God has finally come in the introductory issue of Venom’s biggest event yet: King in Black #1. Written by Donny Cates, penciled by Ryan Stegman, colored by Frank Martin, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Forrest Hollingsworth: After nearly two years the time of ascendancy for us Goop Troopers, us Slime Scholars, us Venom Fu– aha heh, nevermind, has come! Knull, the much discussed God of the Symbiotes, has finally arrived to destroy Eddie Brock’s world in King in Black #1 and it’s both a lot of fun and entirely, impossibly frustrating. Justin, how ya feeling?
Justin Partridge: I FEEL! I FEEEEL! Cold. So this is the way the world ends, eh? In a stone-cold repeat of one of the Sentry’s best known moments and a metric ton of goop. I am starting to regret doing this, BUT IT’S HAPPENING ANY WAY. Might as well get some Content out of it.
“The Call Goes Out”
FH: So, because Venom is a title that has become increasingly dense over the course of Cates’ run, I’d like to start us off with a little primer, a way to keep track of all the chess pieces on the board as it were:
Thousands of years ago in an infinite blackness called The Abyss, a deity-like being named Knull existed in nothingness. Over time, he harnessed his myriad powers into the ability to create both unsurpassable weaponry (Knull is immune to both sonics and fire, unlike his kin) and life and created the Symbiotes, an alien race of goo based lifeforms that bond with hosts and operated en masse under Knull’s direction to overtake entire worlds and civilizations. Knull’s campaign across space garnered him more than a few enemies including the Celestials and, eventually, the Symbiotes themselves. Tired of Knull’s cruelty, the Symbiote race rebelled against their creator and imprisoned him indefinitely in the center of their world, Klyntar. Incensed by his imprisonment, Knull formulated a plan to reclaim his enslaved armies through abusing his psychic connection to them, using Carnage as a pawn in his wars (Absolute Carnage) and eventually, through freeing himself.
Parrellely, over time, and primarily on Earth through the likes of Eddie Brock – Venom and Cletus Kasady – Carnage, the freed Symbiotes would leave permanent marks on humanity both literally (their DNA is embedded in every host’s spinal cord, known as a Codex) and figuratively. They waged and fought in wars, they fell in love with and impregnated Eddie, and because more or less every Venom run to date is canon, they became impossibly intertwined with the fate of Earth through using hosts like Captain America, Iron Man, and basically every mutant. Eddie and Venom together have spent the last years recognizing and investigating the totality of this interweaving in the fabric of the Marvel universe, and through discovering and caring for Eddie’s son, Dylan, have come to fear Knull’s arrival.
Now, for both better and worse, the King in Black is here…and we have to write about it.
JP: I am actually genuinely glad you just provided all that because I truly did not remember like HALF of that. But also, it should give the readers a real sense of just HOW MUCH Donny has invested in Knull so far up till now. Both as a Venom antagonist and member of the larger tapestry of the Marvel Cosmic landscape.
But at the same time, now having read, King in Black #1…it almost seems…largely moot? Or at least doesn’t weigh too heavily on the debut, which is odd. It operates with a level of expectation on the reader that they have gotten this far, but it seems kinda inside baseball just as an opener, no?
FH: Hey I don’t call myself a Slime Scholar for nothing – I went to school! You’re right that there has been a significant, surprising investment in Knull both from Cates himself, and Marvel as a whole for as…one dimensional of a villain as he is.
That being said, I think he’s also been established as a very credible threat over the course of this run, and especially so as we get into some of big moments here. So credible, in fact, that we find that on the heels of the previous arc, Beyond, that upon Eddie and Dylan’s return from a year away in an alternate universe, they worked with the likes of the Avengers and the X-Men to make a plan, with multiple recursions and backups, for Knull’s arrival. The bulk of the first third of this issue, really, is just that plan falling apart to waves of Knull’s Symbiotic gargoyles prior to his arrival. There’s some nice emotional beats here, especially as Eddie expresses his love and care for Dylan before sheltering him, but it’s primarily a dour DBZ-esque escalation of powers (including – hey! – a callback to Empyre).
Did you feel they successfully impressed the direness of the situation, Justin, or did it come across as monotone? I’m falling somewhere in the middle, finding this to be a visually and narratively significant step up from Beyond but also surprisingly, unfortunately similar to too much of the run to date.
JP: No, I absolutely agree about the “one-note” feeling of Knull, even through the constant teasing of his arrival. Now that he’s here, we still really DON’T have a sense of why aside from just vague screaming about conquest and darkness.
I will ALSO agree that it feels very, very frontloaded by this opening set piece, which then even doubles down it’s own self-importance by making it but a drop in the bucket against the teeming hordes of Knull. There IS a fun bit of comic book grossness I can get behind here, centered around the goopified bodies of the Knull-Bats. As the heroes liquify them, their bodies pool around them, forming the liquid latex-like coating that Knull then uses to “choke” the planet. That’s some Thompson and Nadler type shit that I can get behind.
But you are absolutely right. None of it EVER feels like it matters. And even with all the gloom and doom and God Modding of Knull’s powers, I still don’t really have ANY connection to his actions or his quick nerfing of Eddie and his A-list co-stars. There is KIND of a fun turn toward the end of the issue (which I am sure we are about to talk about in a later section), but I don’t have ANY sense of why Knull is doing anything. Why is conquering Earth so important for him? Why does he need the Brocks in particular, when he seems largely indifferent toward (aside from The Other One which we will talk about in a second). But it’s just…nothing. I MYSELF have become a void, because this should be precisely the kind of nonsense I should be behind, but I just can’t gain any purchase with it.
“I Am The Void”
FH: So, a lot happens in quick succession as the tides turn in Knull’s favor: Eddie makes for the underground spire Dark Carnage led his hordes from in Absolute Carnage (first seen in Lethal Protector), Earth’s defenses ready their secret weapon, and Knull arrives via Symbiote-Celestial orbital drop.
I have to admit that I like the beat to beat narrative moments and visuals here a lot, even if I’m unsure of the overarching direction the book and event seem to be taking. Stegman is one of my favorite artists working today, and everything is given an appropriate air of finality and regal gothic indulgence. Even the Celestial reveal, which I would normally find groan-inducing, has its place in this run: Knull is petty, deliberate, dedicated. He has done the slow, painstaking work of removing all of the hurdles to success — as far as he’s concerned, he’s already won. Inevitable.
That is, unless Earth can produce a secret weapon which, for a brief moment, appears to be Sentry? Justin you called this out up above so I’m tagging you in as the column’s appointed Sentry Scribe (ooh – hot tag!).
JP: AH BABY MY Rock N’ Roll Express dreams have come TRUE!
But you are totally right. Here is where the book really starts to come alive, just from an not-at-all-objective-fannnish place. Once the opening narration is out the door, both Donny and Stegman (with liberal aid from colorist Frank Martin, a talent I am only appreciating more as I get older) upshift into pure action mode. It really starts to sing here visually and even calls back a bit to the drive of Absolute Carnage, which I can appreciate.
That said, I think you are a little hotter than I am on this narratively. Again, it harkens back to what I was saying before, that even after all this buildup. All the “preparations” Eddie and the Avengers and the X-Men have made, it just crashes against this plot wall that is Knull. I WILL SAY, that like you, I thought the Celestial sequence was pretty striking and a welcome showing of Stegman and Martin’s handle of scale that I don’t think they get to flex very often. I can also appreciate Cates’ own attention to the details of “lore” that he’s built up around Knull, which is given a nice flashpoint with the Knulled On Celestials. They were Knull’s “first enemy” so it is followed through on nicely with that reveal.
But I hate to sound like a broken record, but it just FEELS and reads like nothing to me. Donny has already spent upwards of two years telling me how all-powerful Knull is and peppered him through literally EVERY other book he’s written which just FURTHER then tells me how ultra-badass and powerful Knull is. So when I actually SEE him doing it on the page now, I’m just like “Eh”. Even WITH the impressive scope and shine of Stegman and Martin. It is VERY frustrating (and severely, hilariously undercuts all the supremely nerdy and backbreaking work Donny has been doing to put Knull over).
As far as Sentry goes, again it’s…fine enough. Donny already kinda slapped at him a bit in his Marvel Cosmic stuff (not very well, as he’s now stuck in this very weird Superman-But-Even-More-Square Plus Aloof mold that isn’t that fun) but this is almost a beat-for-beat reskin of his intro from Siege, right? We will have the Judges check my math on this, but I’m like pretty sure this is just the Bendis Sentry stuff again. Just with slime. I dunno. I feel like this debut is making me sound like a grouse.
FH: All in all, it’s structured around a continuous escalation of power that has been building for the last two years and has now reached a boiling point, especially in an oversized issue. I’m glad we’re getting the bulk of this event’s similarities to Absolute Carnage out of the way in the initial issue, but that the spectre of Knull that has haunted the early issues of this run is no longer effective nor necessary when he is here in the flesh – also he’s got cool serpentine Symbiote snakes coming out of his body that he uses to rip things and people apart indiscriminately. Symbiote-Celestials, blacking out the Earth, Storm and Sentry doing what they do, this is all cool – it ticks the gloomy and doomy parts of my brain! But, and this is a big caveat, a new narrative direction, and really a new mission statement for Venom need to be established so that King in Black feels different from War of the Realms or Empyre, and I think we might’ve found it…
“Let’s Go Meet Our Maker”
FH: As Earth’s defenses fall, we get to the crux of the issue: Eddie is willing to sacrifice himself for the things on Earth he has found worth loving – primarily his son, Dylan. Eddie and Venom also express their romantic love for each other — a moment that comes across as genuine, but also kind of weirdly overemphasized, given that their affection for each other has been established since, at least, Costa’s ‘16-’18 run — and then come face to face with their maker. The twist? After Eddie has readied himself to give his very life, Knull reveals that it’s actually Dylan that he’s interested in, discarding Eddie and Venom as nothing more than annoyances.
JP: Eyoo, boyee, talk about a real yay/boo kinda deal here.
Again, I think when Donny is really focused on this new softer, more self-aware Eddie and his dynamic with Dylan, the book starts to gain some steam for me. I think this kind of followthrough on the emotionality of the title is really strong and something I think sets this era of Venom apart from other stuff, which in turn makes it engaging for me. Hell, that was kind of the whole part and parcel why I gave it a chance in the first place; I genuinely love that Eddie, in going through all these harrowing encounters with Symbiote related weirdness, has grown into the kind of person that WOULD sacrifice himself for the Earth. A far cry from the dude that would kick goopy sand into Peter Parker’s face a decade previous.
BUT AGAIN, The Knull of it All just saps the wind RIGHT out of these sails. I talked earlier about how this stuff with Dylan, while a novel enough turn and effective at injecting some narrative stakes into the opening, just doesn’t really land because we still have no real sense of what Knull’s goals really are.
Why does he need Dylan specifically? What does he plan to do with him ONCE he gets him? Is he aware at all about his abilities? We have to assume at least a bit, knowing what we know from Absolute Carnage, but it just has absolutely no weight to me beyond the surface level of “Oh, Eddie’s kid is in danger. But he probably really ISN’T because he’s a Donny OC and Donny ain’t gonna kill one his OCs THIS early”. It is goddamn maddening.
FH: Dylan has received such an elevated importance since his debut that it’s hard to say we didn’t see this coming, but I also think it’s fairly effective as the kind of grim bait-and-switch that this book trades in, and it does the work of differentiating longterm things from Absolute Carnage, hopefully.
There is an emotional throughline here consisting of pieces that I think Cates has intentionally placed even across the admittedly weaker previous arc, from Eddie’s repentance and he and Dylan’s shared grief over the loss of Annie to salience and catharsis that could be very rewarding, though I do worry the general pageantry and rote grimness of King in Black could easily undermine it. Time will tell on that front.
JP: AND AGAIN! That stuff is GREAT! The little sprinkles of characterization and growth he’s padded throughout this series have been REALLY amazing. But he just keeps cutting the tendrils out from under them just for more dicking around with his original characters. I truly, truly hate it.
This series is like a REALLY good, but inconsistent burger joint. Some days, the burger gets to you really hot and the fries are extra fresh and then the next, it’s a wet, towering hillic of protein and the fries feel like modeling glue. But you KEEP going back, because those good burgers are worth it. King in Black #1 is NOT, I repeat, NOT that good of a burger.
FH: I’m sure at least one of us will get tapped to write up some of this event’s many, many tie-ins so this isn’t goo-dbye it’s see you later!
JP: It’s funny, I’m actually looking more forward to the tie-ins because they at least LOOK insane and are coming to the table with fun ideas. I mean, Doom and Stark at Christmas and an Immortal Hulk Christmas Special? Not to mention the SNAKES in The Order and all sorts of other silliness. Give us THOSE books, Marvel. We will eat ‘em up for sure.
Goop ya later, True Believers.
Marvelous Musings
- FH: There’s a comprehensive and immensely helpful breakdown of all of the major players in the event in the backmatter of this issue that would’ve been better served coming out beforehand. Surely King in Black is big enough for a Handbook issue that Marvel could provide to us, the Slime Scholars, too.
- JP: Stegman draws a bunch of X-Men here, which is fun enough, but did…nobody tell him that Cable is a teen now? I have a SNEAKING suspicion that this might have been a choice of Donny “The 90s No.1 Fan” Cates, but it’s still funny to see adult Cable just randomly in an event comic some years after his IC death and rebirth.
- FH: A Storm and Thor fighting Symbiotes miniseries? I would like to see it.
- JP: YES PLEASE. Also, of note, this is one of the first bigger Event appearances for the Post-DAWN OF X teams which should be a bigger deal than it is here. It is played with appropriate grandeur by Stegman and Martin in their introduction splash, but against Knull they are promptly nerfed and barely mentioned again which is…disappointing. I am curious to see how these big Events in the future handle their being “on table” for the casts.
- FH: The suggestion that Brock and the rest of Marvel’s heroes made a plan to combat Knull entirely off-screen between this issue and the end of Beyond is frustrating given how little that previous arc does narratively here.
- JP: AGAIN, just another amazing idea just cast off to the void of the “Off-Panel Action”. Show us THAT strategy session. It is like every time Cates gets near an interesting dynamic or turn, he just has it happen off “screen”. Thanks! I hate it!
- FH: I like seeing Tony Stark suffer. This is an anti-Stark column all my homies hate Stark.
- FH: Venom Mpreg canon in Fortnite.
- JP: I am going to have to spend $15 on that goddamn thing eventually and I’m gonna hate myself for it
Justin Partridge has loved comics all his life. He hasn't quite gotten them to love him back just yet. But that hasn't stopped him from trying as he has been writing about them now for a little over a decade. With bylines at Newsarama, Shelfdust, PanelXPanel, and more, Justin has been doing the work and putting in the time! Comics have yet to return his calls. Usually he can be found on Twitter screaming about Doctor Who.
Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.
