‘Carnage’ #5 review: Highway to Hel

A dark day for the dark elves.

August 24, 2022

As Carnage slaughters his way through the dark elves, Kenneth is forced to once again consider where his loyalties lie. And he’d better choose quick, because Carnage is never too far away.

This issue narrows its focus in some ways, mostly zeroing in on Kenneth’s P.O.V. as Carnage continues his rampage. The most fascinating aspect of this issue is what appears to be a budding companionship between Kenneth and Zeiste, a dark elf hunting after Carnage. We get a great deal of this character’s backstory and a sense of understanding between the pair.

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However, without spoiling things, it feels like this potential storyline may have already been scuttled, leaving me wondering about the reasoning behind this interlude. Maybe the point of Zeiste’s character was to show Kenneth that he’s not cut out for this life, but the storyline is both given too much real estate and not enough room to breathe at the same time. That being said, we do get a few moments of interesting insight into Kenneth’s frame of mind and his wavering loyalty to Carnage.

The big guy himself, meanwhile, continues his transformation into a more powerful, almost mythical being, complete with more poetic pontifications about the nature of evil and his own desire to become something greater. Continuing a trend from recent issues, some of the dialogue in Carnage’s scenes can occasionally feel a bit flowery. I can see how it could be a bit off-putting for longtime fans of the character, but there’s something about it that also reinforces Carnage’s evolution in the story. Now that Carnage doesn’t have anyone pulling his strings, the symbiote is continuing to change on a fundamental level.

'Carnage' #5 review: Highway to Hel — Marvel Comics

That constant sense of change is reflected in the story itself, which continues to operate at a cosmic scale. Seeing Carnage assimilating one elf after another is a horrifying visual, made all the worse by the fact that he’s instantly able to co-opt their memories and use them against their friends. Francesco Manna delivers on the creepiness here, showing the horror in these hunted characters’ faces as they realize their friends are long gone, and now something terrible is puppeteering their bodies. Manna and Erick Arciniega craft some wildly colorful (and bloody) fantasy imagery, from giant flaming wolves to a gnarly one-sided fight between Carnage and the dark elves. However, it’s a bit difficult to get too excited when Carnage just keeps walking from one scenario to another with nobody giving him a hard time. When the lead character out-levels everybody else, there’s not much tension.

With that in mind, much of the tension in the story falls to Jonathan Shayde and Kenneth — both of whom feel like afterthoughts in this issue. Kenneth in particular appears to be given a moral dilemma in the early parts of the issue — and those moments feel like they’re on the verge of revealing something new and interesting about this character — but this thread of the story ultimately feels like it doesn’t pay off in this issue. I could be totally wrong, but at this point, I’m just glad Carnage has made it to Hel so that the story can once again kick into high gear.