Marvel Comics’ Venom War has just pitted two of the deadliest symbiote supervillains against each other.

After infiltrating the offices and labs of Alchemax, the titular serial killer symbiote of Venom War: Carnage #2 gets the chance to see just what the company’s new K-Chemicals can do. Unfortunately for him, not even Carnage is prepared for the kind of damage that these anti-symbiote weapons are capable of dishing out. Worse still, his best attempt at escaping is cut short by the revelation that Alchemax’s latest executive just so happens to be the version of Eddie Brock that everyone fears the most.

Written by TORUNN GRØNBEKK Art by PERE PÉREZ Colors by ERICK ARCINIEGA Letters by VC’s JOE SABINO Design by STACIE ZUCKER Main cover art by KEN LASHLEY & RACHELLE ROSENBERG Variant cover art by JOEY VAZQUEZ

Marvel’s Venom War event is the culmination of several storylines involving the Venom symbiote and its most iconic host, Eddie Brock, as well as Eddie’s young son and human-symbiote hybrid, Dylan. While Eddie’s ascension to King in Black and his trip through time and space has shown him the horrors that the future will hold if Dylan maintains his bond with the Venom symbiote, the younger Brock is similarly trying to avert an apocalyptic future by preventing his father from reforming the very same bond. This has driven everyone involved to take drastic measures, with both Eddie and Dylan going so far as to become Marvel Comics’ latest Hybrid symbiotes by absorbing their respective supporters.

While Cletus Kasady and the Carnage symbiote have long been among Marvel’s foremost superpowered serial killers, recent years have seen their usual status quo shift in demonstrable ways. After splitting up under particularly brutal circumstances, Cletus and Carnage embarked on their respective quests to acquire more power than ever before. Each managed to attain a form of godhood of their own, though the eventual confrontation between them saw Carnage consume Cletus’ physical form, only to recreate a version of its old host within itself. Since then, Carnage has infiltrated Alchemax in a bid to continue amassing new power and resources that he can use in his quest for blood-soaked divinity.

Meridius, the sixth iteration of Eddie Brock as the King in Black, has taken Venom War as an opportunity to wreak absolute havoc and usurp his former self’s place. To that end, Meridius has made his way into the Alchemax boardroom under the guise of a high-powered executive and the scientific genius behind the anti-symbiote K-Chemicals. Rather than simply developing a weapon against his fellow symbiotes, however, Meridius has also engineered a breed of cannibalistic Zombiotes that have quickly swarmed over vast swaths of New York City.

Venom War: Carnage #2 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.

Source: Marvel Comics