Tik Tok, the clock is ticking…
Growing up in Chicago, my family lived near gang-infested neighborhoods. To avoid recruitment, we did two things: went to school and played Sega Genesis and Nintendo. School was a major resource for us to retrieve games we had never played before, thanks to my brother’s popularity.
He was and still is excellent at winning friends and influencing people. I wasn’t so great at it (as Denzel Washington puts it, I was socially handicapped), but my brother was a burgeoning socialite. Anyway, I benefitted from his relationships.
My brother would borrow games and comics from his friends, even when we had nothing to exchange. I learned early that if people find fondness with you, they’ll share without or with minimal expectation.
In the 4th grade, my brother had this friend named Alberto. Alberto was huge into comics. As far as I know, he was the only person in our grade level to have several issues (not the entire series) with the released Maximum Carnage limited run.
Are you part of the “too long, didn’t read” crowd? Say less. You can watch the video adaptation here:
He loaned my brother 5 of the books from the 8 he had. I believe there were 15 books in total.
The storyline was something I’ve never witnessed in a Spider-Man comic. It blew my mind! It was my introduction to Venom and his initial hatred for Spider-Man. I was also introduced to psychopath Cletus Kassidy, who took on Carnage’s mantle after bonding with Venom’s symbiote offspring.
The story also introduced other d-list heroes and villains such as Shriek, Demogoblin, and Doppelganger. Despite their low-level popularity, they played being a supporting cast well for the lead murderer that is Carnage.
My dad bought us Maximum Carnage on Sega Genesis for Christmas the following year. That gift bought the comic to life and was quite a surprise as I didn’t know there was a Maximum Carnage game.
In 2012, I purchased the entire Maximum Carnage collection in graphic novel format off Amazon. I finally was able to have the whole story experience.
Seeing the world through a biblical lens, I tend to make connections to things, revealing parallels that were invisible to me before. And from comparing the Maximum Carnage story to our present day, including the pseudo-revolution we experienced in 2020, boy, do things start to get eerie.
Connecting the Past with the Present
Shriek, Carnage’s version of Joker’s Harley Quinn, can manipulate sounds in the story. Shriek harnesses it for, as Wikipedia puts it, “destructive concussive force or use it to disorient and agitate her enemies,” which she did not hesitate to use, putting Venom down in several panels of the comic.
However, the more notable attribute of her powers is that she can channel her negative emotions and amplify those feelings in others around her, causing an implied form of “mind control.” This ability is central to how she bridles the generated insanity within crowds causing them to be nuttier than her.
She causes people to fight each other, attack the good guys, and, more disturbing, have people forgo their moral responsibility to indulge their darker, selfish instincts. In one panel, a woman was psychologically moved to throw her small children off the top of a building. Shriek brought thoughts hidden in the deepest recess of that woman’s mind thanks to Shriek.
Fortunately, Spider-Man comes in for the rescue before that happens. By partnering with Carnage, her powers to induce the psychotic are magnified times ten. She further explains how this works:
“I can take all the little bed bugs (negative thoughts and emotions) crawling around inside my head and transmit them out to anyone close to me — – like these charming citizens! Normally it just shakes ‘em up a little — but since I’ve been hanging with Carnage and soaking up his sick vibes — -I’m able to really pump up the volume! Carnage is the battery and I’m the radio — -we can make anybody as crazy as we are!”
Consequently, the citizens of NYC, already paranoid from media hysteria, are severely susceptible to her psionic waves, making them easy prey to her powers.
You could say our social media technology parallels Shriek’s psionic force. Digital entities such as Facebook, *cough*, and Meta continue to engineer divisive content manipulating people’s fears and biases.
And with the emergence of TikTok, lunacy is packaged as innocent dance videos and “challenges” to a younger generation void of the ability to discern what’s trash and what isn’t rightfully.
We can expect our descent into madness to occur quickly as today’s kids become tomorrow’s adults who warmly welcome a New World Order.
Maximum Carnage in the Classroom
NYC was ill-equipped to battle Carnage and his cronies, placing them in a “can’t beat em’, join em’” conundrum. As misbehavior in education continues to become unrestrained, students with intentions to learn will eventually cave into campus insanity if there are no systems to counteract the cultivating of the zoo.
As a teacher, I have worked on campuses where profanity was unchecked as administrators viewed it as “a battle not worth fighting.” While I was able to manage it in my room (zero tolerance for foul language and teaching students better ways to speak), it was not an easy expectation to express.
Frequently, I found myself being negatively impacted by the student’s behaviors. It was a risk as I placed myself in jeopardy of compromising my character and moral value. Fortunately, the reward outweighed that risk. To teach above the behavior while building relationships, I had to use what was familiar to them and speak “their” language.
A Scriptural Conclusion
My educational experience, managing myself around the surrounding darkness, parallels the prophet’s time in Sodom. This story is retold anecdotally by an unknown author who published a classic collection of devotionals:
“As legend has it, a just and good man went to Sodom one day, hoping to save the city from God’s judgment. He tried talking to first one individual and then the next, but nobody would engage in conversation with him.
Next, he tried carrying a picket sign that had ‘REPENT’ written on it in large letters. Nobody paid any attention to his sign after an initial glance.
Finally he began going from street to street and from marketplace to marketplace, shouting loudly, “Men and women, repent! What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you! It will destroy you!”
The people laughed at him, but still he went about shouting. One day, a person stopped him and said, ‘Stranger, can’t you see that your shouting is useless?’ The man replied, ‘Yes I see that.’ The person then asked, ‘So why do you continue?’
The man said, ‘When I arrived in this city, I was convinced that I could change them. Now I continue shouting because I don’t want them to change me.’”
With this story, I can easily relate to what the mysterious prophet talks about in continuing his mission to prevent the city’s darkness from overshadowing his light.
We are to continue to be transformed by renewing our minds (Rom. 12:2), meditating on the Word of God daily to combat mental and spiritual attacks. I internalize the Word to help me navigate my own emotions, guiding my actions when interacting with others.
With this preparation, we can sanctify ourselves and be physically present. It is unnecessary to withdraw from society to remain “pure” because in following Jesus Christ, we have to be amongst the people hoping that Christ’s light will shine through to them(Mattew 5:14).
If I did not have the Lord working on the inside of me to counteract such darkness, I would easily be consumed by it, just like Shriek was able to do to the NYC citizens. The Word helps me capture the vain imaginations of my emotions, bringing them against Biblical understanding. What do you have to counter darkness in your life when we’re entering a time of chaos?
There is also an excellent video by Alpha and Omega Productions about how Paul doesn’t allow the culture to taint him and his position in delivering the gospel. Paul’s ministry is a perfect example of a man not fellowshipping with the world yet being all things to all men that he might save some.
Revisiting Maximum Carnage allowed me to see disturbing parallels as fiction bleeds into reality. In the console version marketing of the comics, Marvel displayed ads in gaming magazines that headlined, “Paint the town red.”
If we continue down this path, blood will be spilled to create entire crimson cities.
God help us all.
