History
The Life Foundation[]
Carl Mach was a mercenary who worked for a sinister corporation called the "Life Foundation." The Foundation was preparing for the M.A.D.(Mutually Assured Destruction) fallout of the Cold War and sought to provide a comfortable life for their wealthy clients after the impending nuclear holocaust. The Life Foundation experimented with the Venom symbiote in the hopes of developing superhuman peacekeepers to watch over their imagined fallout shelter utopia, and Carl was one of the three men chosen as hosts for Venom's forcibly-extracted spawn.[2]
Carl was the self-proclaimed leader of the group, however Scream was the leader de facto. During Venom's time as Lethal Protector of San Francisco, Phage and his "siblings" were defeated by Venom and Spider-Man. Carl's symbiote was artificially aged to dust and his body was caught in a massive explosion.[2]
It was later revealed that Phage and the other symbiotes had survived due to efforts by the Life Foundation. They broke Eddie Brock out of prison and kidnapped him in a last ditch effort to communicate with their alien "others." Unfortunately Eddie refused to aid them, due to Carnage's example that his "children" became psychopathic killers. Scream killed Carl with a sonic knife shortly after, having snapped from her schizophrenia and her symbiote's influence, believing that the symbiotes and any who host them were evil.[3]
After Death[]
Carl's symbiote (Phage) survived, and was imprisoned/experimented upon in The Vault along with its siblings (with the exception of Carnage and Scream.) The symbiotes eventually merged together, and bonded with a man known as Scott Washington to form Hybrid.[4]
Years later, Carl's corpse was one of many unearthed and freed from his spine, adding his codex to the many that had been bonded to a symbiote.[5]Attributes
Powers
- Orange Symbiotic Costume: Phage possessed all the powers the original Venom symbiote had, including an ability even his "father" did not have. Unfortunately since Carl could not properly control his "other," and the fact that he died early on in his career, Phage only exhibited some powers granted by the symbiote. His full range of powers would have consisted of:
- Superhuman Strength
- Superhuman Durability
- Superhuman Stamina
- Accelerated Healing Factor
- Wall-Crawling
- ESP (Spider-Sense)
- Immunity to Spider-Man's Spider Sense
- Webbing Generation
- Camouflage
- Constituent-Matter Generation
- Constituent-Matter Manipulation (Bladed Weapons): His primary method of attack was to form his symbiotic costume into long serrated blades and slash or stab his opponents. This ability was also possessed by his brother, Carnage. Another unique ability was that he could throw pieces of his of his suit at enemies and it would be highly acidic and could even melt through metal.
Abilities
- Skilled Mercenary: Carl Mach was a skilled mercenary before joining his symbiote.
Weaknesses
- Intense Sound: The symbiote is extremely sensitive to high frequencies of sound and Sonic attacks. This was best exhibited when Carl was killed by Donna using a Sonic knife.
- Intense Heat: The symbiote is also vulnerable to intense levels of heat generated by substances such as plasma, fire, and electricity.
Paraphernalia
Transportation
Notes
Trivia
- Both Phage and Rampage were fan names for Carl and his symbiote. Phage was actually the nickname for the Xenophage, a giant predatory alien-monster that preyed upon symbiotes, but the name Phage stuck in the symbiote mythos.
- The symbiote (and his hosts) wasn't officially named Phage, until Carnage, U.S.A. #2, with Rico Axelson as host.
See Also
- 7 appearance(s) of Carl Mach (Earth-616)
- 7 minor appearance(s) of Carl Mach (Earth-616)
- 1 mention(s) of Carl Mach (Earth-616)
- 20 image(s) of Carl Mach (Earth-616)