Morbius the Living Vampire 7, Superior Carnage 1, Ultimate Spider-Man 25

Morbius the Living Vampire 7
Keatinge (w) and De Landro and Ruiz (a) and Fabela (c)

After the attack by Nikoleta Harrow last issue to steal parts for the Rose's new Ultimate Nullifier from Horizon Labs, Spider-Man and Morbius are on the offensive. Of course, it's not as much offense as they'd like as they're still being set up by Harrow and Rose but it's a start, right? They manage to track Harrow where she informs them that the plan is already set in motion and can't be stopped and, most of all, can't be stopped by them. In fact, she plans to use Morbius as a scapegoat for what's about to come next as Rose, with his new Ultimate Nullifier, sets his sights on Brownsville.

I'm trying this week, in case you didn't notice in the first post of yesterday, to cut down on summary to avoid too many spoilers while also giving enough to let us talk about it all. But BOY, this one seems especially cut down, doesn't it? Well that's kind of because that's pretty much all that happens in this issue. It seems short but it reads relatively well. In fact, I think it's probably about the strongest issue of the series yet. Still, there are things about it that I can't quite put my finger on but hey, let's try it out. There's a scene where Morbius turns on the super science for a minute to help Spider-Man create a device that blocks out his spidey sense to stop Harrow from manipulating it as she had before. I'll grant you that Morbius is a talented scientist so it kind of fits in that respect, but it comes in the midst of a book that has hardly acknowledged that fact throughout and it kind of treats the sciences as interchangeable. I'm not particularly well-versed in Morbius but I was pretty sure he was a different sort of scientist, especially since his start in science was to help him cure his own rare blood disease (which, of course, backfired, leaving us where we are now). Add to that the fact that Morbius still flips between brooding and cracking jokes (it might not even be cracking jokes so much as it is relieving tension) and there's a real disconnect within this character. Maybe it's waved away by saying it's the disconnect between the vampirish thing he is and the human he was, but I have my doubts that's the explanation. Still, the art is solid and helps carry the issue (though boy is Morbius always super ugly) and the story seems to want to go somewhere. We'll let it get there before the book ends, I suppose.

Superior Carnage 1
Schinick (w) and Segovia (a) and Ramos (c)

After his last appearance fighting Venom and Scarlet Spider, Cletus Kasady is pretty damaged. Scarlet Spider isn't really one to pull punches, even if Venom is, and he certainly didn't pull his punches against Kasady. Still, the prison he's brought to holds Carnage in high esteem and awaits the day that he returns. The first half of the book is narrated by a white collar criminal in the prison (thanks to Mayor Jameson's weird treatment of the prison system) who is terrified of everyone there and no one more than Carnage. When he dies mid-book (look, I don't think it's a spoiler that Carnage killed a a throwaway, unpowered character since that's pretty much all he ever does), we've gotten pretty much all the background we've needed. Now we're left to find out what engineered Carnage's predictable breakout. It's revealed that the Wizard is behind it, attempting to reform the Frightful Four with Carnage as the cornerstone in both a grasp at power and a way to impress Bentley-23.

Carnage is, as always, an incredibly brutal book. When Venom loses control of himself as Venom and the symbiote goes crazy, killing whatever is trying to hold it back, we all hold our breath and wait for Flash our whoever else to get it under control again. Carnage is that but all the time, with no regard for life and no filter; Cletus Kasady doesn't seem to have sway over Carnage now, his brain battered into disfunction, but even when he was in control he was a raging psychopath. Now it seems like it's all Carnage, all the time. That somehow makes it more worrisome. The book starts off a little on the weaker side, giving us the throwaway character and making us deal with him, knowing he's not likely to get out of the issue alive. On top of that, there's a weird fascination in the writing with how often he soils himself. The Carnage art is pretty solid, as usual, though often hard to watch. Wizard is an interesting choice as our mastermind and his idea of the Frightful Four is worth keeping up with. I'll be curious to see how this one plays out.

Ultimate Spider-Man 25
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Ponsor (c)

Miles is still having trouble wrapping his head around becoming Spider-Man again. Gwen is mad at him and texts Ganke about the run-in with Cloak and Dagger at the restaurant, making Ganke even more mad at him. Miles can't talk to his girlfriend Kate about it and is still unable to process all the information himself. Meanwhile, Cloak and Dagger are still out in the world somewhere and we get a little more of their backstory as we see a little bit more from the scientists who created them only a week before our story. Finally, Jessica Drew pays another visit to Miles to explain the connection between the two of them, Cloak and Dagger, and so many others.

One of the things you have to kind of come to terms with reading Bendis' books is that there are a lot of words and a very deliberate pace to the plot, which is a nicer way for me to say that Bendis has a lot of waste issues and I still don't care for his style of dialogue. I will say that he very clearly cares about these characters and wants them to act in the way that he thinks they would. I think one of the flaws that comes with that rapid-fire style of back-and-forth dialogue is that no one ends up with a particularly well-defined personality and every personality type kind of bleeds together as people just echo one another. I know I complain about this all the time but it really does hurt the book more than it helps. I think back on books like New Avengers where I really enjoyed this sort of back-and-forth at the Avengers dinner table (though even then I was aware that there were real throwaway issues) but I wonder if I'd go back and feel the same way. I'm not going to actually do that, but I do wonder about it. Still, Miles' break is coming to its end and we're bound to string the Cloak and Dagger story along a bit more but at least Spider-Man is likely to be there.