Comic Summary II (Maximum Carnage ''Part14" CONCLUSION)

Carnage emerges from the water ready to fight. Venom takes his first shot at him and Deals him a particularly nasty blow. Spider-Man tries his best to both avoid the conflict and to stop the other two from killing one another. It doesn't go over well. Carnage runs away (his brain still swimming with emotions he couldn't understand). Venom is still full of rage and pursues Carnage .Spider-Man finally decides to go to the hospital realizing that he can't go on anymore.
That's the great irony of this comic, the three main iconic characters are all involved in one final confrontation and none of them are at Peak Performance. Venom is bruised and battered from persistent torture, Carnage is psychiatrically damaged (even by his own standards.) Spider-Man is just flat-out broken.
It really comes off as a metaphor for this whole comic series. It's just worn out, now and it needs to end. We see Spider-Man in the hospital with Mary Jane, the two are happy to be in each other's arms and Spider-Man goes home with Mary Jane to see their family and to reassure them that Peter Parker is in fact safe. This is also where we get Peter Parker telling off his father who is still continuing to be a Negative Nancy.
Peter's father accepts his statement but with a bit of resentment. I suspect all this will come to its own conclusion in a different mini series but I have no plans of reading that. I don't care about Peter's father, much like the Clones of Glen Stacy I kind of hope he melts away into nothing.

Now we cut over to Carnage who's trying to break into Rikers prison to reacquaint himself with his old cell . Carnage's mind is Wheeling with all the different and strange emotions that have been alien to him for so many years. He seems to believe that if he can revisit the past then maybe he can sort out these memories or at the very least be rid of them. But everywhere Carnage goes Venom is in full Pursuit and although Venom is hurt he is still And physically better condition and Carnage as of the moment.

Carnage tries to kill a guard of which Venom of all people ends up saving. Then Carnage runs away again, this time to the orphanage where he originally lived now he's being haunted by all the Demons of the past. All the bullies, abusive parents and victims who Carnage's have to deal with throughout his life. Still Venom is on his Trail and Carnage needs to run away again! This time to his final Refuge the graveyard, just to the site of his deceased mother.

It's unclear to us what actually happened with Carnage's family. As he puts it; ''His father tried to kill him after killing his mother, but he thinks he might have killed his mother which made his father kill him, but it might be that his father killed his mother and he tried to kill his father.'' In reality Carnage probably killed both of them .
It's here that Carnage, Spider-Man and Venom fight for the last time with Black-cat popping in at the end to help Spider-Man out. Venom decides to take a final shot throwing himself and Carnage into a giant electrical generator causing an explosion and knocking Carnage out once and for all. The Avengers show up to finally take Carnage and put him in a maximum-security prison of their own making. Even his symbiote won't be able to escape*. The battle is over and Spider-Man is finally able to rest hoping that he can put the Demons of the past behind him.
And that's it for this comic it's incredibly simplistic a big fight between the three main characters at a final bit of resolution. It's not a bad ending but it feels only rushed which is strange considering this whole comic has a pacing problem.
*Just ask: Hugo Grotius, Snake Plissken or Jackknife (Superjail reference) They were inside maximum security prisons too.

Conclusion:

So now we come to the final verdict is this comic any good?

Well it's overly-long, bogged down with so many characters, you often get lost and forget exactly what was happened in main story. It also gets extremely repetitive, some of the writing is a bit corny. The characters act a bit out of place too. Peters Parker's morality breaks way too easily.
And ironically Carnage, Spider-Man and Venom don't fight each other to directly for out most of the comic (although that might be to its benefit)

Now is it the worst comic ever made? Definitely not. The series overall is entertaining enough. It's stories unique and one or two of the individual volumes are fantastic. I think it ends up on people's radar because of the way it was marketed. It's showing off as the ultra edgy psychopath comic.

"Watch as Carnage goes out and murders the world!" When in reality it doesn't even show you much of the destruction, in fact there's little to no blood in this entire comic,

And at the end of the day it's message is pretty simple ''Vigilante justice doesn't work.'' The Grim and gritty kill the bad guy, we must stop them at any cost prove to be unsuccessful every time. You just end up creating monsters as bad as the ones you're fighting if not worse. Unfortunately I don't think Marvel Comics as of the last few years has taken this to Heart. They have so many Comics now where it's nothing but blood, guts and destruction**. Say what you will about this Carnage comic but there isn't actually that much blood in it. It's surprisingly tame by modern standards I can pick up a basic Deadpool comic today and it'll show a picture of a guy having his entire entrails ripped out of his body and nobody even blinks an eye at it. The worst thing you'll see in Maximum Carnage is Eddie Brock being held over a fire. No blood no Gore it's not even that overly violent the most violence happens to the alien symbiote not the human body.

I'd say 95% of people that put this on their worst list are doing it to either look popular or to follow the herd. I suspect none of them have actually taken the time to inspect the content of this series.
I can understand if you don't like it. But this is not badly made, there are far worse Comics out there. The art alone should elevated this above vast quantities of late 80s to mid-90s budget comics of the time.

Personally I'm just happy to be done with this series. As much as all defended as not being the worst comic of all time I do have to admit I found it difficult to read at certain points. Especially if you have more entertaining material available to you which in this day and age I can't see why you wouldn't.

I wouldn't recommend the whole reading to most people. Only if you like the Symbiote characters or if you're a big Spider-Man fan. Otherwise there's no real reason to read through Maximum Carnage you might get an occasional reference to Captain America but you'd be better off just reading a Wiki article if that's all you're looking for.

My personal recommendation, read volume 1 and volume 13 maybe skim over two and give a look to 5. You can live without seeing the rest.

**It's not a bad ending but it feels only rushed which is strange considering this whole comic has a pacing problem.