|
This article, Cletus Cassidy (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
White (with symbiote)
No Hair (with symbiote)
Spider-Man Vol 1 34
Venom Vol 2 35
History
We're gonna paint the whole damn world red!
- — Carnage
- — Carnage
Early Years
Cletus Cassidy (born 1968) had a troubled and quite morbidly disturbing childhood. Growing up in an abusive and mentally disordered family, he would he intentionally kill his grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs, and tortured his mother's dog, which were both fueling his sociopathy. Afterward, his father killed his mother, and received no defense from Cassidy during his trial. As an orphan, Cassidy 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. When he was a teen, Cassidy gained revenge by murdering the disciplinarian administration and burning down the orphanage, killing and injuring several of the staff and personnel inside the building until he was subdued by persons in authority.
Meeting Eddie Brock
Now developing and embracing his personality as a homicidal maniac, Cletus was serving eleven consecutive prison terms for his inhumane crimes when an opportunity for early parole presented itself in the form of his new cell mate Eddie Brock, human host to a symbiotic suit once worn by the web-slinger Spider-Man. The monster and man had merged to become the villainous (and later the anti-heroic) Venom, but Brock was separated from the alien symbiote during a battle with the web-slinger. While Brock waited for the symbiote to spring him from prison, Cassidy entertained him with his homicidal philosophy on life: that even the average person can commit murder, as long as he has the courage and the guts to do it himself, which slightly disturbed Brock and made him reflect on his path of murderous vengeance whether it was worth it from the beginning.
There Came Carnage
As anticipated, the Venom symbiote attempted to free Brock by inciting a destructive jailbreak. Unknown to its human host, the alien was pregnant due to previous repetitious experimentation by the Life Foundation (former subsidiary of A.I.M.) on the symbiote before escaping captivity. Then, it gave birth during the disastrous rescue. Left behind in the midst of the riot that ensued, the symbiote's spawn bonded with Cassidy. Empowered far beyond the levels of Spider-Man and Venom, he made good his escape - intent on using his new-found power to disseminate his lethal doctrine and as the ravenous Carnage, embarking on a citywide killing spree to satisfy his ruthless, sadistic personality.
Attacking Spider-Man
Embarking on a citywide killing spree, Carnage was confronted by Spider-Man. However, the wall-crawler's amazing arachnid-like abilities were insufficient to subdue the thrice-strong serial killer. Spider-Man was forced to enlist the aid of the heroic Fantastic Four in order to defeat the heartless villain and try to separate Cletus from the organic suit. But despite being defeated, Cletus never wanted to separate himself from the host and neither did the symbiote, as the two had an mutual, inseparable bond.
As a result, the battle eventually ended with Carnage escaping his foes due to defeat, finding its way down the sewers of New York. Following Carnage's escape, Spider-Man vows to immediately confront Carnage once they met again, and with the help of the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic, they decided to study a fragment of the symbiote left on the scene of the battle, so they would also use it as a tool to eventually track the symbiote itself, while Cletus was still at large as for the time being.
Versus Venom
He also sought the assistance of another more dangerous ally, a mutant outcast by the name of Frances Barrison, whom Cletus eventually fell in love with as they helped each other in battling the Carnage symbiote's father, Venom, the latter becoming one of his most-despised foes. But even though Venom despised its offspring even more, it seemingly agreed to help as a price of killing the Spider by themselves. Later, Cletus was betrayed by Venom due to his change of heart as a lethal protector, who unwillingly sought out on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and his fellow villain and former cellmate, Ulysses Klaue for their help in order to take down an unstoppable Carnage and rival the sonic scream of Shriek from causing worse death and chaos.
Facing the combined might and the efforts of Spider-Man, Venom, Klaw, and the Fantastic Four, Carnage and Shriek were eventually defeated in the end. Defeated once more, Cletus, still bonded with Carnage, was apprehended and was captured, imprisoning the Shriek at Ravencroft Institute while Cletus and Carnage at a Life Foundation facility, where he had to remain imprisoned and experimented away from the eyes of the authorities, until the prison's ultimate destruction during the days of Ultimate War had led to their escape once again.
Carnage, Reborn
Later on, the Venom Symbiote eventually reabsorbed the Carnage Symbiote into his own body after a brief confrontation between the two villains. Without the Symbiote in him, Cassidy attempted to re-assume the Carnage persona by costuming himself in red paint and continuing his killing sprees without it, claiming that he still possessed at least some of Carnage's strength and convinced that he only needed to kill Spider-Man and Venom to regain his Symbiote, but Spider-Man nevertheless easily defeated him in a fight. Cassidy, however, eventually found himself encountering another escaped symbiote, which was revealed to be a surviving portion of the Carnage symbiote, on the streets of San Francisco, which had been kept sealed inside the abandoned headquarters of the Life Foundation, which was in ruins after a devastating self-contained conflict, and willingly bonded with it to form the second symbiote of the Carnage.
Having to become the bloodthirsty villain once more, Cletus was starting to communicate with the newly-bonded symbiote, begging for his help and request into fulfilling something that the symbiote has wanted to do for a very long time, which was to track down and mercilessly slaughter all the abusive and sadistic members of the infamous Life Foundation, specifically the ones who treated the symbiote like some kind of a lab rat in an attempt to weaponize it for their own interests. Cletus willingly agrees with the symbiote's requests, since after all, he has never killed anyone ever since he was imprisoned at the Ravencroft Institute, before starting his first anti-heroic journey to find down all the members, and kill until he finally gets the chance to find the true mastermind behind the every single symbiote's suffering, who was Carlton Drake.
However, unknown to Cletus' awareness at the moment, the Carnage symbiote was secretly pregnant as the result of getting experimented by the organization, conceiving another symbiote that was threatening the Carnage Symbiote by its existence. The Carnage Symbiote tried to find a way to kill it even before it fully develops, however, it couldn't even be killed, causing for it to wait until Cletus was able to track down Drake, so that Carnage would finally be able to threaten Drake into exterminating the symbiote embryo for good.
Minimum Carnage
Starting his ravenous crusade in hunting down the surviving members of the Life Foundation, Cletus unintentionally crossed paths with a NYPD cop by the name of Patrick Mulligan after Cletus' searches for the members had led him back into the city of New York. Coincidentally, Cletus started knowing about Mulligan's hatred towards Drake after knowing that he was the on responsible for the death of his wife, Gina, who once worked at the Life Foundation before her timely demise. Cletus also knew that not long since Gina had died, Patrick had started a series of investigations in order to prove that Drake really is guilty of causing the deaths of many, including his love, during the Carnage's earlier years of killing spree.
Revealed into having the similar motives in taking down the hiding members of Life Foundation, Cletus eventually and mysteriously approaches Patrick as some kind of a beggar sitting in the street. Patrick interrogated Cletus, who surprisingly was already of knowing his true identity at their first encounter, asking him what he knows about the remaining whereabouts of the Life Foundation. Cletus agreed to help Mulligan, but at the very condition of not telling the other authorities about his presence after he escaped Ravencroft, to which Mulligan unwillingly agrees to team up with Cletus, just so he could finally bring Carlton Drake into justice, once and for all.
After a series of confrontations and interrogations towards several low-ranking members of the disbanded organization, Mulligan and Cassidy was getting much, much closer into finding Drake. Throughout their journey, Patrick sadly forgot to realize that each and every time he apprehends these criminals, they all ended up dying at the bloodiest hands of Cletus and the Carnage Symbiote as he secretly and brutally butcher and devour all of them in the darkest shadows, much to Cletus' morbid satisfaction.
Payback Time
Hearing about the following deaths of the apprehended members, Patrick was shocked, causing for him to start having a suspicion towards Cletus for killing the members and started having a painful regret for trusting him in the first place. Receiving Mulligan's response, Cletus arrogantly calms Patrick down, telling him not to worry about it, and all that matters now is that they have finally found the exact location of where Drake has been hiding the whole time.
Eventually after days of searching for the hiding place of Carlton Drake, the two finally finds it, which was the old Drake Mansion, located in the isolated suburbs of Washington, DC. The two immediately tried to break in the mansion, only to find out that it was all protected by all sorts of defense systems activated by Drake himself, who was still inside the mansion witnessing their attempt, confident that not even a single symbiote could get in there.
Desperate into getting in the mansion, Patrick and Cletus tried to do their best into destroying all Drake's defense, only to cause Patrick to receive several shots of led into his body. Mortally wounded, Cletus had the choice to either reveal himself to be the Carnage and leave Mulligan for dead to go after Drake for himself, or to treat Cletus' wounds, even though that would be pointless since he was already dying. Thankfully, Cletus had thought of a better plan. Ordering the Carnage Symbiote to leave him for a short while, he told it to sneakily enter the mansion, to which it successfully did, reaching the overall controls that would finally deactivate the defense system.
Symbiotic Duel
Unbeknownst to an arrogant and overly-confident Drake, he was finally confronted by the Carnage Symbiote, alongside Cletus carrying a wounded Patrick by his side. Placing Mulligan in a safe corner to remain put in the mean time, Cletus smirks at Drake as he bonds with the symbiote once more, making Drake completely uncomfortable and nervous. As a result, Drake tried all the best that he could to get himself away from the murderous villain who was looking for payback, after what he tormentingly did on the symbiote, but failed in the process.
Accepting his defeat, Carlton seemingly surrenders to Cletus as he kneels before him, offering to the symbiote that he could still fix the condition the Carnage Symbiote was going through. Convinced by Drake's begs and pleads of fixing it, the Symbiote tries to desperately de-attach itself from Cletus, who even tries to talk the symbiote out of it, believing that they could still get rid of the symbiote's offspring in a better way, instead of having Drake's help. Now confused on which side to choose from, Drake makes the big opportunity to reveal his final weapon against Cletus and the Carnage. Unexpectedly opening a secret compartment in his living room comes the emergence of a symbiote Drake immediately attaches himself to, revealing that Drake had successfully created a much more powerful, more agile, a lot stronger artificial clone of all the symbiotes combined, using it for himself to combat against Carnage.
Realizing this would have been a threat to Carnage and its developing offspring, it attaches itself once again back into Cletus before both symbiotes clashed to the death. As the two symbiotes duel it out, Patrick eventually wakes up in the corner, as he witness the symbiotes cause havoc and devastation inside the mansion. Seeing that Cletus was all ready in slitting Drake's throat after successfully defeating him, Patrick immediately uses his anti-symbiote sonic device in his belt, driving off the symbiote from Cletus and weakening it in the process that stopped it from killing Carlton Drake.
The Birth of Toxin
Rising up from the ground, Patrick immediately aimed his gun both at the symbioteless Cletus and Carlton, arresting them for committing such crimes. However, just as the time when Patrick was able to bring Carlton into justice, Carnage suddenly screams in agony as it finally gives birth to its offspring. Confused by the series of events that was going on, Patrick stares in disbelief as a weakened Carnage tries to chase after its newborn offspring as it swiftly crawl towards Patrick. Distracted by what was exactly happening, Patrick failed to evade the newborn symbiote, causing for it to latch and attach itself on him as he tries getting himself out of it.
Patrick obviously failed to resist, and now he finally became the individual that many would later know as Toxin. Surprised to see that he is now in control of a symbiote, Patrick breaks down in tears after realizing that those things, the symbiotes, were the direct cause of his wife's death. Due to Patrick's emotions, the symbiote suddenly embraces its host's hatred towards Drake and grows in rage & wrath as he approaches an symbioteless Drake, in which he proceeds to mercilessly choke him, until Drake's symbiote immediately jumps out of nowhere, bonding itself back to Drake before the two engages in a battle to the death.
The battle didn't last that long, as the unpreparedness and the immature physiology of the Toxin symbiote has caused its downfall against Carlton Drake's powerful symbiote, despite it being just an artificially-organic clone. Defeated by the more powerful symbiote, Toxin was fallen under the hands of Carlton Drake, ready to have his head decapitated, until he was thankfully save by Carnage (whose host was still Cletus, once again) just in time to save its offspring from death. With the help of the symbiotes' alliance, their combined efforts has finally defeated Carlton, killing his symbiote in the process.
Father Vs. Son
After being defeated by the ones whom he had tormented, Toxin mercilessly grabs Drake upwards by his neck, slowly crushing his spine. But as Patrick hears Drake's painful struggles, he remembers Gina, and realizes that this was something his wife would not have wanted for him to become, a killer, even if she was still alive right now. Remembering his allegiance to law and order as a loyal police officer, Patrick lets Drake go from dying, and instead of killing the man, he decided to have him arrested for his unforgivable crimes.
However, by the time Toxin was supposed to apprehend Drake the right way, Cletus steps up in the scenario, where he unexpectedly impales Carlton with his symbiotic limb, right before brutally shredding and tearing him apart before consuming half of his corpse, killing Drake instantly, much to Patrick's shocked and traumatized expression. While Patrick freezes in disbelief, Carnage was filled with momentary euphoria and satisfaction after Cletus had finally killed someone once again. Seeing what Carnage have done, Toxin lashes out in outrage where he immediately attacks Carnage for murdering Drake in cold blood, believing that killing the latter was truly unnecessary.
In the lasting finale, the two engaged in a duel that ended with the NYPD arriving at the mansion, where they both tried to shoot Carnage and Toxin, to which they would never knew that Patrick was its host until later, to which they both escaped in the very end as the parted ways, for now. While Carnage was hiding under the sewers of New York City in the mean time while he continues his terrifying killing spree towards other criminals throughout the city, he was pityingly disappointed to its newborn offspring Toxin, after revealing that he continued bonding with Patrick Mulligan, where their bondage had made the pair develop into becoming into more of a hero, among the Marvel Knights of New York.
War of the Symbiotes
.jpg){kind=link}
Accessing the hive mind and gaining the powers of almost every symbiote on Earth through Darkforce, Carnage attained his nigh-cosmic level of power as Knull the Red
As Venom's native species, the Klyntar, were able to survive its slow yet progressing extinction by making its way on Earth in the form of the Venom (Carnage's father), the latter would discover that it has ended up repopulating a plethora of Klyntar symbiotes onto the blue-green planet for the past few years, and it all was made possible thanks to Carlton Drake, the lives of these newly-emerging offsprings would now last for generations to come, in which they aimed to rule the Earth as its dominant species, believing in desperation that it was the best way to escape their race's extinction.
Around the summer of 2018, during the final months of Norman Osborn's Dark Reign, Carnage knew that this moment would be to rise up and take the planet of Earth as their own new home and knowing how compatible this world was just like their homeworld, Carnage proclaimed to lead the symbiotes into their movement of turning Earth as New Klyntaria, with Cletus morbidly describing that he and his fellow symbiotes would be painting the world into red, slaughtering and consuming every single life form that defies and disrupts their cause and existence. Accessing the dimension known as Darkforce when Cletus discreetly activated and made use of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Inter-Dimensional Gate. At the time, the portal was stored by H.A.M.M.E.R. inside an undisclosed facility but he was able to get to after manipulating the mind of Scorpion's Venom symbiote (a duplicate of the original) to greenlight his entry without detection, Carnage was able to channel and harness negative energy akin to dark magic, mutating his symbiote into a state or level no other symbiote on Earth has ever attained at the time, not even Venom.
Thus, as the mutation enabled Cletus and Carnage to merge into one powerful being, he retrieved a million years worth of memories of the Symbiotes' history on Klyntar and manifested more, newer abilities of almost symbiote on Earth through the very hive mind Carnage has generated and manipulated, gaining higher power and declaring his ruthless title of ruler as Knull the Red, since he embraced the torturous and perverted ideologies of the late scientist who found and tried to manipulate the Symbiotes in their original homeworld — into Cletus' more twisted, deranged, and ravenously violent mind — as Cletus would make an small yet significant spark of connection with the creator of the symbiotes, a massive malevolent entity known as Null the Living Darkness, affirming Cletus' cause to transform planet Earth into a domain of darkness in the name of chaos and carnage.
To further ensure that his great mission would go smoothly, Cletus broke out his lover and partner Shriek from Ravencroft Institute as his right-hand woman. Because of Carnage's leadership on the lost symbiotes in his cult known as the Hive of the Abyss, Carnage's enemies Venom and Eddie Brock had to join forces with other new symbiotic users such as Toxin, Agent Anti-Venom along with the web-slinging superhero Spider-Man — which are joined by the minimal but crucial assistance of Cloak & Dagger and Masters of the Mystic Arts led by Clea and Brother Voodoo — to fight the symbiote collective and put an end to the hellish and malevolent leadership of Carnage himself and Shriek, and suggest to each and their own kind a better solution to survive, instead of letting the symbiotes take over the planet.
By the end of the great skirmish of the symbiotes on the fate of their survival on Earth, Carnage was defeated by the alliance Eddie and Venom was responsible for forming, and the last straw involved the main group of symbiotes, both those who defected from Carnage and those from the opposing alliance, to form together as the gestalt Hybrid, and with Clea and Voodoo's enchantments, they were able to possess the strong-willed Shriek into reluctantly unleashing and magically amplifying her sonic scream to severely weaken Carnage's immunity before throwing him onto several fuel tanks set to explode and combust, mortally wounding Carnage in spite of his superhuman power as a merged being. All alone, a dying Carnage still fought back with ultimate madness until he was completely dissolved and obliterated by Anti-Venom into pieces, with the modicum remains of the symbiote being devoured and absorbed back into the main group who defeated him, Venom included. Completely freed from the clutches of Carnage's hostile and coercive influence, the outcome of their battle ending with the mutual decision of both the alliance and the symbiotes to have most of the latter themselves ride on a rocket to leave Earth and find a new home on a planet somewhere in the Negative Zone under the guidance and leadership of Scream, a stellar migration that would eventually lead to the fruitful and peaceful repopulation of the symbiotes under the reestablished new colonies of New Klyntar.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Carnage Symbiote: The symbiote of which Cletus Cassidy is host provides him with numerous spider-like powers. Even without the symbiote, Cletus is still considered very dangerous, as his Antisocial Personality Disorder and obsession with chaos make him impossible to reason with and he has no trouble with killing with no motive. Upon reaching its highest known symbiosis when Cletus willingly merged himself with the symbiote on a tissue to molecular level depending on how they please it, Carnage became the most powerful symbiote to exist in modern day as both his Darkforce magical and biological induced mutations gained him thousands worth of powerful arcane symbiote abilities on native-born symbiotes could previously manifested before Klyntaria's destruction. However, the overall power of Carnage would still rival the Anti-Venom, due to its essential connection with the Lightforce, and the gestalt Hybrid when he was weakened by the former.
- Superhuman Strength
- Superhuman Speed
- Superhuman Stamina
- Superhuman Durability
- Superhuman Agility
- Superhuman Reflexes
- Regenerative Healing Factor
- Wall Crawling
- Webbing
- Camouflage Capabilities
- Constituent Matter Generation
- Constituent-Matter Manipulation
- Immunity to Spider-Man's Spider-Sense
- Darkforce Mutations and Enhancements
- Self-Sustenance
- Mixed Shapeshifting
- Darkforce Energy Channeling
- Immunity to Sonic and Heat
- Limited Darkforce Teleportation
- Limited Darkforce Energy Manipulation
- Darkness Generation and Manipulation
- Symbiote Manifestation and Domination
- Multi Hive Mind with the Symbiotes
| Power Grid [1] | |||||
| Intelligence |
|
||||
| Strength |
|
||||
| Speed* |
|
||||
| Durability* |
|
||||
| Energy Projection |
|
||||
| Fighting Skills* |
|
||||
Abilities
- Blade Mastery
- Knowledge on Weaponry
- Formidable Combatant
Strength level
Class 15+
Weaknesses
- Sonic and Heat
- Electricity
- Insanity
- Psychopathy
- Sociopathy
- Antisocial Personality
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Carnage Symbiote
Transportation:
- Web-Slinging
Weapons:
- Fangs and Claws
- Weaponized Limbs
Notes
- Carnage's spiral emblem as Knull the Red (or King in Red) was the symbol of the rogue faction of the Klyntaria's Science Council, first introduced by the late Klyntarian scientist Knull due to his twisted mind and historically infamous reputation in their world for revering the creator of the Symbiotes, Null the Living Darkness, whose form from afar resembles a spiraling nimbus.
- Through Carnage's gained memories via the Multi Hive Mind, it also indicates that the true nature, power, and origin of the symbiotes and their homeworld may have originated from the Great Old Ones, more commonly known on Earth in the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Through Carnage's gained memories via the Multi Hive Mind, it also indicates that the true nature, power, and origin of the symbiotes and their homeworld may have originated from the Great Old Ones, more commonly known on Earth in the Cthulhu Mythos.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Spider-Man Vol 1 34
Trivia
- No trivia.
See Also
- Appearances of Cletus Cassidy (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Cletus Cassidy (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Cletus Cassidy (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Carnage · Cletus Cortland Cassidy · Cletus Cassidy (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.