Cletus Kasady

Cletus Cortland Kasady is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer David Michelinie and artist Erik Larsen, the character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #344 (March 1991) as the first and most infamous host of the Carnage symbiote, an offspring of Venom. A deranged serial killer, Kasady bonded with the Carnage symbiote while sharing a cell with Venom's human host, Eddie Brock, and broke out of prison using the super-human abilities granted by it. Since then, he went on to menace both Venom and Spider-Man, resulting in various unlikely alliances between the two to defeat him. Kasady and Carnage are a perfect match, as they both have sadistic personalities, and the symbiote only increases Kasady's already existent violent tendencies. After separating from the symbiote following the events of Absolute Carnage, Kasady nonetheless continued calling himself Carnage, bonding with the Extrembiote symbiote as his new primary symbiote avatar. Since his introduction in comics, the character has been adapted into several other forms of media, including television series and video games. Woody Harrelson portrayed Cletus Kasady in the live-action Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) films Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), bonding with Carnage in the latter film. In 2009, Kasady was ranked as IGN's 90th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.