Sunday, October 28, 2012

Minimum Carnage: Alpha #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, I'm game.  This issue isn't perfect, resorting to a lot of exposition that I guess you have to have in these sorts of team-up events, where readers of one series might be unfamiliar with the protagonist from the other.  But, once they get past introducing Flash's whininess and Kaine's crankiness, Bunn and Yost manage to channel the creepiness of Carnage, reminding you what an unpredictable threat he is.

As the first issue in the cross-over event, this issue obviously raises some questions, like why the "tiny people" contacted Cletus and why they were seemingly stuck on Earth in the first place.  Perhaps the most interesting part of the issue is Flash's discomfort in the mere existence of Carnage.  The discovery that the symbiote has bonded with Cletus on a cellular level clearly shakes him, particularly since he's not exactly doing such a great job of control his own symbiote lately.  Kaine seems less fazed when confronting Carnage, having no reason to view him as anything other than a violent monster who needs to be stopped.  Their battle is fun, in a sick way, as Cletus comes to realize that Kaine, who tries to snap his neck and uses his claws to break free of Carnage's hold, isn't Spider-Man.  Cletus, of course, is in his usual form, and I loved him surprising the "tiny people" by revealing that the "clean start" he wants in the Microverse is just the ability to kill more people in a whole new universe.  That sounds like the sort of thing that would motivate Cletus.

I'm still not so sure that "Kaine and Venom take on the Microverse" was a story that needed to be told, but Bunn and Yost sell it enough that I'm interested to see where they go with it.

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