This series is usually mocked as the peak of "90s style over substance!" "no message just edgy slaughter!" and it isn't that at all, which proves a lot of people never actually read it

The entire story of Maximum Carnage, plays like a deconstruction and analysis of the trends of the day, and in a respectful way. You have two teams, team Carnage and team Venom, both blood hungry as the other but one trying to stop the other. Spider-Man is caught in between, and his whole crisis during it is that he feels overwhelmed by Venom and people siding with him, at one point giving up and deciding he will join them. This changes as Carnage is about to be killed, and Spider-Man and Firestar go full moralfag again only to be joined by Captain America to finally end the war.

Now it's not perfect, no comics are though, it is kind of a sloppy story with a shitload going on and cameos out the ass, running across a lot of books, but those were just trends of the times as comics from any era suffers from

>>149350935 (OP)
That's terrific. Still didn't need to be FOURTEEN GODDAMN ISSUES!

>>149350961
That's not that long for a comic arc anon

Question, is Maximum Carnage's length problem something that's more a problem for those who were there when it was going on?
Is it a problem for people who read Shonen manga and are used to lengthy arcs?

>>149351268
NTA but the constant fights that amounted to nothing only to prolong a barebones story is hardly worth that many issues or even half that number.

>>149351318
It's Carnage, Shriek, and Doppelganger fighting Spider-Man and Venom and half of Marvel's heroes over and over again. Just to pad things out, whenever someone is winning, the losers escape so the fight can happen again later. Then civilians are killed. Then some other hero comes in to help. Then another fight. Then one side runs off. Rinse and repeat.

>it's bad to kill a psychopathic mass murderer because... it just is, ok?
Repeated for 14 issues

>>149351385
HEY MAY BE THE MOST INNOCENT OF US ALL!

>>149351399
Those children he viciously slaughtered? Less innocent!

>>149351268
In 1994 it most certainly was! This was long before decompression made a walk down stares an entire ordeal. Bigger stories covered fewer issues. Kraven's Last Hunt was less than HALF that.

*cough*

>>149351268
Only if you're talking about decompressed comics. 14 issues back then would be like 30 decompressed comics

>>149351494
Man it's crazy how what would be considered a huge criticism of format then has become of main style today. And by crazy I mean disgusting.

>>149350935 (OP)
If I wanted to read a street level hero arc that gets hijacked by Captain America near the end, I'll stick with Born Again, thank you very much.

>>149351517
You're all full of shit, The long Halloween is 13 issues

>>149351620
It's not called the short halloween

>>149351268
It only feels long because it could've ended when they calmed the rioters down the fisrt time but they had to keep it going to squeeze out a bit more money

>>149351620
You can get away with that when you're doing a mystery rather than a series of extended fight scenes.

>>149351471
Great art though

>>149351620
Yeah and it spans an entire year and not a couple of afternoons.

I love this shit

>>149351442
>Kraven's Last Hunt was less than HALF that.
But they were both published over approximately 3 months. The difference is Spider-Man had an additional monthly title, and a quarterly book by 1993.

>>149351517
If Maximum Carnage happened today, the core story would probably just be a 5-6 issue event mini, but ASM, Venom and all the other Spider-Man-related ongoings would be doing tie-in stories, plus there'd be tie-in minis or one-shots for Cloak & Dagger, Morbius, Firestar, Iron Fist, Deathlok, Nightwatch and Captain America. Probably for some of the villains, too. Potentially a lot more characters also getting tie-in minis, or in name only tie-ins that just show the FF, Avengers, etc having some simultaneous adventure that keeps them from getting involved.

No, we've read it. The premise is simply absurd.

>>149353328
Not really
>Carnage runs amuck
>Venom and others want to kill him
>Spider-Man doesn't but still wants to stop him
It's simple

The most "absurd" element is that Carnage LARPS as having a family with Shriek and his minions as children, but that's why we read comics, to have fun with absurdity, go watch a soap if you want realism

>>149353353
No, the absurdity is Spider-Man and the other heroes standing around debating whether or not to kill Carnage, meanwhile Carnage is massacring a whole street of innocent people

>>149353413
That's capeshit post comics code fella, Spidey Supes and Bats always wanna not kill people who deserve it

>>149353413

>>149353353
>>149353413

Now, it's been a while since I read it, but if I recall correctly, didn't Captain America end the conflict by inspiring them to build a 'love beam'?
That felt pretty absurd to me.

Maximum Cringe
Read the first 6 issues then skipped to the end as they all played out the same

>>149353421
Punisher has another problem that ends up being the same. No matter how many criminals he kills, it never makes a dent in the crime rate. Either you're a hero that doesn't kill and you face off against the same villains again and again or you kill endless random crooks and they get replaced by someone else.

>>149353445
Black Cat really has nothing to speak for when all she does is job. Better to have some irrelevant hero like sleepwalker than the bitch that's gonna get captured

>>149353495
Yes and worse was how left field it tag along with the Dagger resurrected sub arc

Internally the Marvel staff referred to it as "Maximum Garbage"

>>149351385
>it's bad to kill a psychopathic mass murderer because... it just is, ok?
Why are superheroes like this? Older kids and teens will look at this and think it's the gayest shit ever.

>>149353353
>The most "absurd" element is that Carnage LARPS as having a family with Shriek and his minions as children


You haven't read past the first three issues of this arc, they did a "hate wave" that overtook all of NYC and some how most of the heroes were MIA during this "month long" psychotic break of the city. Also >>149353413 >>149353495 >>149353954. It's clear this suffered from a corporate mindset of "make a year long multi cross over Spider-man event!" with no clear vision in mind for it. It really is no surprise the clone saga mess came right after this.

>>149353413
They are normies. Their life and death is naturally not as important as a Super-powered being's feels.

I like the Clone Saga more

>>149354208
>ben is the clone
>no peter is the clone
>peter is dying
>never mind he's fine
>don't forget that peter is the clone
>ben is the real peter
>here's a peter skeleton! is he the real peter or a clone? find out eventually!
>did we forget to mention that peter's the clone?
>norman's back and ben's dead
>turns out that peter is the original

>>149354256
kino

>>149350961
You would have hated the clone saga then.

>>149354256
Yeah I like that more than this

>>149354256
>Mary Jane is being stalked
>Mary Jane's plane exploded because of stalker
>New spider-girl makes a romantic advance on Peter
>Just kidding, MJ is alive. Save her Spider-man

I stopped reading until right before civil war and then BND happened.

>>149354337
You missed the part where Jill also tries to make moves on Peter

>>149353821
The story isn't meant to end, it's a comic not an anime

>>149354522
The point of killing your enemies is that you don't have to deal with them again. But Punisher kills his enemies and they get replaced by others. Frank could hold a crime convention and every single criminal in New York could show up and be massacred only for every vacant spot to be filled. But crime do be like that. Really says something about society. Damned if you kill, damned if you don't.

>>149350935 (OP)
it was a fucking wwe season. not much blood just dudes punching each other for an entire year.

>>149353959
During the recent Clone Saga storytimes here, it was really jarring to see the quotes from the clowns in Spider-Man editorial and working on mini series and side projects, talking about how much they hated Maximum Carnage and thought it was so bad, but really thought the books they were working on were so much better. Sure, adults may have hated it, but there were kids who loved Maximum Carnage, it was popular enough to get a videogame really quickly, they even sold a 3 pack of Spidey, Venom and Carnage figures under the Maximum Carnage brand. The trade is one of the few Spider-Man evergreen trades that's seldom out of print. And what have those people dismissing it ever done in comparison?

>>149355363
I'm reminded of Morrison dismissing 1990s X-Men comics with a comparison to wrestling like this is supposed to be a bad thing and not part of the appeal all along.

>>149353991
its because of holdover ideas from the comics books code authority.

>>149355807
This, and killing a villain who's a cash cow for the company is a retarded decision from a financial standpoint, no matter how much he may 'deserve to die' from a narrative standpoint. The same year as Maximum Carnage, Marvel had Magneto kill millions in terrorist attacks, but he's too valuable to the company to kill as well, so he just got mindwiped for a few years until people sort of forgot what he did.

>>149353821
>No matter how many criminals he kills, it never makes a dent in the crime rate
I mean I think the point of Punisher is that he isn't suppose to end all crimes but him fighting it because that all he knows

>>149354633
>and they get replaced by others.
Many of them come back to life, even.

>>149355736
I like wrestling, but it's not what I expected with a title, characters, and premise like that.
I'll go blame the comic code.

>>149355736
>And what have those people dismissing it ever done in comparison?
Better stories for the most part. Maximum Carnage getting a game has next to nothing to do with how the book did, Venom and Carnage were crazy popular, it was merely an excuse to make a product (see Separation Anxiety).

>>149354358
You're right, I did miss that. I actually stopped reading the comics after the "it's a good thing your wife died because we're meanr to be together" line. I only knew she came back from an issue that teased Doctor Doom might know that MJ is alive, which still didn't entice me to get back on.

I am mad that I read through BND up until Doc Ock swapped bodies with him and haven't read since. I was just clinging to the hope that MJ would find a way to get back to Peter, but that obviously never happened.

>>149354522
>anime
>end

>>149355841
Unlike Carnage, all the people magneto killed in fatal attractions were entirely off-panel which makes it easier to ignore or even retcon

>>149357946
No it doesn't

>>149356782
>Better stories for the most part.
In their own minds, maybe.

>>149360235
There's a reason you're the sole defender of Maximum Carnage in a place that favors DeMatteis more than usual.

>>149350935 (OP)
The real question is how badly they'll butcher it for the shitshow that Marvel's Spider Man 3 is guaranteed to be.

>>149360428
Carnage will be Miles' mom or something

>>149350961
Fourteen issues over FIVE series because Spider-Man had five ongoings at the time. Well, the one was only quarterly and started with this storyline but still. It was only 3 months, it just ran through EVERY Spider-Man book of the time. Which is the problem anytime a character has so many books(Superman had four monthlies for a while too) and they aren't alternate universs or something, either you need a new storyline every month or a normal 3 month storyline balloons into a dozen issues

>>149359112
It does whether you like it or not

>>149360336
You're defending people like Brevoort and Greenberg, who absolutely weren't making better comics. It's OK for you to dislike Maximum Carnage, but not to dislike it so much that you're defending people like that.

>>149353445
Venom is the one who beats Carnage in the end. Spidey is useless the whole story. He spends more time complaining about venom than carnage.
Seeing Brock break puny parker's ribs was quite satisfying

>>149360682
Carnage needs to be Gwen Stacy.

>>149360797
Go away, Bendis, you're drunk.

>>149360761
The only Greenberg comics I remember reading are the Osborn Journal and Goblins at the Gate.
The former did a pretty decent job trying to tie that massive headache together and the latter is absolutely a better story than Maximum Carnage

>>149360428
I still think they're gonna do Superior for the Act 1 and 2 plot, then Goblin Nation for the finale, with Red Goblin being the final boss

>>149361345
So Carnage is gonna be reduced to a jobber? Is that your prediction?

>>149350961
/thread
At the least, we can cut out all the Morbus and Nightwatch shit.

>>149362359
Not Morbius

>>149350935 (OP)
Maximum Carnage is fucking badass
it has every excuse, plotwise, to be everything that it is. They didn't just have a bunch of carnage happen, they wrote in a whole thing and powers that combine to spread insanity and it felt great.
>>149351268
especially with this many guests in it.

>>149362971
>especially with this many guests in it.
The guests are part of the problem. Very few of them actually DO anything.

>>149354633
something i've been saying lately since i thought about it..
in order for most capestyle crimefighting to work, you have to be able to just.. wade out into the city and find crime everywhere you go
_if there was that much crime_ you would not be making a fucking dent in it. and if you ever did make progress, you'd get to where you could not find the crime anymore. It's a logistical thing that you'd think would be covered more often. Sure we get Martian Manhunter and Oracle types here and there who could reasonably keep abreast of things, but.. you have to let go of realism pretty thoroughly to expect this to work purely on a basis of -getting to each other- to fight.

>>149362983
And they would have done even less if you shortened it!
i like how crampacked with heroes Marvel's New York is. and it makes sense Carnage would kinda just start picking them up.
When else are we going to get to hang out with Doppelganger? When the fuck else is Demogoblin gonna show up? Cloak and Dagger? like come on.
I'm not saying you couldn't have cut a few out, but...

>>149363011
start picking up villains I mean.
you .. you know what i meant

>>149362345
Yes, I think they'll shit on Carnage to adapt a Slott storyline

>>149363011
>And they would have done even less if you shortened it!

It's like you're hearing the criticisms but not actually understanding them. Let me put this bluntly and simply, they shouldn't have been there at all. Reduce the number of heroes and villains both. Focus on a few and really have Pete question the should they kill Carnage problem.

>>149363106
Sometimes people think they dislike an ingredient but they actually dislike the recipe.

>>149363492
but I'm not looking for high art Mr. Watterson
I just want to see cool alien bonded psychos fighting people.

>>149363000
You can't eradicate crime unless you like instill a harsh authoritarian police state

Point is when you know there's a good chance of getting your ass beat by a bat or shot to death by skullman, you're less likely. It creates a culture of fear for the would be criminal

Almost every street level hero shit makes a point of this, when the hero is missing and crime goes up 70 percent