A Deal No Sane Person Would Sign
The pitch made a kind of desperate sense. Eddie Brock bonds with the Carnage symbiote, leads it to serial killers, lets it do what it craves — on guilty targets only. Carnage gets blood. Eddie maintains control. Innocents stay safe. What could go wrong with trusting one of Marvel’s most psychotic entities?
Everything, as it turns out. Carnage had been quietly mining Eddie’s memories and feeding intelligence to Torment, a serial killer whose method is disturbingly elegant: he kills in spirals, starting with distant relatives of his real targets and working inward. Using what it learned from Eddie, Carnage handed Torment the secret identities of both Venom and Spider-Man. The spirals now had names attached — Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Eddie Brock himself.
The Shocker Dies First
Torment’s research turned up something ugly: a distant family connection between the Shocker — Spidey’s longtime vibro-gauntlet-wearing antagonist — and Mary Jane Watson, who is currently the host of the Venom symbiote. That thin genealogical thread was sufficient. Torment killed him.
The Shocker’s death carries extra weight given recent continuity. During the Venom War arc, he’d used his abilities to bring Boomerang back from the dead — Boomerang, who’d been Peter Parker’s roommate. That resurrection is now a debt, and Boomerang shows up here with a villain’s definition of justice burning in his chest.
