by skarekrow13 Tue May 14, 2013 1:00 pm
Carnage was pretty sweet. Venom was better in my opinion. Here's my issue with Carnage though....(which is not to say you can't love ol' Cletus)
He suffered from the same issue as Doomsday with that atrocious in hindsight Death and Return of Superman. He was out of the league of the Hero he was matched with. Don't get me wrong, I loved everything about Maximum Carnage with the exception of the crappy video game but it's near impossible to make a logical story (in my mind) after something like that. Spidey needed like 300 assists to get the victory and a cast of supporting heroes that pretty much exhausted the Marvel library. Now, any time I saw Carnage after I had to think to myself.....how come he isn't as bad*** as he used to be? Where's Captain America swooping in at the last second to bail out Spidey? What the crap. Same thing with Doomsday.
Story arc: Here comes Doomsday > Kills Superman easily > For some reason there are like 37 Superman variants now, with admittedly more compelling personalities than the original Superman > Real Superman is alive again somehow > Superman is now waaaay stronger for some reason > Beats Doomsday
Basically I'm saying, for me, the buildup for those two things ruined the characters forever after.
EDIT: As villains I really felt like both had amazing potential but it's tough to be super OP right at the get go then decline. On the other hand, as an actual character, Cletus Kasady was pretty well fleshed out and compelling.