Breakups are hard. Even harder is that life doesn’t stop for a breakup--the world keeps going, and responsibilities and challenges and emergencies don’t go away. Absolute Carnage #3 is, in a lot of ways, a breakup issue.

The significant conflict of the issue is between Eddie and the Venom symbiote. Eddie wants to save and protect people--Miles Morales, Mac Gargan, his son Dylan. The symbiote isn’t interested in protecting, it wants instead to end the threat of Carnage, which leads it to a new, terrifying host.

Absolute Carnage #3 is a wild ride of a comic, moving from event to event with breakneck speed, due mainly to Donny Cates’ tight plotting. Unfortunately, that relentless pace also makes some of the character behaviors and interactions feel almost perfunctory. One character’s surprise appearance towards the end of the issue is given no explanation. Another character’s presence in the book directly contradicts the status quo of their own title, again with no reasoning.

Penciler Ryan Stegman and inker JP Mayer are clearly having the time of their lives depicting the madness of the symbiotes and the Carnage brought by Carnage. Stegman’s layouts add to Cates’ breakneck pace. Frank Martin’s colors offer very little in the way of variety, unfortunately, as much of the book takes place in the dark, in the rain, or both. The lettering by VC’s Clayton Cowles does a great deal to differentiate between the characters, with the individual symbiotes getting different fonts and colors.

Absolute Carnage #3 ends with a hell of a cliffhanger, as the Venom symbiote leaves Eddie for greener pastures, so to speak. It will be exciting to see what happens to those two crazy kids in future issues of this epic crossover.

Grade: A-