Carnage: It's a Wonderful Life #1
It's a Wonderful Life
The Ravencroft Institute has been put under the control of a corporate entity and is slowly shipping out a number of inmates. This is to the delight of Carnage, who mocks Doctor Ashley Kafka from the comfort of his cell. He tries to send the tendrils of his symbiote throughout the facility, but there are microwave barrier places all over to prevent the symbiote from getting out. When company employees come to ship Black Hole off to face death row in Texas, he mocks Kafka's upset over this decision. The company employees ask Ashley if Carnage ever stops talking, but by this point, she doesn't even hear his taunts anymore. Still, Carnage still ceaselessly searches for a way out, sending his tendrils through the fiber optic cable, but finds this path blocked with more microwaves. This coincides with John Jameson demonstrating the security features at the facility to the company man that will be taking over his job.[1] The company employee is impressed with the security set up, although he openly scoffs at Doctor Kafka's attempts to rehabilitate the inmates when, in his opinion, containment is a better solution. From his cell, Carnage hears all of this and begins mocking John and his sudden state of unemployment. Sending a tendrill into the pipes, he tries to come up through one of the toilets. Mocking Ashley once again, Carnage gloats about how the rest of the inmates are going to be put on medications and immediately reintegrated into society. Knowing that many of the inmates at Ravencroft are beyond redemption, he finds this plan to be hilarious. He also wonders where he will go, and suggests that if he is sent to the Vault they won't be able to contain him there and he will break loose again and go on another murder spree.
Finally having enough, Ashley confronts Carnage at the front door of his cell and demands to know what she should be happy about. Her facility is being taken over by corporate interests and her attempts to cure psychopaths like Cletus Kasady are now nothing more than failures. Carnage points out that this is all proof that his worldview, that of chaos and anarchy, are proven valid by this turn of events. This angers Kafka, who tells Cletus that he doesn't really believe in chaos, that he is only concerned with having power over others and being in control. When two company accountants approach her about Carnage, she reminds them that the violent serial killer is still under her care until the following day and not to interrupt her until then. Seeing the two company drones amuses Carnage who recalls the recent release of two inmates known as Wolverina and Razorwire. The company pulled them from the facility to be put into a release-to-welfare program despite Kafka's insistence that the pair remains sedated. No sooner were they out of Kafka's care, did they attempt to escape causing their van to crash, killing everyone on impact. Carnage is still ranting and raving his own personal philosophy as Ashley and John Jameson go outside far out of earshot of Carnage so they can discuss what to do with him. She wants to try an untested theory and John agrees to follow her through on it to the end.
Later that evening, John and Ashley enter Carnage's cell and shut down the microwave cage that keeps him restrained. As Jameson holds him back with tranquilizer darts, Kafka injects drugs into Carnage's system.[2] However, Carnage is not as harmless as it appears, and he quickly bonds his symbiote to them before the drugs kick in, knocking them out in the process. When Ashley and John wake up, they first think that Carnage used this opportunity to escape from his cell.[3] However, Doctor Kafka quickly realizes that Carnage didn't escape, he made them prisoners inside his mind. That's when Carnage makes his presence known and welcomes them to "Carnage World". Suddenly, their surroundings change to a fenced-in pen filled with piles of dead bodies dressed up as Spider-Man. Although Kafka is fascinated by this physical manifestation of Carnage's hatred of the wall-crawler, John Jameson is disgusted and tries to pick a fight with Carnage. Deciding to have fun with this, Carnage changes John into a duplicate of himself so he can play out his fantasy to be the victim as well as the killer.
This battle quickly ends as Carnage grows bored and changes the setting to a library. As Carnage rants about human history, Ashley is surprised to know that he studied anything, let alone history. This is all an opening for Carnage to begin another rant about violence as the library is stormed by warriors that represent the entire history of warfare. As Ashley avoids the attackers, she warns John to let it pass, reminding him that this is all in Carnage's mind. However, John is slowly becoming savage and fights for a weapon. Ashley insists that humankind is generally good. However, this does little to sway Carnage who ramps up all of the violent imagery. John continues to fight was increasing savagery until the battle ends. Suddenly, he begins feeling pain racking through his body. When Ashley insists that they continue pressing on with compassion, he disagrees, saying her way is still not working. Despite this, Ashley feels that these violent impulses are not helping them. That's when she notices her hand is undergoing some kind of transformation. When she tries to get John's to look at it, he is undergoing a transformation on his own. He is slowly taking on the form of the Man-Wolf and is being lured into the part of Kasady's mind that he refers to as Necropolis. He lures John in further with various faceless attackers.[4]
As Ashley tries to catch up with John she finds that someone is slowing her down. She also notices that she is continuing to transform, taking on an insectile form. Soon Carnage pulls both her and John into a twisted late-night talk show scene where he continues his insane manifesto of violence and chaos. He then unleashes his undead studio audience on the pair. However, Ashley realizes that fighting is what Carnage wants and convinces John to come back for her and they flee the scene, much to the psychopath's chagrin. The pair manages to slip into the memories of Cletus Kasady. There they see a memory form when Cletus was a teenager when he is rejected by his girlfriend. She is upset that he dropped out of school and given in to depression. However, the man who would become Carnage insists that it is everyone around him who is changing. They start traveling further into his memories. In one they witness Kasady's father being executed in the electric chair.[5] Further and further they go, where they witness the murder of Cletus' mother at the hands of his father. Carnage attempts to prove that all this personal tragedy confirms his position, saying that the world is full of cruelty, monsters, and violence. That's when they find a memory of his old childhood friend Billy Bentine.[6] They point out that regardless of what happened to Cletus growing up, Billy was a true friend who always met him with kindness.
Faced with this contradiction to his worldview, Carnage tries to resist by threatening to kill the memory of Billy. However, try as he might, he cannot bring himself to do it and violently rejects John and Ashley from his mindscape, freeing them in the real world. When they wake up it is morning and they are in the infirmary. They quickly rush to the cell that held Carnage but discovers that it is empty. Rushing outside they see that Cletus Kasady is being wheeled out to be transferred to another facility. John believes they have won as Kasady has completely internalized within himself, ending his threat. However, as the van drives away with Kasady inside, Ashley Kafka wishes she can believe that the threat of Carnage is finally over.
Recurring Characters
Carnage, Ashley Kafka, John Jameson
Continuity Notes
John mentions how Carnage once used the ethernet connections to try and escape the facility, this was in Venom Carnage Unleashed #1-4.
Carnage asks if this is further punishment for the whole "Kurtz Incident" he is referring to driving Matthew Kurtz insane in Carnage: Mind Bomb #1.
John laments about Carnage escaping "again", at the time of this story he broke out of Ravencroft on two different occasions once in Venom Carnage Unleashed #1-4 and the Planet of the Symbiotes story arc.
Carnage likens John's limbering pace to that of his arthritic grandmother. This is how Carnage chose to remember his grandmother in Venom Carnage Unleashed #3. However, Carnage Vol 2 #12 reveals that she was actually wheelchair-bound.↑ Roscoe Kasady murdered Cletus' mother as first revealed in Venom Carnage Unleashed #1.
The relationship between Cletus Kasady and Billy Bentine was first exploded in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #28.
