Land, sea, and air? This Carnage guy is a creep everywhere in Carnage: Black, White, and Blood #2 by Donny Cates, Kyle Hotz, Rachelle Rosenberg, Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Ram V, Javier Fernandez, and Joe Sabino.

Carnage Shark – Donny Cates, Kyle Hotz, Rachelle Rosenberg

Opening immediately after King in Black’s finale, Cates and Hotz’s story is a brutally beautiful lore slog. Carnage’s opines on the importance of the “red” — blood — in balance with the darkness and light, an idea almost entirely cribbed from DC’s Animal Man with little nuance or variation, do little for the story here, and instead direct to better ones. The revolving door of Carnage’s rebirth, battle with Venom, and subsequent death also seems familiar, of course, and arguably worse because it’s a direct, self-congratulatory rehash of Kasady’s arc through Cates’ own books without a hint of irony, humor, or uniquity. The saving grace is Hotz and Rosenberg’s art which paints choppy seas, red hulking sharks, and blood in the wake with a real sense of apocalyptic direness — the best looking in this issue. Wrought with drama in both the best and worst ways.

My Red Hands – Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto

A really poor output from the usually fantastic Daredevil team. Zdarsky’s story demands a suspension of disbelief that is unpalatable for even the comics norm: not only is Carnage pointlessly haunting this child, but he also has Spider-Man hostage in a family barn conveniently owned by a former Ravencroft guard? So much of the essential moments here happen off page that they in effect make this feel inessential. Checcetto’s reticence to follow the rules of the very simple black, white, and red color scheme further undermine both important visual and narrative moments. Both the worst written and worst looking story here.

My Name Is Carnage – Ram V, Javier Fernandez

A tight, Thing inspired story of Carnage recognizing the murderous obsessiveness in others. The balance of historical invocation with Carnage’s more immediate violence, is inspired, and Fernandez’s inversion of the typical imagery here – the snowy night all red, Carnage cutting a white gash through it – equally so. It’s a simple story but one that also lays the inherent humanness of Carnage bare, mortal life caught up in extremity both in the environment and in relationship with a satisfying, scary hinting towards something bigger. The best written here.