Verse Challenge: Could the Sinister Six defeat Carnage

The Sinister Six. Outside The Lizard (Who was a human at the time), these were the first 6 supervillains Spider-Man battled (in the original roster) and remain iconic villains of his to the day, together representing his early decade of superhero-ing in the 60s. The Vulture, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, Sandman, and their leader Doctor Octopus.

Carnage. One of, if not the, most deadly Spider-Man villains and one of the strongest, a represetentation of the darkening of comics in the 90s

If Spider-Man was unavailable when Carnage showed up, would the Sinister Six be able to stop him?

Everyone will be in their normal states here since Carnage has possessed Silver Surfer before which would absolutely godstomp the Sinister Six even in their strongest states. Though I will be including their base states at the latest point as members of the Sinister Six have trained and upgraded their tech and Carnage has evolved. So in a comparison between the two sides here, the sort of obvious point of reference for comparison would be Spider-Man himself, and while that is a helpful comparison to some extent there also should be some degree of care when using it as Spider-Man's strength famously increases drastically when in a determined state due to his legendary willpower meaning that scaling to him is not always the same. As a compromise I will give the characters' feats of comparing Spider-Man as well as their best feats outside of that.

The first character to include here is the Vulture introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #2. The Vulture has strength to put him almost in League with Spider-Man

Even back in the day he was able to throw a helicopter

He has also beaten Daredevil in a fight

Daredevil having been able to fight equally against some of the toughest Marvel Street Level characters like Deadpool

or against Sabretooth

Doctor Octopus, the leader of the Sinister Six, was the second to be introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #3. Doctor Octopus's Original Arms are regularly shown to be equal or even greater then Spider-Man's strength able to knock him out in a few hits

Doctor Octopus was also able to stop a train

and level a building

and this was BEFORE Doctor Octopus' arms were upgraded to adamantium which could tear through Iron Man's armor

and even defeated The Hulk

The Sandman, third member of the Sinister Six, was introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #4. Sandman is regularly depicted as stronger then Spider-Man, to the point that a headbutt from Spider-Man threatened to knock Spider-Man uncouncious

He has at times grown to be large enough to dwarf skyscrapers

He is also able to massively solidify his sand to temporarily boost his strength and durability drastically able to hurt and take hits from beings like The Thing

Electro is the fourth member of the Sinister Six, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #9. He definitely won a battle with Shocker despite Shocker have surprise and getting in more blows overall

despite Shocker's Gauntlets being capable of nearly killing Spider-Man in one blow

and Electro was able to bring down Spider-Man in a single blast

Electro was also able to create a major electrical storm that caused a blackout and destroyed nearby helicopters

The fifth member of the Sinister Six is Mysterio introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #13. 

Mysterio is.....well physically he's the absolute joke tier of the Marvel Street Tiers. He did take a blow from Daredevil and it's suggesting he's at least superhuman

though it's unknown how much Daredevil was trying there. He also survived this for what it's worth

Kraven the Hunter is the final member of the Sinister Six, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #15. Kraven is tough enough to take lots of blows from a bloodlusted Spider-Man

He also beat Kaine, who is stronger and faster then Spider-Man (though less skilled)

It has also been stated since Kraven's first appearences that he can stop the charge of a Bull Elephant with a single punch

Carnage is famously one of the strongest villains in Spider-Man's Rogue Gallery, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #359 as one of the clearest indicators of the darkening of comics in the 90s. He also was arguably an indicator of power creep for Spider-Man's team. Carnage was strong enough to throw both Spider-Man and Venom relative to Spider-Man in strength off him

as well as tanked Spider-Man's strongest punch

He was able to easily overpower Venom by himself

and recovered quickly from a beatdown from behind by Venom

Also he has unexplainable showings against beings that are hypothetically much stronger then him. For instance hurting Magneto through his shield and surviving a blast from Doctor Doom

tearing out an adamantium robot's eye

tanking a Repulsor Ray

He's also leveled a city street

 

and claimed to be stronger then a dimension after tearing his way out of Cape's dimension

In terms of speed, the Sinister Six generally speaking have feats suggesting they are comparable to Spider-Man though for the reasons above, I'll also include any notable feats they have without scaling to Spider-Man.

Vulture's speed in the air has always been his greatest strength able to speedblitz even Spider-Man (That's Peter in disguise)

 

He can also bullet-time consistently

He's also been able to block and dodge projectiles from Bullseye and Hobgoblin

Doctor Octopus' movement speed is fairly normal, but his reaction and arm speed is fast enough to block a leap from Spider-Man

 

He's also hit other Strong Marvel Street Levelers including Daredevil and Punisher

Doctor Octopus has also been described as "quick as lightning"

This is a common figure of speech but is consistent with many lightning timing feats of Marvel Street Levelers including Spidey.

Sandman has always been on the slower side of Spidey's rogue gallery though his reaction and sand projection speed were fast enough to react to Spider-Man in mid-air and hit with a sand fist

If Electro needs to move quickly he can also move literally on one of his own bolts of lightning to move as fast as lightning

Electro can easily react to and dodge or block projectiles thrown by Black Suit Spider-Man

Electro has even tagged Quicksilver

who has run faster then even radio waves

Mysterio....has no speed feats. He does not have superhuman speed. Though at the very least his lasers move at light speed

Kraven is on the faster side of Spidey's villains, being able to regularly compete with some of Marvel's fast street levels including Spidey, Kaine, Black Panther, and Deadpool

 

He's also moved comparable to Storm's lightning

Carnage is consistently as fast or faster then Spider-Man himself

He's been able to blitz Deadpool before

He was able to fight numerous Venoms at once before blitzing Poison, splitting him in half

Also he hit Nova, whose MFTL once. Again Carnage has a few unexplained inconsistently high showings

Going over their abilities, I'm going to be focusing on the most relevant ones. 

Vulture has the abilities of gravitional manipulation via technology. While initially this was focused through his wings to fly, he can now fly without wings and can use his gravity manipulation to bring down the force of 80 times normal Earth gravity on someone

and can bring down a water tower with it

Doctor Octopus's powerset is fairly simple, being the 4 Metallic Arms, though it should be noted that these arms can act without him

their primary intent being his safety. He can also control them from a distance

Doctor Octopus also has a superintellect, often underestimated. He was able to foil the Intelligencia's plans and outwit Tony Stark. He was able to boost his intellect to control all technology in the city

and created the Octahedral, capable of killing all life on Earth

Sandman has the ability to shift his body as sand to give himself a logia intangibility

He can create or become a flying sandstorm

He can make constructs of sand, including whole sand castles

He can reform from just parts of his sand

and he can also control amouns of sand as large as the entire Sahara Desert

Electro can absorb any nearby electromagnetism

and can be used to move physical objects

As mentioned above he can create a lightning storm and travel on his own electric bolts. He also defeated the psychic Nate Grey by using the electricity of his own brain to turn his own telepathic powers against him

He can also damage someone using the electric impulses in their brain

Mysterio truly is the master of illusions. He could create the appearence of a giant storm or an earthquake

He's tricked Spider-Man into thinking he was 6 inches tall

His hypnosis can control a person

and manipulate a bunch of heroes into fighting each other

Spider-Sense disabling gas

Teleportation

Lightning Illusions

Fire Illusions

Tranquilizers and gas capable of knocking out She-Hulk

numerous hologram duplicates

Lasers capable of harming Spider-Man and move at light speed

and hypnotized Spider-Man into thinking he was drowning when he wasn't even wet

He also made the world appear to be a photo negative of itself

and creating a fake situation where it seemed like Spider-Man was getting to Avengers Mansion when he wasn't moving

Kraven the Huner is a skilled fighter, particullarly skilled in nerve strikes such that he can numb a limb with one strike

He carries also the best in hunting gear including a net that even Black Suit Spider-Man at his best would struggle to escape

He has hallucigenic toxins that even work on beings normally immune to toxins like Symbiotes

Kraven's toxins can drop most metahumans in seconds

He also attained more recently adamantium gear

Carnage is controlled by a symbiote, which allows him to project his body mass like Spider-Man's webs, though often in more violent and insidious ways

He regularly shifts his body parts into various weapons

In this way he can "web-swing" much like Spider-Man

though he can also fly by shifting his arms into wings

He can turn his arms into tentacles that can reach across a city

Carnage also has a highly advanced regen factor, to the point that when under the effect of a morality reversing spell by Doctor Doom and the Scarlet Witch, Carnage sacrificed himself to stop a bomb that threatened to kill all of humanity and was reduced to just a puddle of flesh and yet still regenerated

He can detatch part of himself to use as ranged weapons

This is pretty relevant because if Carnage gets into someone's bloodstream, he can take over and possess that person

or drive people mad

He can also travel through the Ethernet by condensing himself down to molecular size and back again

Carnage also has 360 degree awareness

In terms of weaknesses the Sinister Six generally are somewhat arrogant and often have weaknesses related to their abilities.

Both Vulture and Doctor Octopus are heavily reliant on their tech, and if Vulture's gravity controlling suit or Doctor Octopus mechanical arms are removed they are virtually helpless. Similar for Mysterio although Mysterio also as the weakness that even with his tech he relies mostly on manipulation and is not a physical powerhouse.

Kraven the Hunter has the weakness that he has a code of honor and doesn't like using underhanded means.

Electro is prone to being shorted out by getting wet, though he has gotten more resistant to this and requires lots of water to short him out. Sandman similarly is weak to water which keeps him changing shape though he can change to sandstone to resist this. Sandman is also weak to extreme heat turning him to glass and having the single grain of sand holding his soul removed, keeping him from manipulating the rest of his sand.

In terms of weaknesses, Carnage is weak, like all symbiotes, to extreme heats, radiation and sonics though Carnage in particular has evolved a resistance to these, to the point of outright immunity to sonics. Carnage is also psychotic and not entirely focused on winning fights efficiently preferring to have his demented fun. 

Carnage bursts free from containment and carves a way of destruction and mayhem, bloodshed and terror. Carnage gleefully creates a wave of crime and killings. However Spider-Man and Venom are not there to stop him, being off-world for a mission.

Otto Octavius knows that Carnage is a threat to even the other supervillains and calls for the Sinister Six to re-assemble to stop this threat to his plans for world domination. Wielding the primal elements and some of the greatest weapons of man they prepare to tackle the alien invader whose very name is synonmous with destruction.

What happens?

So a lot of people seem to think this one is clearly going to be a victory for Carnage probably because Spider-Man canonically beat the Sinister Six by himself and Carnage is stronger.  However this is not taking into account the fact that the Sinister Six have grown both physically and mentally since then, as well as the fact that while Carnage is physically stronger then Spider-Man he's neither as intelligent or as skilled a fighter as Spider-Man (though Carnage is plenty skilled and intelligent in his own right).

That's not to say that the Sinister Six would clearly take it either. Carnage is definitely their physical superior in nigh-all cases. Excluding some ridiculous high end feats, Carnage is generally I would estimate somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 5 times the strength of Spider-Man averaging around 2 times stronger while the Sinister Six's stronger members are generally about on par with him. Without abilities this would be a fight between basically 6 preteens and a strong adult man who also is psychotically murderous. In the original story featuring the Sinister Six they allowed their egos to get the better of them and tried to defeat Spider-Man one a time so they would have the personal glory of having defeated him which allowed Spider-Man to beat them one by one. If they tried that with Carnage, they would get torn to shreds.

If the Sinister Six is to win, they would need to take the fight completely seriously and use teamwork, which in fairness, I think they would be very likely to do against CARNAGE. That said they would still generally want to keep away from Carnage. 5 of the Sinister Six if they tried to go hand to hand with Carnage would be torn to ribbons quickly. The exception is Sandman. Sandman is more of a brick then the others but also has a logia intangibility which means he has the best chance of surviving hand to hand. That said physically speaking Sandman is still on his best day only equal to Carnage on his worst day physically and he would have trouble keeping up with him even if Carnage can neither infect nor easily tear him apart. That said Sandman going melee with Carnage could probably be a good idea regardless just to distract Carnage since Sandman can best take Carnage's assault.

So the biggest threat in a fight against Carnage is that Carnage would infect the Sinister Six or indeed any nearby civilians and begin to duplicate. If he does begin doing that, then it's gonna be very difficult to stop him. Fortunately for the Sinister Six while actually stopping him if he does that would be very difficult they have numerous ways to prevent an infection from getting into them if they can keep him at range.

Most notably while Carnage can fire projectiles and his tentacles have a ridiculous range, it's not inconcievable that Electro could simply shock the projectiles away. Electro is probably going to be the chief card of the Sinister Six if they win, simply because his electricity can produce heat on a level Carnage hasn't been shown to be able to resist so he could simply melt away pieces of Carnage thrown. 

Of course this only works if the Sinister Six stay together and that becomes a tactical problem because if Carnage sees they are all in one place, it makes it that much more likley to simply bound over them and get them all where he wants them. Of course the Six could try and split up but most of them are simply not agile enough to avoid being hit by Carnage's tendrils for very long. I think Vulture would probably be able to do it in the air for a while gived his famed aerial agility and his hypothetical ability to exude gravity to send any pieces near him away, and Sandman would simply be immune. Mysterio might also be able to avoid it by usage of holograms. That said Electro would have to be constantly blasting away any carnage parts that get close to him. Of course he could try and use physical objects as shields, but this has the same problem with Doctor Octopus using his arms to try and block them, which is that Carnage's parts could simply go through or slide around physical obstacles. Kraven likewise would have difficulty in avoiding said objects, though given his agility and fighting skill I think he would do slightly better.  

Overall Carnage has a really strong offense for the Six, and would be able to kill or infect any of them very easily if they give him the opportunity. Stealth is also not likely to work unless Mysterio's strange anti-spider sense gas also works on Carnage's 360 degree awareness, it's not clear exactly what Mysterio's gas actually does. 

One thing that the Six does have going for them however is that given their lack of morals it's perfectly in character for them to kill any civilians nearby if Carnage would infect them since it's implied that Symbiotes need their host to be living. This wouldn't even be particularly hard or require close range as Vulture's gravity powers can exude 80x gravity and Electro can exude an electromagnetic wave strong enough to kill with ease and at range. 

However that's only really in one area and this brings in another of Carnage's strengths, his sheer mobility. Carnage is faster then anyone here, and while the difference might not be as drastic as the strength difference, considering his 3-dimensional mobility given his flight and organic "web" swinging it would be very difficult for anyone to keep up with him outside maybe Vulture. This gives Carnage two big advantages; firstly and perhaps more obviously it means it would be harder to keep him at range since if he's not interferred with, not only could he just suddenly tentacle through most of the Six but he can also get close to them before they can do much. The other problem it causes is almost the opposite which is if they are doing damage to him and winning, he's got a good chance of getting out of the area to regen and infect other people to spread. 

It's possible for the Six to deal with either of these problems, though in both cases it's not totally assured and requires some strategy. The first one is more immediatly important to deal with. While Carnage simply bullrushing the Six  is a dangerous strategy, there are numerous ways to stop it if partially. Sandman can somewhat distract and hold Carnage. It's also notable that Sandman's sandstorm technique can deprive people of oxygen. This is important because if Cassidy dies due to oxygen deprivation he will be left in the most aggressive but less powerful symbiote state. This isn't any kind of kill card though since Carnage when exposed to the vacuum of space has adapted small sacks to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. That said it should faze Carnage at least momentarily, forcing a response, giving the others time to move and counter-attack. 

Electro could also get Carnage off him and any Six members nearby if Carnage tries to rush him (though this would be foolish given Carnage would know Electro is the most dangerous Six member to him) as Electro's reactions were enough to tag Quicksilver and can simply create an electric pulse sending Carnage away. Carnage rushing Mysterio probably wouldn't matter since Mysterio would probably just project a hologram. If Carnage tried to rush Doctor Octopus, Doctor Octopus's tentacles would automatically act to protect him. If these are the normal arms, they might be able to hold Carnage for a moment or he may just snap through them. Spider-Man for comparison has been able to destroy Doctor Octopus tentacles before though it clearly required a lot of effort. If they are the Adamantium tentacles I am completely confident in their ability to hold Carnage's physical strength but the main problem would be at that range Carnage would easily be able to infect Doctor Octopus most likely and Carnage can simply convert to him more liquid state or just project a tendril to kill him. They would have to throw Carnage off him fast or Doctor Octopus would die or be infected.

Really this is perhaps one of the biggest issues the Sinister Six would have facing Carnage, defense is always harder then offense especially when that offense is unpredictable like Carnage's. Carnage's range and variety of attacks mean that it would be incredibly difficult to pin him down, with the best chance being Vulture's gravity manipulation or Mysterio manipulating him via illusions. 

The second problem Carnage's superior speed is him evading them and simply regening any damage they do or infecting other humans to duplicate himself.  And this is definitely a real danger, as I would only bet on Vulture keeping up with Carnage. It's possible Vulture could knock him off course with his gravity manipulation or even push him into the ground and hold him. I think that would be a dangerous position for Vulture to be in, since it would force him to be in prime range for Carnage to tendril him, but assuming he can hold him and any tendril down until the others get there, this would at least keep him from running away. The second way is for either Mysterio or Kraven to disorient Carnage so he doesn't know where to move. Mysterio did this to Peter when he thought he was going to Avengers Mansion so it's not out of the question he could trick to Carnage to thinking he was evading them when he wasn't. It's also possible though it would probably be harder and less consistent for Kraven to do so using his toxin which can work on symbiotes. Of course if Carnage escapes into the ethernet, he most likely wins as he could simply escape anywhere in the city and infect at will. The only ways they could potentially stop this is Electro creating an electric storm quick enough to shut down all computers before Carnage can get anywhere or if this is peak Doctor Octopus who could simply mentally command all machines to shut down if Carnage comes close to them.

If Carnage does start infecting people, which isn't a normal strategy for him but not out of the question if he thinks he's in real danger, then it's basically over for the Six, they keep up with multiple Carnages who can infect and grow expotentially. The only real recovery strategy at that rate is Mysterio hypnotizing the Carnages into fighting each other. And Mysterio's hypnosis is strong though I am not sure how it would work on the dual counciousness of Carnage. I don't know if Carnage could "wake" Cletus, though as their counciousness is more fully combined then Venom's it's possible this would work, especially as Mysterio's hypnosis has worked on multiple people before. Carnage can also mentally hax people though this functionally would be as hard to do as infection and so should be simply understood as a subcategory of infection.

Outside of hypnosis Mysterio could also hypothetically disorient Carnage by creating the illusion of fires, as he has done before. He also has lasers that could tag and harm Carnage which if used with Electro's lightning could kill Carnage. That said Carnage is also a decent manpiulator and is they give him the chance he could very well trick them on a more base level, like making them think he's in one place when he's somewhere else using a part of himself, and really the longer this fight goes on, the more I figure Carnage is in a good position since if he kills any of them that radically lowers their versatility and it gives Carnage the chance to infect any nearby passerbys or animals.

One strategy that could very well work if Doctor Octopus's adamntium arms are able to controlled mentally like his old arms is Sandman hides them inside them and Doctor Octopus uses them as a surprise attack to tag Carnage up close and try to rip Cletus out of Carnage by Doctor Octopus' mental command. This leads to what I believe is the optimal strategy which is Sandman shows up pretending to want to take on Carnage and getting close to him using his hardened sand more before quickly switching to soft sand and having the adamantium arms grab Cletus. Mysterio disorients Carnage to not knowing that's going on by filling his mind with fire illusions while Vulture gravitionally holds him down from above and Kraven and Electro blast the symbiote with lightning and anti-symbiote toxin. Given Octopus' supergenius mind, this seems like a type of plan he could concievably come up with, as well as hypothetical strategies for if this doesn't work or only partially works. 

Even that would be an extremely dangerous strategy if Carnage simply sends spikes and tendrils out in every direction, or fights through the illusion and gravity, or really just if any of it doesn't work well enough. Carnage would be an extremely difficult opponent for the Sinister Six but I do think if they act tactically they could defeat him. 

TLDR: The Sinister Six can beat Carnage if they act tactically due to their sheer versatility of abilities. If they make any big mistakes or act arrogant Carnage would kill them.