In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics).

As we await the official first debut of the Red Goblin in this week's Amazing Spider-Man #798, I figure that it would be fun to look at the history of the Carnage symbiote having other hosts. In a lot of ways, Carnage is basically just a Red Venom, but one of the ways that he is different from Venom is that the Venom symbiote has merged with a lot more people. The Carnage symbiote, for whatever reason, has been relatively selective over the years, almost only choosing to bond with its original owner, the serial killer, Cletus Kasaday. You could argue that Kasaday is just SO twisted that he effectively ruined the symbiote for anyone else, as what other person could quite match the insanity that was Kasaday?

Anyhow, the first time we saw the symbiote bond with someone else came during the time period where Ben Reilly was Spider-Man. You see, Ben, who was a clone of Spider-Man, was shown test results by a trusted friend that he was the original version of Peter Parker and that the person who we all thought was Peter Parker was actually a clone (they had gotten mixed up way back during the original Clone Saga). So Peter decided that he would quit as Spider-Man and go off and live with his wife, Mary Jane, in some other part of the country (especially when Peter seemingly lost his powers) and then Ben would take over as Spider-Man. Ben died his hair blonde so that people wouldn't think that he was Peter Parker (although, he just looked like a blonde Peter Parker, but I guess that's neither here nor there). He got a new costume and became the new (seemingly original) Spider-Man. Eventually, it turned out that Norman Osborn had just faked the test results just to be a jerk and Ben was the clone and Peter was the original.

Anyhow, in a storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #410 (by Tom DeFalco, Mark Bagley, Larry Mahlstedt and Randy Emberlin), Cletus Kasaday is locked up in Ravencroft (Marvel's answer to Arkham Asylum. Like, just a COMPLETE knock off of Arkham Asylum). The head of security at Ravencroft was John Jameson.

Well, in Amazing Spider-Man #410, Carnage is out causing problems with Kasaday is still in his cell...

Naturally, it turns out that the symbiote has possessed Jameson, which is why it is acting a BIT more heroic than usual, just with the Carnage symbiote influencing Jameson's mind to make him a lot more violent (Jameson sure is prone to getting possessed by stuff - years earlier he was turned into the Man-Wolf).

Okay, so Spider-Man shows up and he is shocked to learn that not only has the Carnage symbiote possessed Jameson, but that it was only using him until it could find a more powerful host and, guess what, Spider-Man is that new host!

This was back in the days when the four Spider-Man titles (Amazing Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and Spider-Man) were basically telling weekly stories like the Superman titles of the 1990s, so Spider-Carnage showed up in all of those titles before Ben and the symbiote split.

It would only be 20 issues before the symbiote found a new temporary host!

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Amazing Spider-Man #430 (by Tom DeFalco, Joe Bennett and Sam de la Rosa), is notable as being the issue where Spider-Man finds out that the heroes that he thought died in the Onslaught event were actually alive. Well, not precisely, as he saw them all in the storyline where they returned to Earth, but this issue he at least got to REACT to the news.

Anyhow, he has a fight with Carnage in the issue and during it, the Silver Surfer happened to be in the neighborhood and the symbiote goes NUTS...

That's a heck of a visual. It doesn't really necessarily make all that much sense that the symbiote would be able to take over Surfer, but it's worth it for the visual!

Okay, so years pass and Carnage is seemingly killed in the opening arc of New Avengers when Sentry tears him into two pieces and throws him into outer space. However, the symbiote somehow keeps Kasaday alive, despite being in two parts. A rogue company captured the symbiote in outer space and in the Carnage miniseries by Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain, it temporarily merges with Dr. Tanis Nieves, a psychiatrist who was treating Carnage's old girlfriend, Shriek. The symbiote briefly merged with her in Carnage #2...

but it was all a ploy just to get to re-merge with Kasaday.

There was this bit with Karl Malus (now a TV star thanks to Jessica Jones) but I don't really personally count that.

The most recent example came in Amazing Spider-Man #795, out just a month ago (by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Mike Hawthorne, Terry Pallot and Marte Gracia)...

Presumably, this means that Osborn will become the Red Goblin, but I guess we'll know for sure just WHO the Red Goblin is when Amazing Spider-Man #798 comes out tomorrow!

That's it for this edition of Drawing Crazy Patterns! If anyone else has ideas for things that get repeated a lot that you'd like to see me spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!