You might have noticed that a new Carnage story came out yesterday (with my thoughts to be posted tomorrow). Anyway, followers of my site know I have a complicated relationship with that sociopathic symbiote. So pardon me for poking fun at some of the recurring tropes and themes in Carnage stories over in my latest list at ComicBook.com.
Mark Ginocchio is a professional writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. He's been collecting Amazing Spider-Man comic books since the late-1980s and launched Chasing Amazing in 2011 as a way to tell his story about Spider-Man, comics, collecting and everything else in-between. You also find Mark's writing at Comics Should Be Good at Comic Book Resources, WhatCulture.com and Longbox Graveyard. Follow him on Twitter for comic book chat @ChasingASMBlog.
It’s pretty weird how character dynamics develop and sort of perpetuate themselves without necessarily making any sense in the first place. In the article, you observe the conflict that Peter feels about sparing Carnage despite the near certainty that he will kill again. This is totally true, but what I find interesting is that Spidey suffers no such conflict with, say, Doc Ock, who has on multiple occasions sought to detonate WMDs in major metropolitan areas. So while Ock poses unquestionably the greater threat to humanity, the character dynamics have been set in place so that Peter always feels a sort of respect and compassion for Ock’s twisted genius, and would never entertain killing him or even allowing him to be killed, whereas Carnage is seen as a mad dog, and even Peter himself barely understands why he won’t put him down.