Extreme Carnage: Scream by Clay McLeod Chapman, Chris Mooneyham, Marcio Menyz, and Travis Lanham
In the shadow of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s recently concluded, critically and commercially lauded reinvention of Eddie Brock in Venom, writer Clay McLeod Chapman and artist Chris Mooneyham were quietly charting a reinvention of their own with Life Foundation Symbiote, Scream in Scream: Curse of Carnage.
Once nothing more than a cast-off side character from a decades-old solo story Scream has, particularly with the help of new host Andi Benton (formerly Mania), undergone a quietly fascinating revitalization of her own through the development of a nuanced balance between decades of dense Symbiote lore, Andi’s own Hellfire, and grim and silly character beats in the eyes of diehard fans. Unfortunately, Curse of Carnage was also a spin-off story burdened with the editorial mandate to be read as nothing more than a companion piece, a second fiddle to the mainline Eddie Brock story that sells, let’s be realistic, too many copies.
Now, however, Chapman and Mooneyham have been supplied with a real chance, a solo (still tie-in) opportunity taking place in the vacuum of Venom’s conclusion that allows Extreme Carnage: Scream to successfully make the case that Scream has ascended from supporting cast to main character.
Across Scream’s run-ins with Doppelganger, Alchemax Guardsmen, and the reincarnated Carnage — the essentials to the expanding, somewhat predictable but cathartically action-oriented Extreme Carnage — the narrative here hits numerous admittedly demanding beats that could fall apart easily: an uneasy tension and yet reliance on the extended Symbiote family, a persistent, reemerging threat that crosses the boundaries of corporate and supernatural, and one that relies on storied character lore to understand. Yet, Chapman ties it together with sensible touches, specifically in the narration.
The back and forth between Scream and Andi’s narration and inner monologues (red and purple in an appropriate touch from the color and lettering team) to later be upset by Carnage’s own loud and chaotic tone works – an intentional push-and-pull that is at odds with something like Eddie’s usual synchronicity with the Venom Symbiote, and one that gets across the point of Scream being inherently, desperately jealous of Andi’s other obligations well.
How do you convince someone you’re truly committed to them when you’ve made other lifelong commitments? How do you resist the impulse to be jealous, or to fall back to the easier, maybe abusive but more singularly focused relationships like Carnage and Scream have? There’s inherent messiness and emotional rawness to these stories that Chapman understands and explores well through a lens that is unique to these characters rather than yielding to the tropes of one like Eddie’s.
Mooneyham’s art, for the most part, compliments this, too. Not insignificant problems with a male gaze towards anatomy aside, seeing Scream recoil in pain leaving sinewy strands as she falls off of Andi’s face, desperately struggling to find solace in the sewers below the city where, unexpectedly, Carnage looms both physically and figuratively large works well. Narratively and visually that wresting of control from Scream herself to Carnage is significant as the story progresses and Mooneyham keenly grounds it on a character level with the balance, the push-and-pull between Scream’s own Symbiote powers and Andi’s Hellfire. Pained expressions, screeching howls, claws, teeth, and flesh and fire there’s a digestible, but chaotic energy to everything that speaks to the narrative divorce happening, a kind of tandem that again makes the case the Chapman and Mooneyham are the right kind of creative team to elevate a character like Scream.
All in all a synaptically quick, chaotic but also effective story that puts Scream and Andi in unique places of their own for what’s left to unfold.
Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.
