Comic Book Resources

That would be a cover homage to The Brave and the Bold #78

"As he slowly awakens from his stupor, with his thoughts racing, “Why can’t anything good happen? Why is everything so EVIL?”…he is approached by a figure.

Then, the last page of the story, BIG splash page of Captain America standing above Spider-Man, saying something along the lines of, “Hi, you look like you could use a hand.”

That does sound cool. I will have to look that one up. Interesting how iconic Captain America can really be in the right story.

I loved that Cap scene.

The idea that Ben knew Peter was Spidey makes sense.

It's funny how the early 90s Maximum Carnage cross-over can be read as a rejection dark superheroics that was dominating the market. In the end, the hyper-violent methods of Venom fail and Captain America and a LOVE BOMB are used to save the day.

LOVE BOMB. Craziness.

I LOVED ROM!!

It's great that they completed his quest and gave him a happy ending, but I would still love to see him again.

It's a shame that I only really found out about him after his heyday was over, so I never really got to see the scope of the wraiths in the Marvel Universe.

Hell, I'm still trying to track down a copy of the issue where apparently everyone teams up and finally beats them all down.

I remember reading that Maximum Carnage issue and just loving that Cap America scene. The problem was that you knew Terry Kavanagh and even worse David Michilinie were going to be doing the follow up issues so you never could get too excited by a good DeMatteis moment.

Captain America always seems to work better as a guest star.

The Wraiths also faced off against the New Mutants (in a ROM annual).

I quit reading Spectacular, in spite of being a Matteis fan, because of that crossover. I'm starting to feel a small twinge of regret on missing that issue, because that ending does sound pretty neat. But, again, a small twinge.

"Captain America always seems to work better as a guest star."

Or in a team book. I've always thought he did better in Avengers where he had to uphold morals and be the spirit of the group, even though the group didn't necessarily agree.

"LOVE BOMB. Craziness."

It wasn't a Love Bomb. That would be silly.

It was a Goodness Cannon.

"I'm really Batman!" "Well duh!"

At the end of No Man's Land, when Batman unmasked for Jim Gordon. Why's that deserve a place of coolness? Because Gordon closed his eyes and refused to look. He, like Ben Urich, implied that he knew who Batman really was and was insulted by Bruce wanting to "reveal" it to him. He reminded Batman that he'd been a detective long before he was commissioner, and refused to face Batman until the mask was back on.

Better names for Shadowcat? Well, "Ghost" would have worked, at the time, but it was probably considered too masculine. "Spirit" is close to her original, terrible codename, and would serve double duty by describing her role on the team, as well. Or we could follow the logic that gave us a character named Storm and just call her "Phase."

Intangible Lass? Ghost Gal? Ether? Gossamer?

Unlike the other examples, Pete Ross found out Superboy's secret ID in a very, very early story, possibly even his 2nd appearance. (I don't remember exactly.) This might not have been obvious if you only saw the Superman stories, but it was almost always part of Pete's character concept that he knew Clark's secret, but Clark didn't know he knew.

Maximum Carnage was the storyline that made me stop buying Spiderman comics. To put that into perspective, I'd been reading and collecting Spiderman comics since 1975. That's 18 or 19 years of collecting and reading and that story was so bad, it actually made me stop. Just thought I'd share.

-Tim

David Michilinie was the first person to make me stop reading Amazing Spider-Man, but I kept up with the other Spider-titles. Gerry Conway was doing Web and Spectacular. Mackie took over Web and drove me off of that book. Kavanagh came on and kept me off Web. At that point I was down to just DeMatteis on Spectacular. The Maximum Carnage came along and I quit halfway through and it was the first time since I was seven that I spent a month without reading a single Spider-Man comic.

Maximum Carnage was the last straw for me as well for a number of years, I think until the end of the whole clone saga. That Cap sequence was the best part of the whole 14 part story though.

A couple more "I knew THAT's" from the unused recesses of my fading memories:

Lois & Clark, end of second(?) season, Clark proposes to Lois and is apparently about to unveil, when she says, brightly, "Who's asking? Clark Kent, or Superman?"

SpiderWoman, original series, she comes out to her friend Lindsey(?), who says "that's your big revelation? Girl, I knew that all along!"

That's the one who Jessica Drew later opened the detective agency with, right?

I'm going to have to hunt up the TPB for Maximum Carnage just for that scene, now.

Venom was fine for a once-in-a-while but by the time of Max Carnage he was so ubiquitous ... and I absolutely hated Carnage as a character. I couldn't take what was happening to the Spider-Man titles and I was so sick of Sal Buscema's inappropriate (for Spider-Man) art style and I gave up.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Steel yet.

Back when Steel was a supporting character in Superman: The Man of Steel, a few months went by when Superman and Lois and Clark were all strangely casual about the whole secret identity issue. When Clark finally revealed the truth, John revealed that he'd known for some time, and that he and Lois hadn't exactly been very careful with it. At which point Natasha walks through and demonstrates her ignorance as to the whole identity issue.

A similar thing happens with Superboy; Kon learned Clark's identity when he met a version of the Silver Age Superboy, and only told Clark about it when Clark revealed his identity during Sins of Youth. Incidentally, Clark knew he'd been helping out the Kents for some time, even though he supposedly didn't know Clark's secret.

I bought all of Maximum Carnage as a kid and loved it at the time. I liked the game, too. My opinion of the game has changed considerably, but I haven't read the story in awhile. Perhaps it's due for another chance. Count me among those who didn't mind Michilinie's Spider-Man, though. I loved the whole Peter's Parents saga, even when they turned out to be evil robot duplicates.