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What If...? Dark: Carnage Vol 1 1

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Appearing in 1st story

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Ravencroft
    • Ashley Kafka (First appearance)
    • Camille Pazzo (First appearance)
    • Travis Many Hands (First appearance) (First appearance; Erased from existence)
    • Numerous unnamed guards (Death of several)
  • Carnage (Cortland Kasady) (First appearance)
  • Spiral Cult (First appearance)
    • Five Hands (First appearance) (Death)
    • Numerous unnamed Spiral Cultists (Death)
  • Dormammu (First appearance)
  • Mindless Ones
  • Ravencroft

Other Characters:

Races and Species:

Locations:

Items:

Synopsis for 1st story

Rampaging through Ravencroft Institute, Carnage gleefully devours every guard he comes across. Cornered in the laundry room, he laughs off the guards' attempt to kill him down with bullets and retreats into the basement to search for a means of escaping the grounds. The new chief of security, Travis Many Hands, reports the situation to Ashley Kafka and Camille Pazzo; the two bickering over whose fault the escape is. Pazzo clears Travis to use the new anti-symbiote weaponry, and the remaining guards descend into the bowels of the asylum. Searching for an exit, Carnage ambushes the guards and flees into a vent, emerging in a long-abandoned sub-basement that once been a laboratory belonging to Mister Sinister. As the guards deploy sonic grenades and ground-tremor oscillators against Travis' warnings, the floor collapses and Carnage plunges into a cavern below the asylum.

Carnage comes to at the base of a gnarled and twisted tree, noting it must've been a sapling when the first settlers arrived in the area, buried when the soil it was growing in collapsed into the cavern. Spotting something glowing amidst the branches, Carnage climbs to discover the skeleton of a man from the 17th century. As Carnage peers at it, the skeleton speaks -- demanding to know who he is and disdainfully saying that he's not its benefactor.

In the laundry room, Travis helps the remaining guards as Pazzo storms in and berates him for almost collapsing the whole asylum, Travis retorting that she was the one who greenlit the use of the weaponry. Their argument is interrupted as the floor quakes again and an eerie orange light shines through the cracks.

In the caverns below, the skeleton begins extricating itself from the branches, stating that its benefactor promised it an army, but that they are not ready yet -- gesturing to translucent fruit-like pods hanging from the tree's branches, each containing a human skeleton. Carnage asks who the skeleton is and who it's talking about, the skeleton introduces itself as Cortland Kasady and the one it serves as the Dread Dormammu.

In the Dark Dimension, Dormammu senses his name is being invoked and senses that one of his long-term plans to conquer Earth is being disrupted. Tearing open space-time to investigate, Dormammu tells Cortland to go back to sleep and wait until the cultists are fully matured, at which point Cortland can use them to summon Dormammu to Earth. As the crack widens, Mindless Ones begin spilling out and attacking the Ravencroft guards. As Travis and his men gun them down, Kafka and Pazzo order them to put a stop to whatever it is that Carnage has unleashed. Dormammu explains that the Space-Time Tree was grown from a grafting of numerous divine trees and nourished by Cortland's inherit evil, its roots descending through time into the 17th century and its branches reaching out into the future. Once mature, it will enable Dormammu to escape the confines placed on him by Doctor Strange and the other Sorcerer Supremes, and Cortland will conquer Earth in his name with the metamorphosed Spiral Cultists as his army. Carnage sneers at Dormammu, disgusted that his ancestor would swear fealty to another -- even a dark god. Travis and his men arrive and begin shooting the pods, Dormammu dispatching more Mindless Ones to attack them. Carnage escapes down into the roots, Dormammu worrying that he will ruin his plans by altering the past. Granting Cortland a boon, Dormammu accelerates his transformation -- causing Cortland to be engulfed in a black and red symbiote with a skull-shaped chest emblem and a spiral symbol on his chest. Dormammu sends the new and improved Dark Carnage to go to stop his descendant.

In 1674, Carnage lands in the depths of a cave system and examines some wall-art depicting a dark god wielding a sword, commenting that it looks oddly familiar. Smelling cooking meat, Carnage follows the scent to a chamber where a group of Spiral Cultists are roasting a captive. Noting that Carnage has a symbiote, they hail him as an emissary of the Elder Gods and offer themselves up to be eaten, Carnage being off-put by their reverence. Before he can do anything, Dark Carnage enters and denounces Carnage as a heretic. Siding with Dark Carnage, the cultists attack Carnage, who slaughters them despite Dark Carnage's protests that he's changing the timeline. All this going over Cletus' head, Carnage tries to bite off Dark Carnage's but is overpowered. Slaughtering the remaining cultists, Carnage mocks his ancestor for being a flunky to an interdimensional loser and notes that one of the cultists -- Five Hands -- has a similar name to Travis Many Hands. Eating Five Hands' head, Carnage coats his axe in his symbiote and chops through the roots of the Space-Time Tree, causing it to die. Climbing back up the roots as they crumble, Carnage arrives in the present. Dark Carnage follows in an attempt to attack him, but is thrown through the portal into the Dark Dimension for his trouble. Furious, Dormammu reaches through to smite Carnage, but the portal closes and cuts off his arm. Dormammu's arm vanishes and regenerates, the Faltine warlord furiously venting his wrath on Dark Carnage.

Back in Ravencroft, Carnage is easily recaptured by guards wielding high-tech anti-symbiote weaponry, owing their success to Bertrand Stalking Wolf's long tenure as head of security. Confused, Carnage asks what happened to Travis Many Hands as he's strapped into an apparatus; Bertrand retorting that he's been the head of Brutality Research for as long as Cletus has been an inmate. As Bertrand states they're going to extract the Carnage symbiote from Cletus and chop them to pieces to watch them slowly heal, Carnage lets out a scream of anguish; leaving Pazzo, Kafka, and Bertrand confused as this is normally his favorite part.

Solicit Synopsis

WHAT IF…CORTLAND KASADY BECAME CARNAGE?

• CLETUS KASADY, the mad man who bonded to CARNAGE, wasn’t the only family member to have a connection with symbiotes.

• CORTLAND KASADY, his long-dead ancestor, rests beneath the RAVENCROFT INSTITUTE FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE!

• What would happen if the symbiote reanimated the corpse of Cortland Kasady?

• Is the world big enough for TWO KASADY CARNAGES?!

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