Product Description

The perennial fan-favorite collection, back in print! Carnage, the spawn of Venom, has assembled an army of Spider-Man's criminally insane adversaries to spread his message of hostility, chaos and wholesale slaughter: Carrion, Demogoblin, Shriek and the Spider-Man Doppelganger! Outmanned and overpowered, the wall-crawler must recruit his own band of super-beings to combat the rising tide of evil: Black Cat, Cloak & Dagger, Firestar, Captain America, Deathlok and ... Venom?! Spider-Man's worst enemy becomes his uneasy ally in the battle to halt Carnage's mad rampage. But when he finds himself at odds with a number of his allies, who want to finish Carnage and his cronies once and for all, Spider-Man must decide whether to violate his personal code of honor to rid the world of pure evil. Can the web-slinger find an alternative before it's too late? Either choice carries dire consequences! Collects AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Vol. 1) #378-380, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #201-203, SPIDER-MAN #35-37, SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED #1 and #2, and WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #101-103.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174043 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

A classic saga, but an average story.
Maximum Carnage - the saga that lasted 14 issues over multiple publications and included pretty much every random superhero and supervillain the creators could cram in it. Good? Well, not as good as it could have been.

The story starts off promisingly with Carnage escaping from his high security pen and going on a murderous rampage through New York with various oddball villains that join him and become part of his twisted little family. This leads to Spiderman having to team up with various good guys, and not so good guys (such as Venom and Morbius) in order to stop the bloodshed. It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately the majority of the 14 issues is simply based on fight after fight with no clear winner and the occasional introduction of a new villain or hero - which doesn't make it any more interesting. Add on a slightly nauseating christian subtext that is anything but subtle and you're left with..well, not much really. However, the interactions between Venom and Carnage with Spiderman stuck in the middle are amusing as always and despite being pretty monotonous it is a major saga of the 90s and worth reading, at least once.

The best graphic novel superhero/villan team up EVER
The story starts with Carnage (Cletus Kasady) escaping from Ravencroft prison with his accomplice Shriek (she can generate sound waves) and together with Spiderman's Doppelganger they go on a killing rampage through New York City, teaming up with Demogoblin and Carrion along the way. To counter the killing spree Spiderman teams up with Venom, Black Cat, Iron Fist, Nightwatch, Morbius, Captain America, Cloak and Dagger and Deathlok and thus a constant and huge battle of good and evil commences. However some of our heroes have problem sworkign with each other due to differences in MO (Spidey and Venom, Spidey and Morbius for example) which makes the story more interesting. The artwork is fantastic, unsurprisingin since the comic is prencilled mostly by Mark Bagley, now with Ultimate Spiderman.
Very cool comic overall and one to have in your collection. The spiderman comics nowadays suck in comparison.

Repetitive...
This book has the intelligence of a brick wall. Basically the 12 or so issues it collects features fight after fight after fight with nothing of any significance really ever happening. This could have easily been a 3 or 4 issue story arc. Some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy and unfortuanetly it is almost impossible to enjoy this book unless you are five years old.

If you only "read" comics for the fights then you'll love this, since there is one(or two! Maybe even three...) in every issue. The art is average, typical 90s style. I didn't really enjoy the art style myself being used to the visually attractive art we have these days. With a fight happening every issue, and no one really getting injured or anything actually happening as an outcome of the fight- I found that my brain switched off in the fight scenes. Which is a not-small portion of the book.

The only redeeming feature of this "Graphic Novel" are the interactions between Spider-Man, Venom and carnage. Yes the dialogue is awfully cheesy, but these scenes of speech are enjoyable non-the less. The constant arguements and threats thrown across the table are interesting and some are almost funny. However, I did find Spider-Man himself slightly annoying in this book. He is written like he is a nun or something. A complete goody two shoes, he hates it when anyone does anything wrong. Now, I know that he is the hero but in this particular graphic novel, this aspect of him is really over-written. Because I wasn't aware that Spider-Man was a nun.

Basically, the best parts of this book are the scenes with Venom. He has an interesting relationship with Carnage and Spidey so he often gets the best lines. A few of the fights here and there are interesting but most of them are instantly forgettable. So if you like your comics to be low on plot/character development and full of disposable action- this is the comic for you!