CARNAGE
Are you ready for CARNAGE tomorrow!?!?! If you need something to hold you over until you can get your hands on issue 1, check out Marvel's interview with artist Mike Perkins:
Marvel.com: How has it been playing in the Spider-Man universe with a legend like Gerry Conway?
Mike Perkins: It’s great to be working within the Spider-Man universe as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do mostly because there’s such a diversity of genres to work with in that setting from the soap opera aspects of Spider-Man itself to the dark horror and suspense that we’re dealing with in CARNAGE. To do this and get the chance to collaborate with such a legend as Gerry Conway is a big thrill for me as I’ve grown up reading his works and the scripts that I’ve read on this so far are just astounding. He brings a depth of character to the thrills and suspense which populate the story.
Marvel.com: This comic has a kind of TOMB OF DRACULA vibe to it with a group of characters chasing down the title bad guy. Would you say you consciously altered your style a bit to hearken back to the monster comics of the 70’s?
Mike Perkins: I wouldn’t say my style is consciously changed. It’s more to do with the fact that the style of work on TOMB OF DRACULA is something that I’ve always aspired to. I love utilizing shadow and a lot of this story takes place underground and at night so I’m able to bring that specific element of my artwork to the full and really manipulate the shadow and textures that go into making our Carnage truly terrifying.
Marvel.com: From a visual standpoint, how did you set out to differentiate the two symbiotes in this book, Carnage and Toxin?
Mike Perkins: I would say that Carnage is more fluid, there’s a sense of liquidity to him. Toxin, because he is being manipulated by the FBI and the military in the story, reacts similarly to Venom at this moment whereby he has that sense of armor to the look and the structure of his being.
Marvel.com: John Jameson is also in this book. He has a few monster characters in his past. What are the odds of a Man-Wolf or Stargod appearance?
Mike Perkins: I couldn’t really go much into that without issuing spoiler warnings. All I can say is that the odds of this happening are really quite high and if this should happen then you would be able to consider me one very happy artist as the Man-Wolf is one of my favorite characters from a very early age.
Marvel.com: The book also stars two more human characters, Manuela Calderon and Claire Dixon; what was the process like coming up with their designs?
Mike Perkins: The descriptions of the characters were within the original outline of the CARNAGE series and, as such, were pretty much established by Gerry. Manuela in the original character sketch was carrying a baseball bat for no particular reason other than I thought it looked very, very cool and Gerry managed to put this into the script because he liked the idea so much. It just happens that the baseball bat becomes a piece of piping that she picks up when she’s originally attacked by Carnage.
Marvel.com: Did you work out a unifying theme for the Carnage-hunting squad’s clothing?
Mike Perkins: Not as such, simply because a lot of it does take place in shadow. With the military clothing anyway it’s very hard to differentiate between characters as there is an inherent uniformity to the clothing. I’m actually trying to get them out of the uniforms so that we have an individuality that shows through in the design of each character.
So, are you getting CARNAGE tomorrow more because of Carnage or because of Brock?