Watching Alex Saviuk adapt to the 90s-ification of comics is kind of a bummer. He was kind of the last of the old school, the last newish guy to be doing the Romita house style. Sal Buscema adapted by not reality doing the 90s thing, and instead just making his regular style more angular (And certainly didn’t impress any of us ungrateful young turds in the process). Alex is making art that kind of looks like he’s not having a good time. He’s slathering on the detail lines and hatchmarks and stuff, but it doesn’t seem natural. And we’re now very close to them bringing in Steven Baskerville to 90s him up, which only made it worse. It’s not his fault working at Marvel stopped being what he wanted it to be right out from under him. But for now, it’s still Don Hudson. The villains are traveling through the city blowing things up and maiming people, and Carnage says they’ve found a great spot to kill Venom in. Then we cut to Captain America having taken Spider-Man and Starfire to Avengers HQ. As they do 3 pages of furious recapping, we learn the other heroes, who all basically looked dead last issue, got up and went after Evil Team without them. Which is just Black Cat, Cloak and Morbius now. What do they hope to accomplish? Some kind of ridiculous flying robot is also re-bandaging Spider-Man’s chest, and that seems to be its job, and that’s hilarious. Anyway, rather than trying to stop Carnage or save Venom, these 3 are just hangin’ out, watching the chaos unfold on the big monitor, until the system identifies an intruder. It’s Deathlok, tho no one seems to recognize him on the screen. Cap initiates some failsafes and then Spider-Man does some totally fake computer handwaving, and Iron Fist appears on the screen.
Spider-Man continuing to just duck out on this ongoing genocide to say hi to his family is just insane to me. “Carnage and Co will probably kill like 50 more people while I’m gone, but I need to hug Aunt May and/or Mary Jane, I think.” Elsewhere, the rest of Hero Team is trailing the baddies when the “kids” surprise attack them, having doubled back behind them. It’s a 3v3 brawl, but it’s just to keep the heroes from getting in the way as Carnage and Shriek prepare to burn Venom alive in the torch of The Statue of Liberty.
Meanwhile, as Venom is tortured to death, The Parkers, the remains of the Osborn clan and Flash Thompson have all conveniently gathered at Liz’s (The Betty Brant subplot seems to be abandoned already). But we’re told MJ insists on sitting alone in her own place, presumably so they can have Peter sneak up on her.
The battle isn’t going well for the good guys, and after 3 more pages of empty fighting, they’re all down for the count (Again!) when the lamest addition to the team yet appears.
Not rid of this doofus yet. Worth mentioning that part of Spawn’s deal was, every time he used his powers, a counter ticked down, and when it hit zero, he’d re-die or be sucked back down to Hell or whatever, I don’t remember, so naturally, Nightwatch’s costume & powers have to be a danger to him, too. Meanwhile, rather than rushing to the rescue of those guys OR Venom, Spider-Man has gone to stop a riot at his local police station, as various goons have apparently gotten out of their cells.
He beats them all up, because how could he not, and then we cut back to the real fight, where Nightwatch’s random and stupid appearance has turned the tide for the heroes. But, I mean, this is Maximum Carnage, so what that means is they get the upper hand and the villains flee. And even tho they’re flying out over the water, right at The Statue of Liberty, and Morbius and Nightwatch are flying behind them, Cloak tells Black Cat they can’t know where the villains went. Whatever, dumby!
Black Cat & Cloak had to bow out because this already stupid constant stalemate couldn’t last with the bad guys outnumbered so badly. It’s now 10 heroes to 5 villains in this dumb mess, and will presumably be 11 to 5 when Dagger inevitably proves less dead than advertized. And yet, it’s still gonna take 4 more comics to end. Woof. And what do the newly bolstered A-Team of heroes set out to do? Stop Carnage? No, clean up after him. He’ll keep making corpses, you keep weeping over them, sounds like a good deal.