Phage

== Phage==

Carl Mach is a mercenary who worked for a sinister corporation called the "Life Foundation". The Foundation was preparing for the M.A.D. fallout of the Cold War and sought to provide a comfortable life for their wealthy clients after the impending nuclear holocaust. The Life Foundation was experimenting with the Venom symbiote in the hopes of developing superhuman peacekeepers to watch over their imagined fallout shelter utopia. Carl is one of three men who are chosen as hosts for Venom's forcibly-extracted spawn.[volume & issue needed]

In the storyline Venom: Lethal Protector, Mach and his "siblings" are defeated by Venom and Spider-Man. His symbiote is artificially aged to dust and his body is caught in a massive explosion.[volume & issue needed]

The miniseries Venom: Separation Anxiety reveals that Phage and the other symbiotes had survived due to efforts by the Life Foundation. They break Eddie Brock out of prison and kidnap him in a last ditch effort to communicate with their alien "others". In issue 4, Scream kills Carl with a sonic knife, believing that the symbiotes and any who host them are evil.[volume & issue needed]

Phage survives, and is imprisoned and experimented upon in The Vault along with its siblings (with the exception of Carnage and Scream). The symbiotes eventually merge together, and bond with a man known as Scott Washington to form Hybrid.