Carnage #13 Review

Papa… Papa Please

Written by: Gerry Conway

Art by: Mike Perkins, Andy Troy and joe Sabino

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: October 19, 2016

When this series started out, I was all for it. Carnage is my favorite Spider-Man villain, and even though I was a little skeptical about how he would do with his own title, I was ready to go. The first arc was awesome, probably a 9/10 in my mind, but it’s been steadily declining ever since. I keep finding myself hoping each issue is going to be the one to get it back on track. So let’s hop into #13 and see if it’s back to what it once was.

We start out with Carnage and Raze fighting their way through the inhabitants of this island that is allegedly home to some altar that Carnage needs for the Darkhold to work. Carnage gets a flashback to one of Jubulile’s memories. Carnage tried to change Jubulile into one of his minions on her sailboat, but it didn’t work and they’ve been connected ever since. We see Cletus (in Jubulile’s place) talking to his parents on the sailboat about the ocean before her dad coughs up a little blood.

Back to present time, Carnage tries to figure out what’s going on, but the weird blue inhabitants of the island surround him and Raze. They fight them off for a little while but are forced to retreat. They manage to get away, but another memory gets in Carnage’s head. This time, he’s working on the sailboat with his father, talking about how they’re going to sail around the world one day. His dad is clearly sick and collapses in his arms.

As he snaps out of it, the symbiote goes off of Cletus’ body for a minute and you can see how pale and week he looks. Jubulile’s memory makes him angry so he snaps right back into Carnage and sets off for the altar. As they near the altar, Cletus snaps into another one of Jubulile’s memories, this one of the day her dad died and she promised to sail around the world for him.

As he comes out of it, it looks like they’re almost at their destination. He and Raze start the long descent down to the altar as the island’s inhabitants watch on. At this point, I have no idea where Gerry Conway is taking this series, but I have to say I’m interested. The story has been mind-bending and pretty weird all the way through and I’m ready to finally get some answers.

I’ve been a huge fan of Mike Perkins’ art the whole way through, and once again I thought it looked great. He’s one artist I would’ve loved to have seen on that on monster-filled Batman crossover that I don’t really want to think about anymore.

Bits and Pieces:

This book has never been easy to decipher. But while more and more questions keep getting raised with very few answers, it’s finally getting me interested again. I hope this quality keeps up around the level of the first arc, instead of down where we’ve been since then.

7.5/10