Cletus Kasady
Cletus Cortland Kasady is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer David Michelinie and artist Erik Larsen, the character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #344 as the first and most infamous host of the Carnage symbiote, an offspring of Venom. Originally a deranged serial killer, Kasady bonded with the symbiote while sharing a cell with Venom's human host, Eddie Brock, and broke out of prison using the super-human abilities granted by it. Since then, he went on to menace both Venom and Spider-Man, resulting in various unlikely alliances between the two to defeat him. Kasady and Carnage are a perfect match, as they both have sadistic personalities, and the symbiote only increases Kasady's already existent violent tendencies. After being separated from the redeemed Carnage symbiote in Absolute Carnage, Kasady nonetheless continued calling himself Carnage, bonding with Grendel, Mania and several other symbiotes to become Dark Carnage.
Since his original introduction in comics, the character has been adapted into several other forms of media, such as television series and video games. Woody Harrelson portrays Cletus Kasady in the live-action Sony's Spider-Man Universe films Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, bonding with Carnage in the latter film. In 2009, Kasady was ranked as IGN's 90th-greatest comic book villain of all time.
Publication history
Writer David Michelinie intended to have Venom's human alter ego, Eddie Brock, be killed off in The Amazing Spider-Man #400 and have the symbiote continue to bond with a series of hosts. However, as Brock and Venom's popularity increased, Marvel would not allow him to be killed. Michelinie decided to create a new character: a total psychopath who, unlike Venom, had no sense of morality. The human component of Carnage's first host, Cletus Kasady, was designed by artist Erik Larsen, who modeled the character after the DC Comics supervillain the Joker.Kasady was introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #344 and first appears as Carnage in issue #361. As the host of the Carnage symbiote, he is the main villain in the 1993 "Maximum Carnage" crossover, a 14-part storyline crossover that spanned through all the Spider-Man titles. In 1996, two one-shot comics centered entirely around Carnage were released, entitled Carnage: Mind Bomb and Carnage: It's a Wonderful Life, both of which expand on his character.
After a 2004 appearance in New Avengers the character was presumed dead and was absent from comics for nearly six years. A 2010–2011 limited series titled Carnage featured the return of Kasady as Carnage. The comic was released as a tie-in to the "Big Time" storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man. This was followed by another five-issue limited series titled Carnage U.S.A. and published 2011–2012. Carnage was next seen in the 2012 "Minimum Carnage" crossover storyline between Scarlet Spider vol. 2, Venom vol. 2, and two one-shots titled Minimum Carnage Alpha and Minimum Carnage Omega. The character crosses over with the Superior Spider-Man in the 2013 five-issue limited series called Superior Carnage, written by Kevin Shinick.
A new Carnage series, starting in November 2015, as part of Marvel's post-"Secret Wars" relaunch, was written by Gerry Conway and Mike Perkins.
Fictional character biography
Early life
Kasady is a psychopath and a homicidal sadist. He is a deeply disturbed individual whose dark past known only through secondhand accounts and his own flawed recollections: he was born in a psychiatric prison at Ravencroft to a mother with paranoid schizophrenia, who died shortly after his birth. Allegedly, his heart stopped for a few minutes until Knull intervened, saving his life so he would be the one to free the eldritch god from Klyntar. As a child, he killed his grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs either for being simply a fan of Mary Poppins or downright abusive, tried to murder his foster mother, Louise, by dropping a hairdryer into her bathtub, and tortured and killed his mother's dog, Fifi, with a drill. His mother died either by trying to kill Kasady, in retaliation for killing her dog, and then being beaten to the brink of death by Kasady's father, Roscoe, or by trying to defend Kasady from his father who was beating him, who then pushed her away- causing her to hit her neck against a table, killing her. Either way, Roscoe received no defense from him during the trial. As an orphan, Kasady 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. Kasady gained revenge by murdering the disciplinarian administrator, pushing a girl in front of a moving bus, and burning down the orphanage. It was during his brutal years at St. Estes that 8 year old Kasady acquired his philosophy that life was essentially meaningless and futile, that "laws are only words", and came to see the spreading of chaos through random, unpatterned bloodshed as "the ultimate freedom" and thinking that he was actually "freeing" people.Rebirth
Kasady became a serial killer, convicted of eleven murders though he bragged of a dozen more victims. He was then captured and sent to Ryker's Island prison, where he shared a cell with Eddie Brock, the host of the alien symbiote Venom. When Brock's symbiote soon returned to be bonded again, allowing Venom to escape prison, the symbiote unknowingly left its offspring in the cell; due to its alien instincts, the symbiote felt no emotional attachment to its offspring, regarding it as insignificant, and thus never communicated its existence to Brock via their telepathic link. The new symbiote then bonded with Kasady, transforming him into Carnage. The bond between the Carnage symbiote and Kasady was stronger than the bond between Brock and the Venom symbiote. As a result, Carnage is far more violent, powerful, and deadly than Venom. He escaped prison, and began a series of murders, and at the scene of each crime, wrote "Carnage" on the walls with his own blood. He was found by Spider-Man, though the hero proved to be no match for Carnage's powers. In desperation, Spider-Man made a truce with Venom to fight Carnage. The Carnage symbiote was defeated and apparently destroyed with sonic weaponry, but unbeknownst to them the symbiote's deeper equilibrium with its host helped to save it. After entering Kasady's body through a small cut, it bonded to his blood—which caused its red coloration, and enabled Kasady to ultimately regenerate the symbiote simply by bleeding himself.''Maximum Carnage''
Kasady is taken to the Vault, a prison for super-villains, then to Ravencroft. A doctor at the facility, hoping to find a "cure" for his madness, draws blood from him. This unwittingly enables Kasady to transform into Carnage, who goes on to recruit an army of psychopathic supervillains including Shriek, Demogoblin, Carrion, and Doppelganger to take over New York City. Using Shriek's "psychic channel" powers, he also drives ordinary New Yorkers to attack one another. Carnage and his "family" are ultimately driven back by Spider-Man, Venom and a number of other superheroes and super-antiheroes, with Carnage and Shriek being remanded to Ravencroft.Web of Carnage
During a subsequent jailbreak, he made it his mission to kill his only childhood friend, Billy Bentime, hoping to refute the notion that friendship should be paid in kind. Carnage nearly defeated Spider-Man until Bentime tricked Carnage into reverting to human form enabling Spider-Man to knock out Kasady with a simple punch.Though bonded to Kasady's bloodstream, the symbiote found a way to ditch its host by travelling through the institute's water pipes, its absence leaving Kasady increasingly weakened. The symbiote initially took control of John Jameson before it eventually transferred itself to Spider-Man. Reilly attempted to destroy the symbiote by subjecting himself to a potentially lethal burst of microwave energy, but the symbiote fled back to the weakening Kasady.
Later, Kasady was able to escape his prison when a new governor at Ravencroft decided to try and save money by turning off some of the defenses around Kasady's cell, underestimating the level of awareness the symbiote had of its surroundings. During this escape, it was confronted by Spider-Man and the Silver Surfer. The symbiote—driven to panic due to genetic memories of Galactus devouring a planet of symbiotes—parted from Kasady and bonded to the Surfer to stop him while Spider-Man was forced to take Kasady to the hospital. Learning that the killer was dying of a stomach tumor that had been kept in check by the symbiote, Spider-Man was forced to help the Surfer return the symbiote to Kasady to save his life, but the Surfer then sealed Kasady in an unbreakable prison in an attempt to force him to reflect on his sins for eternity.