Raft prison together, I’ll never know. Kasady’s identity as Carnage is well known, and in a classic prison bit, he gets shived by a fellow inmate that wanted to prove he’s bigger than Carnage. At the same time, the main mass of Carnage dies in its holding cell on Spider Island. It's implied that it felt Kasady's pain as he felt its, and where Kasady could be revived, no one thought or cared enough to figure out how to resuscitate liquid evil. Kasady feels the creature's pain while recovering in the prison’s hospital. He believes the main suit is dead, but he can “still hear the little one.”

This could have been the longest fight ever. If only.

In a research facility in New Mexico, a small sample of the Carnage suit breaks free of its holding, infects a doctor who’d been studying it, and then helps her kill her abusive husband before setting on its journey to Jersey. It jumps from host to host across the US, leaving a pretty clear trail of bodies pointing right to Kasady. At the same time, Kasady is murdered by his Psychiatrist, who reveals monologue style that he set the whole thing up, Kasady’s prison transfer and the stabbing, to lure the suit here and offer himself as the new host. When the suit arrives, it gives him the same attention the bombshell walking down the street gives the hooting construction workers. Which is to say, none at all. It rebonds with Kasady, who sits back up and reveals the suit can and has saved him from a lot worse than being dead for twenty minutes. He goes so far as to say that the suit needs him as much as he needs the suit, to feel complete. Kasady then continues the rampage the suit began, killing the shrink and the guy that shived him before planning to paint the US red. This is why you don’t pick fights with a guy whose alter ego is a homicidal monster, it never ends well.

Meanwhile in New York, Deadpool is bored and channel surfing. Mentally stitching the seemingly random bits of speech he hears while flipping, Deadpool has the epiphany that he’s the only nut job crazy enough to hunt down Carnage and make him go splat. Considering all he really needs to be motivated to do anything is the promise of making things go splat, this is a rare treat for him. Following a random trail that he believes to be a signs from the Universe, Deadpool tracks Carnage to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Carnage had set up shop in an abandoned Cul-de-sac. The two hack, slash, shoot, slash, stab and slash each other for a while before Carnage’s sound manipulating side-kick/girlfriend Shriek arrives to bail him out.  

Gloria, he's seen the light of madness
Wait...

Deadpool loses the trail, but picks it up again from a fat guy that had a similar epiphany after buying out a storage locker when Deadpool kept emergency supplies. That saying "The Universe works in mysterious ways," has never been more accurate or crazy. Deadpool surprises attacks the pair, in his classic craziness, using one of those giant crop harvesters. Carnage escapes again, and uses Deadpool’s “random universe clues” idea to lead him to the secret base of Mercury Team, a group of soldiers and their attack dog that use Symbiotes as emergency weapons. The team minus the dog are killed, Deadpool is chopped to bits, and the base is going to self-destruct.

Deadpool is saved by the dog, who has bonded with one of the Symbiotes, and lends Deadpool the other three. The suits stitch him back together, and seem to ignite him with new vigor. Symbiote empowered Deadpool is about as terrifying as you can imagine. And yet it makes a lot of sense, who better to control four separate entities at once than a man as wacked out nuts as Deadpool? I can’t think of anyone.

Deadpool, with help from the Symbiotes, tracks Carnage and his lady to Carrington Cottage Psychiatric Hospital. Some letters fell off, so the sign real “CAR N AGE PSYC O,” real subtle Universe. Apparently the conversation’s they’d had during their previous bouts planted a seed of doubt in Carnage’s mind about the purity of his random, chaotic movements and so he planned to grill fellow crazy’s to try to get his mojo back.

Awesome, and terrifying, but awesome.
His Symbiotes are Phage, Lasher,
Riot and Agony. Just a fun fact.

Using the fact that he’s gotten Carnage pretty weirded out with his “there is no Chaos” talk, plus the Symbiote enhancements, plus the dog, plus his own unique brand of crazy, Deadpool is able to match Carnage blow for blow. He further infuriates Carnage by claiming that the two of them are connect in mutual insanity. Let’s call it the Crazy Force. Flash and the speedster of DC have the Speed Force, Deadpool and the nuts of Marvel have the Crazy Force. Universe in harmony. Deadpool then tricks Carnage into attacking and horribly injuring Shriek.

In a strange closing, Carnage goes into a cell in the Psychiatric Hospital, shuts the door, and just sits there muttering to himself. No doubt trying to find a way in his own crazy mind to discredit Deadpool’s claims and become an agent of Chaos again. Meanwhile, Deadpool bids farewell to the dog and Four Symbiotes before vowing to hunt down another insane supervillain. He’s found his calling.

This story arch is rather new, it was only published earlier this year, so you’re probably wondering why I’m calling it an Essential Story. Because it just is. It is one of the better stories explaining how a psycho like Deadpool can be considered a hero, and how his unique brand of crazy can be a superpower as useful as his healing factor. Plus when you break it down further, it becomes the story of the resident psycho of the Spider-man franchise vs. the resident psycho of the X-men franchise. If there is a better way to do a Spider-man vs. X-men story, without making Spider-man seem Batman level overpowered, I don’t want to see it. It also serves as a good way to explain what the heck Carnage is now doing, without doing the separating him from the Symbiote story for the hundredth time. He’s now trapped in a philosophical prison, trying to use the reason of crazy to prove crazy and random do in fact exist. Deadpool, he can even break minds that were broken from the start. Brilliance. If you’re curious about Deadpool, Carnage, or just the insanity of Marvel, I recommend picking it up, my summary really doesn’t do it enough justice. Next time, Man-Bat, Batman’s other Jekyll and Hyde bad guy. 

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