Okay, what’s the deal with these two? What are they? Who’s stronger? Cooler?
Assuming you’re talking about the comic book characters, I’ll explain for the uninitiated:
It starts during the Secret Wars when Spider-Man has to fight off plantet Earth. He gets a new, black costume there. The costume can change shapes and gives off organic webbing. Spidey later discovers this “costume” is actually an alien life form called a “symbiote.” The symbiote wants to bond with him, but Spidey rejects it and enlists the aid of Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four to get the costume off him. The costume, now angry at Spidey for rejecting him, slithers off.
Now we cut to Eddie Brock, who works at the Daily Bugle with Peter Parker (Spidey). Brock loses his job and blames Spidey/Peter. Eddie finds the symbiote and they bond, becoming Venom.
Venom can do everything Spidey can do and he doesn’t set off Spidey’s spider-sense. Also, since the alien symbiote knew Spidey’s secret identity, Eddie Brock/Venom knows Spidey’s secret identity. This made for one bad-ass Spidey-villian. Venom sees himself as a protector of the innocent, but is a little of in the head (to say the least) and tends to go overboard in his protection techniques. He also still harbors a hatered for Spidey.
Now we skip ahead to where Eddie Brock has been captured and is in prison, without his alien symbiote costume. He shares a cell with Cletus Cassidy. Cassidy was a serial killer serving multiple life sentences. When the symbiote broke Eddie out of prison, it left behind a “spawn” that merged with Cassidy. Thus Carnage was born, giving Cletus his chance to generate chaos (his favorite psychotic passtime) on a larger scale than ever.
Spidey and Venom have at times reached understandings and left one another alone, but they will always team up to go after the psychotic Carnage, who they both hate. None of the three (Spidey, Venom, or Carnage) laike one another. Spidey needs to the two sympiotes because they will both kill. Venom sees himself as having been wronged by Spider-Man and as a self-appointed protector of innocents hates Carnage’s mass musrdering ways. Carnage is just psycho and will kill everyone.
So that’s the history for those who may be wondering what the OP is about.
As for who’s stronger? In terms of sheer strength Venom is strongest. Eddie Brock is a big giant wall of muscle. He can beat the crap out of Spidey and Carnage in a brawl. The flip side though - Spidey is smarter and knows the symbiotes’ weaknesses of loud sounds and fire and whereas Cassidy and Brock get their powers from the alien symbiotes, Spidey’s power is his own. Carnage is unpredictable so you can never be sure how to attack or defend him but without the alien he’s nothing.
Who’s cooler? That depends on one’s definition of cool. I always liked Venom because he’s more a complete character. He has motives and reasons for his actions. He’s misguided, killing anyone at the drop of a hat if he thinks they’ve harmed an innocent (and there’s that whole wanting to eat Spidey’s brains thing), but still tries to do good. He even had his own comic title for a while, but Venom is too good a villian to use as a hero.
But if you think a cool villian is a near unstoppable psycho bent on wreaking havoc just to watch the chaos, then Carnage is your man. Carnage is like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. There’s no motive, no reason behind his actions. You never know what he’ll do, where or why.
Any other questions?
Crunchy Frog
avid Spider-Man fan and collector since 1982. 
What’s the current status of these two lovable nutjobs? I stopped reading Spidey at the end of the clone saga. I was so pissed off by the “I wasn’t dead, I was in Europe” bit, I couldn’t bear to pick another issue.
Do they ever explain where this sybiote came from? Or why this spawn was left behind to form Carnage?
The Venom symbiote actually came from a whole planet of symbiotes, and to my recollection it was captured by an unknown race and then part of their planet where it was being held was ripped off the planet by the Beyonder to help form battle-world, the planet in Secret Wars.
The spawn that formed Carnage was, IIRC, dropped by the symbiote because it was “time” to have offspring. Sorta like a chicken laying an egg. Also, and this is another IIRC, it was mutated by something in Earth’s environment which is why it looks so different from the Venom symbiote. Sorry if this paragraph is a little vague, but I always thought Carnage was a lame character.
Mr. Blue Sky, I don’t know the current state of the two lovable nutjobs because I stopped collecting Spider-Man at the same time you did, but I would strongly recommend picking it up again. Ultimate Spider-Man is being written by Brian Michael Bendis and he’s writing a brand new Spider-Man in a different universe with a seperate continuity from the main Marvel universe. You can read all the issues online at Marvelcomics.com and you can do the same for a few other series. Just click on the links at the top of the page (it’s free because they’re working on the Crack-Cocaine Principle).
Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spider-Man (the only two regular continuity Spider-Man titles left) are being written respectively by J. Michael Stryzcynski (sp?) of Babylon 5 fame and Paul Jenkins who wrote the excellent Inhumans mini-series. Both of those series have Spider-Man back to what he’s good at: a wisecracking crime-figher, and a guy who can’t get any breaks in his personal life.
I haven’t seen either of them in a long time. The last I remember reading of Venom, he had joined the Sinister Six.
The Sinister Six isn’t a set group of villians, but occasionally, some baddies get together (and there always are 6, by coincidence) to try to get Spider-Man. The other members were Dr. Octopus, the Sandman, the Vulture, Kraven the Hunter (for Spidey fans, this is not the Kraven that died years ago, but his son who blames Spidey), and Mysterio. Venom’s teammates humilited himi in a battle, and he set out to get revenge on the other Sinister Six members, most notably he took a bite out of the Sandman. (For those who don’t know, the Sandman can change his body at will and reconstruct himself, so long as none of the particles are lost. By taking a bite of the Sandman, Venom broke down the Sandman’s molecular stability and the Sandman, after trying to get vengeance on Spidy, but was literally unable to hold himself together, lost cohesion and was washed away into a New York City storm drain. We are led to believe he’s dead, but you know how comics are.)
The last I heard of Carnage, he was once again in a mental institution, the Ravencroft Asylum.
As for the clone saga - yeah, that pissed a lot of people off. The writer’s have done their best to put that behind them and they seem to have learned from their mistake.
The symbiote came from the planet Spidey was on during the Secret Wars. That’s as best explanation as I can give. I don’t think it was ever made clear if the alien symbiote was a native of that planet or got there by some other means. The spawn was left behind, that’s just how this life form reproduces. Similar to how a single cell splits, this thing apparently will occasionally leave a spawn behind.
And it seems I’ve been misspelling the name. It looks like it should be Cletus Kasady. And I also seem to be wrong about who’s stronger. This site has the officail bios and histories of Marvel characters including charts for each character rating intellignce, strength, speed, durability, agility, reflexes and fighting skill.
So according to the people at marvel, Carnage is the strongest, followed by Venom, then Spidey.
One’s red and one’s black!
::tumbleweeds roll by::
Okay, fine. Carnage, in addition to having pretty much all of Venom’s powers can also form solid extensions of itself. This often takes the form of spikes and axe like arms. He can also throw/shoot these weapons, leading to a lot of flipping and dodging for Spidey. They lose cohesiveness, dissolving into powder, IIRC, shortly after losing contact with the main symbiote.
I forget if the Venom symbiote is incapable of forming similar weapons or if this is a sign that Cletus is simply more imaginative than Brock or Peter were in finding uses for the suit.