10 Comics You Loved As A Teen (But Should Never Return To)
4. Maximum Carnage
Marvel Comics
The nineties were a... confusing time for comics. Everything was extreme, edgy or some variation on either word, and while the X-Men were still Marvel's most profitable super-team, its most popular solo hero was still everyone's favourite friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
Spider-Man's popularity had approached astronomical levels while Todd McFarlane handled art duties, and this just so happened to coincide with the rise of Venom as a key force in Spidey's comics. The two forged a fearsome rivalry, but then Marvel decided Eddie Brock could be better utilised as an anti-hero rather than as a straight up villain.
Enter Carnage, a Symbiote offspring that attached itself to notorious serial killer Cletus Kasady while he and Brock shared a cell. Carnage embarks on his own wave of terror, and so it falls to Spidey and Venom to track him down, and put a stop to him before more innocents are hurt.
And that's basically it. Maximum Carnage features a cool team-up between Spider-Man and Venom that would get any fan excited, but in reality it embodies some of the most dated tropes of that particular decade.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
