Description

Personality

A serial killer.
Criminally insane.

His philosophy that life was essentially meaningless and futile, that "laws are only words", and came to see the spreading of chaos through random, unpatterned bloodshed as "the ultimate freedom."

Equipment

Powers and abilities:

As Eddie Brock explained, due to the fact that Carnage's symbiote gestated in an alien environment to it, Earth, it was born with abilities even more singular than those of its progenitor. The alien symbiote endows Cletus Kasady with enhanced physical strength greater than that of Spider-Man and Venom combined and shapeshifting abilities, allows him to project a web-like substance from any part of his body including the formation of weapons, and enables him to plant thoughts into a person's head using a symbiote tendril. Much like Spider-Man, Kasady has the ability to cling to virtually any surface, and has a version of Spider-Man's spider-sense, as the symbiote can relay information to him from any angle and grants Kasady the ability to "see" in any direction, warning him of incoming threats. He can rapidly crawl, walk, or run across even slick surfaces. The Carnage symbiote has similar abilities of that of Spider-Man's as a direct result of the Venom symbiote's first host, Peter Parker, who transferred some of Spider-Man's power into the symbiote.

The symbiote can protect Kasady from bullets from small-arms weapons. He is able to rapidly regenerate damaged body tissues much faster and more extensively than an ordinary human. It isn't known, however, if he can fully regenerate severed limbs or missing internal organs. Kasady is also immune to the effects of all Earthly diseases and infections as long as he remains bonded with the symbiote. Like Venom, the symbiote is vulnerable to sound (to a much smaller degree than Venom) and heat (to a much larger degree than Venom), and is undetectable to Spider-Man's spider-sense. Unlike Venom, Carnage can launch parts of his symbiote at enemies in the form of weapons such as darts, spears, knives, axes, etc., although they disintegrate into dust within ten seconds of leaving Carnage's body.

Kasady has full control over the size, shape, color (usually red and black), texture, and hardness of his symbiote (and any part thereof). Like Venom, he can make his symbiote look like normal clothing (which he has done on rare occasion), or act as "camoflauge", blending him into the surrounding environment (which he has never done). With the symbiote bonded to his bloodstream, he can "regenerate" his costume from scratch simply by bleeding. His symbiote has the peculiar ability to block its parent's (Venom's) ability to sense and track it.

In some interpretations, the Carnage symbiote is vampiric, feeding on and thus endangering his victims by mere touch. The symbiote was augmented by prosthetics and is now able to grow wings at will, giving it the ability of flight. The symbiote has also shown the ability to call back parts of itself back to the main symbiote, adding it to the parts that already make up the symbiote. It can also send commands that cannot be resisted to parts of itself that are in technology, used to break the bones of the Iron Rangers when they challenged Carnage while wearing symbiote-enhanced technological exo-suits. Using these last two abilities, Carnage absorbed the five Iron Rangers and grew to an enormous size and colored blue.

Finally, Carnage's powers have always been abnormally enhanced from the maniacal will and insane worldview that Cletus Kasady has had from the age of 8 years old onward. Kasady sees "chaos" and random, undirected violence as reality, and considers "order" and virtue to be illusions. He takes an almost artistic pride in his mayhem, likes to leave a trail for others to follow (usually leaving the phrase "Carnage Rules" written in his own blood), and is recklessly willing to take on the most dangerous and powerful of opponents and victims. (On rare occasions, however, he has deliberately spared individuals in order to serve as witnesses for others—for instance, Joe Robertson's wife Martha during Savage Rebirth.) Kasady is essentially taking revenge on the whole world for the torment—both real and imagined—of his childhood.

Though bonded to Cletus Kasady's bloodstream, the symbiote found a way to ditch its host.

Carnage's homicidal urges make him an erratic and dangerous opponent.

History

The Symbiote,

is a specific species of extraterrestrial organism. These Symbiotes are sometimes referred to as "living costumes" because of the way the amorphous creatures envelope their hosts and can act as clothing or a costume. Symbiotes were originally an unfeeling, conquering race, taking over any species they came in contact with to feed off their emotions; this mainly involved adrenaline rushes from death-defying feats and, as a consequence, the hosts tend to be short-lived. This was also evidenced in the Fantastic Four series, when a black cube (imprisoned by Devos the Devastator as a trophy of the most dangerous species he has ever faced) escapes and is revealed to be a sentient extraterrestrial symbiote (called Dreadface in the issue's title) that fuels (and then feeds off) the animosity between the Human Torch and the Thing before apparently being incinerated.

The Venom symbiote is the first permanent symbiote resident of Earth, brought by Spider-Man after the events of Secret Wars. It was later established that the Venom symbiote was considered crazy by its fellow parasites since it sought a mutual bond with a host rather than domination, and was imprisoned on a planet that later became part of Beyonder's Battleworld. Once on Earth, the Venom suit was bonded to Spider-Man for some time before being forced off onto Eddie Brock. Stung by the rejection, the symbiote came to hate the superhero and sought revenge with Brock. During this time, it spawned six children, its first child would later have two of its own. Brock would soon reform and spent a considerable amount of time trying to become a hero with the suit.

Though originally happy with Brock, for reasons not entirely clear, the symbiote gradually became increasingly possessive and abusive of him, eventually being sold off by Eddie. It is later revealed that it only stuck with him because of cancer of his adrenal glands. Its treatment of him late in their time together is somewhat inconsistent with the earlier depiction of the symbiote by writers. Since then, the Venom suit has gradually grown more and more monstrous and psychotic. It is currently bonded to Flash Thompson, who struggles to control it, but the symbiote has recently been shown to be developing some slight affection for him. This would suggest the host's mental state can affect the symbiote just as much as the other way around, as the Carnage symbiote is as psychotic as its host and the Venom suit's explosiveness got worse after bonding to its two hosts after Brock, both of which were career criminals. Likewise, the various symbiotes bonded to heroes are not shown to be as twisted, though they occasionally struggle with aggression.

Angel Medina claims he was reluctant to start work on Mighty Avengers because he was working on a Venom project, only to be told he would be drawing a story with "the Avengers vs. an alien invasion — by the Venoms." This story arc was later confirmed to be drawn by Mark Bagley, as Medina would be unavailable. Solicitations state that the New Avengers will also be part of this arc, themselves becoming infested by Symbiotes. Doctor Doom is responsible for dropping a "Venom Bomb" on New York that unleashes the Symbiotes. Further backstory reveals that Doctor Doom collected a tiny sample of the symbiote's cells from the drone he had sent in earlier. Later, it is revealed that Kristoff Vernard actually orchestrated this so that Doom would be arrested for the event above.

Unlike Venom, Carnage is a singular entity, referring to himself as "I" instead of "We", because the symbiote had actually merged into Kasady's bloodstream.


Cletus Kasady,

had a troubled childhood: he killed his grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs and tortured his mother's dog. His mother then tried to kill Cletus, and was apparently beaten to the brink of death by Kasady's father, who received no defense from Kasady during his trial. As an orphan, Kasady was sent to the St. Estes Home for Boys, where his antisocial behavior made him the target of abuse from both the other orphans and the staff. Kasady gained revenge by murdering the disciplinarian administrator, pushing a girl who refused to date him in front of a moving bus, and burning down the orphanage.

He is captured and sent to Ryker's Island prison where he shares a cell with Eddie Brock, who had lost the alien symbiote that transformed him into the supervillain Venom. Brock's symbiote soon returns and bonds with him again, and unwittingly leaves behind the symbiote's offspring; the symbiotes reproduce asexually and the children are then of no consequence to the parent, hence Brock's symbiote felt no need to inform Brock of the existence of its offspring. The new symbiote enters Kasady's bloodstream through a cut and bonds with his blood, transforming him into Carnage. He escapes prison, and begins a series of murders, and at the scene of each crime, writes "Carnage" on the walls with his own blood. He is found by Spider-Man, though the hero proves to be no match for Carnage's powers. In desperation, Spider-Man makes a truce with Venom to fight Carnage. Carnage is defeated with sonic weaponry, but the symbiote lives on because it is merged with Kasady's bloodstream.

Kasady is taken to The Vault, a prison for super-villains—then Ravencroft Institute, a facility for the super-human criminally insane. A doctor at the facility, hoping to find a "cure" for his madness, draws blood from him—unwittingly enabling Kasady to morph into Carnage—who goes on to recruit an army of psychopathic supervillains including Shriek, Demogoblin, Carrion, and Doppelganger to overtake New York City. Using Shriek's "psychic channel" powers, he also drives ordinary New Yorkers to attack one another. Carnage and his "family" are ultimately driven back by Spider-Man, Venom, and a number of other superheroes, with Carnage and Shriek being remanded to Ravencroft.

During a subsequent jailbreak, he made it his mission to kill his only childhood friend, Billy Bentime—hoping to refute the notion that friendship should be paid in kind. Carnage nearly defeated Spider-Man until Bentime tricked Carnage into reverting to human form, enabling Spider-Man to knock Kasady out. The Carnage symbiote was supposedly destroyed in a subsequent conflict, and Kasady was sent back to Ryker's Island, where he unexpectedly transformed during transfer and rampaged through the prison.


Carnage is imprisoned,

during a subsequent rampage, the Carnage symbiote briefly attempted to take control of the Silver Surfer, but the Surfer and Spider-Man were able to return the symbiote to Kasady, the Surfer subsequently sealing Kasady in an unbreakable prison in an attempt to force him to reflect on his sins for eternity.


Carnage is reborn:

Having tracked Kasady to a prison specially designed to hold him, Venom eventually reabsorbs the Carnage symbiote into his own body "for good." Kasady, however, eventually finds another symbiote who had been kept sealed in the Negative Zone (a universe parallel to Earth's where all matter is negatively charged; it is entirely filled with a pressurized, breathable atmosphere; and near the center of the Negative Zone is a deadly vortex of unspeakable power.) and bonded with it to form a seciond Carnage.