Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man #14
The Time Before Part 2
In the Negative Zone, an elder has been telling the youngest of his tribe of a legend among their people. Having to seek cover due to a meteor storm they hide out in a cave where the elder continues his story….
Blastaar has been hooked up to a device that will boost his powers to phenomenal levels as part of a plan to conquer the Earth. To test his upper limits, Blastaar fires a blast of energy that destroys a nearby planet. Although the test is a success it was very painful for Blastaar to endure. That’s when Cletus Kasady - his newest recruit - reports that a messenger has arrived and been skulking around. When the messenger explains that the rebels on the planet managed to evacuate before it was destroyed. Furious, Blastaar kills the messenger and then orders Cletus to take troops and track down the survivors. Kasady accepts this mission but says that he needs to take a side trip to find the presence that had drawn him to the Negative Zone to begin with.
Meanwhile, Spider-Man and Dusk are trying to figure out how to keep the population of an entire planet safe from Blastaar and his forces. That’s when a number of drones fly in to attack, prompting Spider-Man and Dusk to leap into action. Dusk has a particular advantage with his ability to blend in with the darkness. After they destroy the drones, Dusk asks Spider-Man if he will stay and help defend his people from Blastaar despite seemingly impossible odds. Spider-Man agrees to stay and help, telling Dusk that he lost his reason to live.[1] At that same moment, Cletus has followed the voice to a location and digs up a strange pod that has been buried in the ground. Sensing a new alien symbiote, inside, Cletus frees it and when it bonds with him he proclaims that Carnage is reborn.[2]
At this time, Blastaar is wired back into his machine and generating massive amounts of power when Spider-Man and Dusk arrive to stop him. Spider-Man is ambushed by the newly reborn Carnage, while Dusk confronts Blastaar. Furious at this new opposition, Blastaar decides to use his power to destroy everything. However, Dusk points out that if Blastaar destroys everything there will be nothing left for him to conquer. Seeing reason, Blastaar orders his minions to turn off the machine. However, Carnage doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity to commit mass genocide and turns the machine back on, causing Blastaar a great deal of pain as he is bombarded with more and more energy. Ripping the wires off, Blastaar vows to kill Carnage and the two come to blows. When the pair are enveloped in a field of energy, Spider-Man can’t stand by and let them kill themselves and leaps into the energy.
When Spider-Man pulls Carnage free, the pair are blasted by Blastaar and sent hurtling into the Negative Zone where they are caught in another maelstrom where they blackout. When Spider-Man wakes up he finds himself back in Manhattan wearing his normal costume and Kasady being taken into police custody.[3] Spider-Man flees the scene before he can be arrested as well, watching Spider-Man go Cletus Kasady grins as tendrils of his new symbiote begin forming on his face.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Blastaar, Carnage, Dusk
Continuity Notes
Spider-Man is referring to the apparent death of Mary Jane who seemingly perished in a plane crash in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #13. However, she is still alive as we’ll learn in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #29.
The original Carnage symbiote, born Amazing Spider-Man #345, was consumed by Venom in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #10. Following this story, the Carnage symbiote is always referred to as the same one that Venom gave birth to even though this is an entirely different entity.
Oh right, this entire issue Spider-Man was wearing the nano-costume of his Earth-751263 counterpart as we saw last issue. It was a blatant promotion for the Spider-Man Unlimited cartoon that was airing around the time this comic book was published.
Errors
The narrative to this story incorrectly attributes the “death” of Mary Jane to Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #12. It actually happened in issue #13
Explaining the Symbiote Situation
After this issue, writers seem to forget about this story and have referred to the symbiote bonded to Cletus Kasady as the original Carnage symbiote birthed by Venom instead of a new entity that he found in the Negative Zone. I think this is basically due to the fact that the writers in question did not do their homework.
Over at my former alma mater, the Marvel Database, they state on their pages about the Carnage symbiote that the original Carnage symbiote somehow absorbed this new symbiote even though there is not a single shred of evidence supporting this other than a Tumblr response from Cullen Bunn who wrote the second volume of Venom. It’s this sort of sloppy work that makes a wiki platform (particularly those on the Fandom network) totally unreliable garbage. A writer making a comment like this on social media or an interview doesn’t make it canonical because a later writer can take on the character and address the issue and do something completely different than what someone stated in an old interview. Only in-universe explanations should be considered canonical until then it’s entirely speculation.
Case in point, the Carnage entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #3 makes a distinction between the two symbiotes that Casady has worn.
In any event, the mental aerobics done by the dipshits at Fandom just goes to show that fans are the worst at trying to figure shit out and come up with something exceedingly complicated to explain something that is very simple. Why do people not recognize the symbiote that Kasady wears as a different being than the one birthed by Venom is very simple: The only person who really knows this is Cletus Kasady (who is batshit insane) and the minions of Blastaar who helped him dig it up. Nobody else saw that. Since the two symbiotes are nearly identical it’s no surprise that everyone just assumes that it is the original Carnage symbiote. How does Venom not know the difference? Well, he’s also not very sane. Also, his own symbiote has a long history of manipulating him in an effort to keep him dependant upon it (as seen in the third volume of Venom) why would it tell Eddie Brock the truth about a new Carnage symbiote if it makes him more dependant on the symbiote?
Sometimes the simpler explanation is the better one, but even then, this is all conjecture on my part and isn’t any more canonical than the garbage on the Database, or shit a writer says on Tumblr instead of providing an explanation in the story.
