Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Reviews

Carnage
Review by Stu, Media by James Harvey

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Episode #38 - Carnage
Original Airdate: November 9th, 1996

Baron Mordo and Dormammu help Eddie Brock's cell-mate, Cletus Kasady, become the merciless villain known as Carnage. Dormammu uses Carnage to get himself into this world and the three set off to create chaos. Faced with more enemies than he can handle, Spider-Man turns to an old ally: Iron Man!

Credits:
Story By: John Semper
Written By: Stan Berkowitz , James Krieg and John Semper
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)
Guest Starring: Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man/Peter Parkr, Robert Hays as Tony Stark, Joseph Campanella as Dr. Curt Connors, Hank Azaria as Venom/Eddie Brock and Scott Cleverdon as Carnage/Cletus Kassidy

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Review: Picking up seconds after "Venom Returns," this story takes a more mystical turn thanks to the largely unneeded presence of Dormammu. It also had a large number of fight scenes, although the story somehow didn't suffer for it. The fights were always 'give and take' in this series, some of them were pretty cool, despite the censors, whilst others were embrassingly bad, mostly due to some dodgy editing and poor timing. One of, if not the most annoying things about this show was when it was good, it was arguably one of the best comic book-based animated series on TV. When it was bad? It was unfathomably terrible, almost to the point of being unwatchable.

The cast was especially large, considering we had Spidey, Venom, Carnage, Iron Man, Mordo, Dr Kafka and Dormammu to contend with, which is a shame because the symbiotes were the best part, and Dormammu and Mordo aren't really all that interesting. I really don't think they had any place here. They worked well enough in Dr. Strange, because they're his villains. Stark's dimensional transporter gave them a good reason to return, but sadly Dormammu's inclusion makes things a bit of a mess. This episode should've been solrely about Carnage.

One of the best scenes in the episode features Venom returning to the Daily Bugle and attacking Jameson. Spidey intervened, and for a few short minutes it was the 'Spidey vs Venom' sequel we never had. Quite why Spidey's most popular villain only had three appearances in the show is baffling, especially considering how good they all where.

The episode was actually well directed for a change. Despite the large number of characters, the fight scenes were pretty good, for Spider-Man's standards. There was nothing here that was "Night Of The Lizard" worthy, but good all the same. I especially liked the Spider-Man/Carnage fight in the city.

Carnage wasn't allowed to kill people on Saturday morning, so the crew had him suck the life out of people. The visual for this was actually pretty cool, it kind of inverted his colour scheme. I didn't think they did too bad a job of Carnage, especially as he was everything the series wasn't allowed to do. I would've loved to see more of Carnage, maybe an episode without Venom, but again, the series was cut short. Ironically, the sixth season premiere was proposed to be 'Spider-Man vs Carnage,' whilst he searched for Mary Jane. Alas, not to be. A great shame.

Iron Man was cool in this episode. When this first aired, I had only seen the first season of his syndicated animated show, so it was great to see Iron Man with a good design, and not have him run through exactly the same story every week. His design is one of the best the Spider-Man: The Animated Series crew ever did and Robert Hay's (who also voiced him in the Iron Man animated series) delievered, as always. I'm glad they brought him in instead of replacing him, like they did with the Fantastic Four's upcoming appearances.

The ending was pretty disappointing, if only for the fact it made it essentially wrote off the chance to see Venom and Carnage again. I thought Brock's romance with Dr Kafka was lames and pretty forced, and to have the story end on that note was a little sour. It's a fine wrap-up to the two-parter but ultimately is ends up a little flat and underwhelming when compared to what could've been.

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