If there’s one thing you can say about Absolute Carnage, Marvel’s big symbiote-fueled crossover, it’s that it never gets boring. Each issue of the story is stuffed with event after event, shock after shock, to the point where it can be a little bit overwhelming. Absolute Carnage #5 is certainly no exception.

The issue begins with a brief flashback to the first meeting between Eddie Brock and Cletus Kasady, then switches to a major confrontation between Cletus and Eddie, each enrobed in the power of many many symbiotes. Eddie’s allies are joined by an even more eclectic group of heroes, presumably culled from the various spinoff mini-series that has been running alongside this crossover. Eventually, Eddie is forced to make an impossible choice to save his son Dylan, who is clearly more than he seems.

Writer Donny Cates has had to keep several plates spinning to keep this story moving, and it’s here in this issue that a few of those different story threads begin to pay off. Cates is wise to make the emotional heart of the story, the relationship between Eddie and Dylan, and this issue takes a significant turn because of that relationship. 

The art for the crossover, primarily by penciler Ryan Stegman and inkers JP Mayer and Jay Leisten, continues to be strong. Stegman clearly has a blast drawing all the different varieties of symbiote mayhem, and it shows in the art. The flashback at the very beginning is drawn by symbiote veterans Mark Bagley and John Dell, and their work evokes precisely the period in Spider-Man comics that it’s meant to. The coloring by Frank Martin unites the two very different art styles, and VC’s Clayton Cowles’ lettering makes the most of the various different symbiotes and other speech styles that he has to render.

Absolute Carnage has been one of Marvel’s most entertaining crossovers to date. Still, all of the various climaxes and reveals and emotional turns are beginning to get exhausting, to the point where the story has no time for falling action, and leaves various threads left dangling to be resolved in the main Venom title. It’s been a good event, but it feels unfinished, and ends extremely abruptly.

Grade: B+