Since his introduction in the early 90s, Carnage has been one of the most vicious villains that Spider-Man has ever faced. He’s been such a terror that he’s widely regarded as one of the greatest comic book villains of all time. Since spawning from the Venom symbiote and attaching itself to serial killer Cletus Kasaday, Carnage has been through a lot of changes in his history, but none might be bigger than the ones coming in ‘Superior Carnage’.

Similar to his long-time foe’s recent transformation, Carnage is about to get an upgrade as well. After being left essentially brain dead after the events of ‘Minimum Carnage’, the villain is incarcerated with little to no chance of getting out again. That is, until the Wizard comes along with his own plan for creating his own agent of chaos, which is the exact opposite of what the government has done with Venom.

‘Robot Chicken’ writer Kevin Shinick returns to the Marvel Universe with this limited series and is extremely excited to play with what’s left of Cletus Kasaday. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, he reveals his approach to this project:

“Marvel says to me, ‘Hey, how would you like to do a Carnage miniseries?’ I say, ‘Great!’ And then they’re like, ‘Oh, by the way — he’s lobotomized!’ I was like, ‘What?!’ But then I realized this was actually the perfect situation, because Carnage has been around long enough now that we all know what to expect from him. This gives me the opportunity to almost start from scratch, to really build up the fear again based on the fact that we don’t know what the symbiote is thinking. When it comes to horror, I always think less is more. The less I know about Michael Myers, the scarier he’s gonna be. And I don’t know about you, but I think those alien movies would be less terrifying if the aliens kept running around telling you how much they were going to kill us. So yeah, I’m hoping to go less bluster and more bad-ass.”

The site also unveiled the first look at issue number one with some unlettered artwork from Stephen Segovia. You can check out the pages in the gallery below, along with a cover by Clayton Crain and a variant from Rafa Garres:

SUPERIOR SPIDER-MONTH GETS SINISTER WITH THE RETURN OF CARNAGE!

• LOCKED AWAY IN AN ASYLUM, IT LOOKS LIKE CARNAGE IS GONE FOR GOOD—BUT HIS FELLOW INMATES HAVE OTHER PLANS…

• WILL THEY SUCCESSFULLY WAKE THE MONSTER?

• OR WILL THIS HIDEOUS EXPERIMENT CREATE THE MOST POWERFUL, DANGEROUS, MANIACAL CARNAGE YET… A SUPERIOR CARNAGE?

• KEVIN SHINICK (Avenging Spider-Man, Robot Chicken) and STEPHEN SEGOVIA (Extreme X-men, Thor) come together to create a story so grotesquely gratifying you wont be able to look away!

By the looks of things, Carnage is looking as sinister as ever. I’m particularly looking forward to Spidey vs. Carnage since both characters have undergone a number of changes since they last met in battle. Needless to say things should be pretty interesting.

‘Superior Carnage’ #1 hits shelves at your local comic shop on July 17, 2013.