Stomping on a Box that I Thought was Empty 09 – Queen in Black #5, Venom #262, and Queen in Black: Venom Unchained #3

In attempting to gather my thoughts on the conclusion of Queen in Black, I’ve found myself thinking about The War of the Realms. The 2019 event acted as the culmination of Jason Aaron’s Thor run and is one that I rank is fairly high esteem as far as events go. I bought the entire event, like Queen in Black (this is the fourth event I’ve bought in its entirety as it came out – the other two being Avengers vs. X-Men and AXE: Judgment Day), and, despite thinking it was quite good, I’ve been wondering how much my enjoyment hinged on reading Aaron’s Thor run entirely leading up to it. How much was the event itself and how much was the context? I’d like to think it was the event itself – and that a good event should stand on its own devoid of larger context – but maybe it was context. That’s the sort of thought that creeps in any time I reflect on these three final issues of Queen in Black, an attempt to push back at my initial reaction, which is that this is a bad ending. Maybe if I had more context. Maybe if I cared about Venom more. Maybe if this was the end of a long journey rather than a standalone story. Maybe that would be more fair.

That’s not the case, though. I came into this event not as a regular reader of Venom; I came into this event as a regular reader of Thor. Considering that this was set up as a story where Hela, Asgardian god of death, claims the throne and power of the Symbiotes as the new Queen in Black and sets her sights on Earth, that seemed like a fairly valid entry point. After all, over in Al Ewing’s Immortal Thor/Mortal Thor/Thor run, the Midgard Realm (Earth and its larger universe) has been cut off from the other Realms, rendering the Asgardians myth like in our world. A big Asgardian threat, complete with a couple of tie-ins explicitly referencing Ewing’s Thor work, and Beta Ray Bill as one of the headliners in Defenders of Light and Dark, made it seem like that side of the event might be more important than it turned out to be. Instead, this is very much the culmination and conclusion to Ewing’s time on Venom, rendering much of the impact somewhat moot to the likes to me. Whoops.

Despite that, I’m not sure that this ending would land well even if I came into it as a fan of Ewing’s Venom work. As I said last week, the Knull/Hela conflict is largely pushed to the side and rushed through here to lead into the Knull attacking Earth, which is now taken over by Venom. Except, that conflict is also glossed over largely in favour of Knull entering the Mindscape that links the entire population of the planet where his power is so large that it threatens to kill everyone. Except, somehow, the presence of eight billion people defeats Knull because he’s the lord of the void and regular lives are something? For comics readers, it’s a very Grant Morrison ending (in the sense that Morrison has done this ending at least twice in their career) and is equal part cheesy and nonsense. I’m somewhat stuck on how Knull goes from “Okay, I guess I’ll just kill everything...” to “Oh no, too much everything!” because Mary Jane says something. Beyond comics, it’s got some real Doctor Who energy to it, while lacking the weight or context that makes that show work. (Though, it does make me wonder if Ewing approached Venom with the idea that the Symbiote is the Doctor and the hosts are the companions, which... no, still doesn’t win me over.) Like, why wouldn’t Knull just kill everyone as he promises? Because there are too many voices?

It exposes a central problem to the inclusion of Knull in the story: originally, he was defeated and lost his role as the King in Black, which placed an emphasis on the role granting power. Instead, he continually overcomes all obstacles to the point where he’s the power and these roles are just accessories that he equips to give himself an unnecessary boost. By the time he confronts Venomworld, he’s too powerful that a clever sort of solution is required and this is it. It’s like a logical victory where there are these overarching rules that everyone involved must adhere to that make no sense to anyone else. At least, when Morrison did the whole “regular people win the day,” they’re given actual superpowers. Here, Knull is defeated by the same feeling I get when I go to Costco. He burst out of the Asgardian god of death after she absorbed his power and essence... and he dies after spending two minutes sitting on a bench in a crowded mall?

Thematically, this ending is sound and I can see where it fits into what I know of his Venom run and what he’s been doing in Mortal Thor. The power of humanity and all of that. It fits with how the core Queen in Black series tried to stay as Earth-bound as possible despite the real threats (Hela and Knull) not being there. But, being thematically sound isn’t the same thing as being good – or satisfying, let’s say. Looking at the whole, there’s a sense that this event was structured like the inverse of every other event. The main thrust of this was meant to be Hela and Knull both coming to either terraform or destroy Earth – and, before that, they need to defeat one another. Yet, that part of the story is barely included the core series after the first issue with most of the space given over the sort of plots that typically get shunted to tie-ins: Earth heroes fighting Hela’s invading multi-race Symbiote army and character drama amongst the Spider/Symbiote characters. If you squint, you can see how it’s all one and the same with how the disparate elements are pulled together to get Venomworld, which is how Knull is ultimately defeated. Kind of.

Looking at Queen in Black, I don’t know why it was done as an event rather than a six-issue story in Venom with maybe Venom Unchained running alongside it, aimed squarely at existing readers. While outside of the control of Ewing, making this an event with a big marketing push, including blind bags for the first issue, made this something that needed to work outside of ‘small Symbiote story to wrap up a Venom run’ and it doesn’t. Add this to the various delays that had the event launch weeks late (which I’ll admit made the event read better in its first few weeks) and the addition of Paco Medina to the art team as of the second issue, and there’s a sense of nothing quite working as intended here, which is not helped by an underwhelming ending.

It’s not helped that one of the tie-ins running alongside the event is there solely to set up what comes next. As Charles Soule said online, Venom Unchained #3 is basically issue 0 of his Venom run. Set beside Venom #262, we get the Symbiote having heart to heart conversations with both Mary Jane Watson and Eddie Brock in quick succession, pointing out just how much this isn’t only the ending of Ewing’s run, it’s the beginning of Soule’s. It’s the awkwardness of the shared universe ongoing that never truly ends. At least, most big runs get to end and, then, the next writer needs to pick up after. It’s like the ending is pulling in two directions at once, one of which is not an ending at all.

I’m at the point where I don’t know if the story told here is so weak that I can’t help but notice all of the scaffolding surrounding it – or if the scaffolding is so obvious that it overpowers the story. I just know that Queen in Black was not a satisfying event to read. I could go on and on from the way information captions in issues 1 through 4 became narration captions in the final issue, or that nothing of much import is done with the idea that Knull is the King in White, or the way that Iban Coello and Paco Medina have such different and contrasting art styles... Or, how about how the resolution to Hela’s story was actually shown in Thor #801 last week? It was a mess on almost every level, beginning with organisation through structure through the resolution. And it all took place between pages of Mortal Thor #9.

Later this week, I hope to put up my attempt at a reading order for the event.