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Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s villain proved that he’s more even twisted than the Joker by turning his psychiatrist into one of his disciples.
The Joker made a name for himself by being the most twisted in the DC Universe, with a warped mind that can even terrify gods. And in the Marvel Universe, the only character who comes close to that level is Carnage. While Carnage and his frequent host Cletus Kasaday have been frequent authors of horrific events, one of their most twisted attacks came in 1996’s Carnage: Mind Bomb by Warren Ellis and Kyle Hotz.
This one-shot examined Carnage’s motives for murder and mayhem, and it saw him forced insanity upon the psychiatrist treating him, turning the man who dedicated his life to understanding and treating monsters into one himself in a move that would make the Joker proud.
Dr. Kafka of the Ravencroft Institute had requested an old teacher of hers, Dr. Matthew Kurtz, to visit and try to treat Cletus Kasady. Her previous attempts to make a dent into Cletus’ psychosis had failed, so she turned to someone whose methods always succeeded, even if they were twisted themselves. Dr. Kurtz entered Carnage’s cell and set about separating symbiote and host by briefly altering Cletus’ brain chemistry. He then paralyzed Cletus with an unknown drug before proceeding to ask him questions about his past and why he kills.
Cletus answered his questions about himself and his reasons for killing. Dr. Kurtz came to the conclusion that Cletus sees the death he sows as a kind of artform, but Carnage took control before he could get to the core of Cletus’ beliefs and how he sees the world. Cletus’ adrenaline quickly burned through the drugs restraining him and the symbiote reconnected to him. He then proceeded to form a physical link between him and Dr. Kurtz, altering the psychiatrist’s mind with Carnage’s own perception of the world.
The results were immediate and horrifying. Carnage wasn’t just changing the way that Kurtz thought, he altered memories of his past. What once seemed like an innocent childhood recollection was turned into a disgusting, gore-filled scene as Carnage made Kurtz believe the same thing he did: the world was sick and depraved and so the only thing it was good for was presenting victims to the both of them. Kurtz devolved into a maddened frenzy, attacking one of the guards trying to save him and taking a bite out of him. And all the while, Carnage sat back in his cell and laughed at the doctor’s fall.
Driving people made is something he and the Joker both share in common, and he effectively broke the mind of his own psychiatrist, Harley Quinn, too. But unlike the Joker, Carnage does not have to break a person down with his words over time. Carnage’s words are blunt and simple. He loves murder for murder’s sake. And with his symbiote, he doesn’t have to persuade people to his broken world views, he can just inject himself directly into their brains and force it upon them. Carnage can actually force people to go mad, that’s something the Joker can’t claim to do.
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