Carnage Epic Collection, vol. 1: Born in Blood

Date Completed: 26 June, 2025

Grade: A-

This volume collects Amazing Spider-Man #361-3, 378-80, Web of Spider-Man #101-3, Spider-Man #35-7, Spectacular Spider-Mn #201-3, and material from Spider-Man Unlimited #1-2, and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #28. In terms of content, this is nearly identical to Amazing Spider-Man Epic vol. 25 because they both carry the Maximum Carnage Storyline. This is also why I chose to read the Carnage line now, because I plan on reading the Spider-Man line after finishing the Fantastic Four line (which I will be starting after this line), and I wanted to give some space between this symbiote stuff and the Spider-Man comics.


I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this volume when I started reading it. The main story is Maximum Carnage, which I bought and read as the issues came out; which was tough to keep up with for a Middle Schooler. I remember at the time thinking this was one of the greatest events in Comics, but I also remember the success of the story setting the stage for more Spider-Man crossover stories with the Clone Saga, and my younger self just couldn’t keep up with buying all of those books, and I eventually became disillusioned with comics in general for a while.

The origin of Carnage is fine. It was an opportunity to build on the success of Venom, but to create a true villain that had no sense of morality at all, which was feeding into all things “extreme” that defined the 90s. The Maximum Carnage storyline I actually still enjoyed. It has its flaws: the story is drawn out, and with multiple writers it seems like some are not sure where the previous issue left off, or some plot points were dropped by some writers but not others (such as Spider-Man’s injured ribs). But this was a big event, and even a cultural phenomenon at the time. Heck, we even got a video game based solely on this story, and the soundtrack was provided by the band Green Jelly (which I know means nothing today, but boy did they have their moment in the 90s - if you haven’t, go find their song “Three Little Pigs” and bask in the 90s weirdness). The defeat of Shriek and the Carnage kids towards the end is frankly ridiculous, but there were some real artistic and intellectual moments found in these stories which I don’t think I appreciated as a kid.

And since I mentioned art, let’s touch on that real quick. The art was good and consistent across the several different artists that we have in this volume. Mark Bagley, as we’ve learned is the Spider-Man artist of my youth and so I grew up enjoying his design. The one artistic outlier here I think is Sal Buscema. This is in no way to imply that Buscema’s art is bad, but his art is cleaner, and more like classic animation than the comic art of his peers. His art does seem to convey more feeling than others, and DeMatteis’ judicious use of dialogue helps bring that out. I’ll admit that when I was younger, I didn’t like picking up Spectacular Spider-Man because I didn’t like Sal’s style, but seeing now what he was doing, and how his art tells a story so well, I kinda want to go back in time and punch my younger self.

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