Almost six months after the release of Sony’s Venom, Marvel Entertainment continues to focus on the symbiote antihero with the release of a new teaser image for a summer comic book storyline that appears to put the character against a number of Marvel heroes. Or… does it?


The teaser image, released Wednesday without comment from Marvel, features Venom suspended above Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Hawkeye, Captain America, the Hulk and the Thing from the Fantastic Four, all of whom are being strangled by red tendrils from a mysterious source. The image is captioned, “Everyone is a target,” with the only other text being, “August 2019,” presumably relating to the release date of the future project.


That the tendrils strangling the various heroes are red would suggest that they’re not from Venom at all, but Carnage, the offspring of Venom’s symbiote side as bonded to serial killer Cletus Kasady. Carnage, a recurring villain in both Spider-Man and Venom comic books, has headlined his own comic book title on multiple occasions since his 1992 debut, with his recent return to prominence being part of the current Venom series.


Given the disparate characters appearing in the promotional image, whatever project is being teased would appear to be a crossover event storyline — there is currently no title in which the seven characters appear together being published by Marvel. If it is a crossover, it would be Marvel’s second such event this year, following The War of the Realms, which is set to launch next month.