Stomping on a Box that I Thought was Empty 08 – Queen in Black #4 and Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark #3

I’ve been pondering reading orders and the way that this event is playing out in real time. Most modern events eschew the old style crossover event where specific comics were given specific chapters/parts in the overall story, particularly if the event involves a core mini-series telling the story. If it’s just a straight up crossover between titles, you still get that linear experience. With events like Queen in Black, it’s nonlinear with most tie-ins orbiting the core series. My usual hierarchy is core series followed by tie-ins by the writer(s) of the core series followed by tie-ins featuring important characters in the core series followed by whatever is left. Queen in Black posses a weird challenge as 13 out of 17 comics making it up are written or co-written by Al Ewing, three star Eddie Brock and look to feed into the new status quo of Venom after this event, and that leaves a single tie-in that falls at the lowest rung – and it’s been referenced a bunch of times in other comics in the event. Queen in Black looks to be placing every comic on a somewhat equal plane but without the benefit of linear storytelling. It’s a strange sort of event and I’m struggling with that a little.

After three weeks of single tie-ins being released, the penultimate week of the event (with a week of nothingness in between) is actually fairly big. When discussing the third issue of Queen in Black, I lamented the way it seemed to drag and tread water; this pairing of issues felt like the opposite. While continuing to show the attack on Earth that, for whatever reason, I thought were mostly over after the second issue of the main series, events seem to speed up. One of the most important confrontations of the event – or, at least, what I think many of us assumed would be one of the most important confrontations of the event – is given precisely two panels in Queen in Black #4 and shown in its entirety in Defenders of Light and Dark #3. While the fight between Hela and Knull may be given some space in the finale of the event, reading these two comics together is a bit strange. There’s a sense of “They shunted that to a tie-in?” to the whole thing.

Queen in Black #4 largely focuses on Earth-bound events: fighting off Symbiote Firelord, fighting off other Symbiote invaders, and the expansion of Venom to take over those Symbiotes and, in fact, the entire world. Meanwhile, Defenders of Light and Dark #3 has the two groups of Defenders enact Plan B, which is kidnapping Knull and, through a series of teleportations/portals, take him to Hela’s ship and provoke a fight between the two. It’s actually kind of funny to see play out as it’s treated as a super dangerous, super serious series of tactics, all the while the team hoping to keep Knull contained and all I could think was “Doesn’t Knull want to fight Hela? They probably could have just told him that they were taking him there and he would have come along nicely.” It turns out, that was pretty much the case as Knull later reveals he played possum and let them take him to Hela. The fight between Knull and Hela seemingly goes Hela’s way until Knull bursts free from her (she ate him) and declares himself the King in All, ready to destroy the Earth, only to find that it’s now Venomworld. The plot finally progresses by pulling in various disparate threads and zooms ahead almost too quickly.

The Hela/Knull fight may be given space in Queen in Black #5, but that seems too late given that it all happened in a tie-in already. That may have not been the main conflict of the event, which was always meant to be the winner takes on Earth, the way it plays out shifts the perspective on the event. Despite the title, it’s not really a story about Hela. She barely factored into the event, appearing in tie-ins far more than the main series. Looking back, the main series seemed to be all about telling the story through the perspective of Earth and the heroes there. After that first issue that set up both Hela and Knull’s paths towards Earth (and one another), the main series rarely went off-planet for anything more than a quick cutaway. This odd focus kept throwing me as I tried to wrap my head around what the event is about exactly. The first issue made it seem like Hela was the big threat, but it was all her Symbiote army and never her. She showed up in the Thor tie-in one-shot in a fairly non-threatening way and battled a team of Defenders in Defenders of Light and Dark, but that’s about it. She was the MacGuffin threat, the one that we were meant to keep looking at and dreading, figuring that she would be the eventual ‘final boss’ for the heroes of Earth given the event is named after her... and, then, in two concurrent issues, her army is nullified and absorbed by Venom using Dylan Brock’s Chainbreaker ability, while she seemingly defeats Knull only to be absorbed by him (or her power is, at least).

I’m torn on this approach. To a certain extent, the surprise of Hela defeating Knull only to be killed by him pages later in a tie-in issue works on its own merits by catching you off guard. No one expected that entire resolution to happen in Defenders of Light and Dark #3, a title whose goal seemed to be to tell the story of the Defenders fighting the two powerhouses until that conflict returns to the main series and concludes there. And I suppose that is what happened; that the conflict shifts back to the main series after Knull has won goes further than expected. The surprise subverts expectations and that’s where I’m torn: is the surprise worth the subversion? And how much are expectations worthwhile?

Ideally, you want to dismiss expectations as the fault of the reader and place the blame for any failure there. After all, not delivering the work that they dreamt up in their head isn’t your fault. Nor is deviating from the usual structure of how events play out. That Queen in Black largely stays on Earth and focuses on that specific perspective isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s unexpected, sure – but is that the story that was implied by the first issue or the marketing for the event? Hell, the cover for Queen in Black #4 shows Hela and Knull in battle, her choking him, him impaling her... and there are two panels of their fight inside. It seems like, given the way that the story was progressing, if the final issue was always meant to be the winner of that fight comes after Earth, their fight should have taken up a large chunk of the fourth issue, not get pushed off to a tie-in book with the possibility of a brief replay in the final issue. Though surprising, the reaction that I had was a bit more of “Is that it?”

To a large extent, the fourth issue of Queen in Black is speedy to catch up to the ending of Venom #261 where the Symbiote began to expand and absorb everyone in Reed’s lab. This issue pushes past that and makes it clear that it’s not necessarily a bad thing – it may be the way to best defend Earth against Knull (or, from their perspective, Hela). It’s helpful, I guess, to stop and think about the sort of event this is: it’s a Symbiote event.

So, of course the focus is on Venom and the other Earth-bound Symbiotes. Of course the focus is on the invading Symbiote/alien army. Of course Knull would defeat Hela.

This was always a Venom event, not a Thor event.

My bad.

Next: the end.