>>8130894Red Goblin, which was Dan Slott's final brainfart, since he was being fired from Spider-Man and Nick Spencer getting the book/permission to reunite MJ/Peter.
Story goes, Slott wanted to end with a Carnage storyline/be the one who does the official sequel to Maximum Carnage (the only Spidey storyline Slott didn't rape in his decades long run) and came up with the brainfart of putting Carnage on Norman, who Slott had been embargoed from using for the bulk of his ten year run (due to Bendis grabbing and refusing to share him once grabbed).
Rumor has it, Slott intended to have Norman murder MJ as his final fuck you to fans and to appease Brevoort and Alonso, who really really didn't want to have to honor his pledge to Spencer to let him reunite Peter/MJ.
But with Alonso fired and Brevoort in the dog house over Secret Empire (and getting Nick Spencer to fall on his sword for them with the Mouse), Brevoort couldn't afford to piss off Spencer and have him tattle to Disney about all of the bad shit Brevoort had been doing to tank the company (such as leaking the fact that the new EiC used an asian pen name and having the SJW death kult use that info to try and get him fired so Brevoort could steal the post for himself).
So Slott had Norman kill Flash Thompson instead on the way out the door as a fuck you to fans. Especially since he was pissy that Eddie's return to Venom basically was far better received than Slott's turning Flash into a safe for housewives version of Venom.
