Donny Cates' upcoming Absolute Carnage event has been teased for quite some time, with most of it coming from the Venom series that the writer continues to get acclaim for. Most of us feel that this event was actually teased naturally since the very first issue of the series and we can't wait to see all of these story threads collide.
However, at the end of Web of Venom: Cult of Carnage #1 (via CBR), it was revealed that there is another storyline that might have teased this event. Interestingly enough, it wasn't a story written by Cates but an eight-year-old mini-series called Carnage USA, written by Zeb Wells with art from Clayton Crain. It's something most of us didn't expect but this does show that Cates is a bit of a continuity nerd, which is a good thing.
Carnage USA had Spider-Man fighting a group of Carnage-controlled Avengers and he needed help from old nemesis Venom, along with a faction of symbiote-powered people. Because of this, it's a bit easy to see why the story is related to Absolute Carnage since that story will involve everyone who has been possessed by a symbiote.
Turns out that the town where Carnage possessed The Avengers is being used to make the symbiote villain even more powerful. Carnage rips out the spine of the regular folk who were possessed by his symbiote for a short time, so that he can get what little symbiote there is left from their bodies. He gets help from Shriek, who gathers these victims for his sick little cult.
Web of Venom: Cult of Carnage #1 is now available in comic book stores.
Read: Marvel Imagines Captain America, Black Panther, Iron Man, and More With the Carnage Symbiote