Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Venom | Tagged: beyonder, king in black, Secret Wars, venom

Venom #17 On The Relationship Of The King In Black To The Beyonder

Last month, Bleeding Cool noted how Venom #17 joined up the jigsaw from the Free Comic Book Day 2022, now #18 jumps further.

Last month, Bleeding Cool noted how Venom #17 joined up the jigsaw from the Free Comic Book Day 2022 Venom comic book which saw Eddie Brock ask an unanswered question.

In today's Venom #18, the answer finally comes, a year after it was asked.

Yeah, he's fine. But then we get onto what else Al Ewing is linking to with Venom. As he says in his newsletter today, "In some ways, I'm probably trying to follow in the footsteps of Marvel writers before me – my very first taste of Marvel was Secret Wars, immediately followed in UK reprints by Secret Wars II – Jim Shooter's attempt to take in heady concepts of desire, godhood and humanity through a lens of pure eighties consumerism. It's widely held to be a failure, but it's kind of a brilliant failure. You can see glimpses and ghosts of what he was trying to achieve, trying to wrestle the Marvel machine – a machine of people, who from what I've read did not enjoy being wrestled by their Editor-In-Chief – into producing. I can't recommend it, exactly, but it's an undeniably fascinating work and, for my sins, one of the foundational comics for me – so every so often, I keep coming back and looking at it from a different angle, trying to find a way in through the tangle." And also, "I have a theory that Marvel needs to have at least one person doing this stuff at all times – or I hope they need that, because it's a lot of what I do and I'm not sure I know how to stop doing it."

But what if there are more than one person doing it? And they are both called Ewing? So in Venom #18, Al Ewing looks at the nature of the Kings In Black and what they are there for,

Looking at the binary nature of the magical cosmos.

And how that is reflected in cosmic levels, with a familiar race of beings…

Beings who Al Ewing has been writing over in Defenders Beyond recently, and who were also called the Ivory Kings there.

The Beyonders, of whom The Beyonder is just one member. And who first appeared in Secret Wars and Secret Wars II.

So The Beyonder – and the Beyonders – are the Kings in White. And their opposites?

The Kings In Black as the cosmic balance to The Beyonders. Making Knull the opposite of The Beyonder.

Is this a possible reason why the Venom symbiote was on the patchwork planet that The Beyonder put together in Secret Wars? And as to why the new Spider-Woman, who first wore that black costume look with the King In Black spider/dragon, whose look Peter Parker stole when he picked up the black Spider-Man costume?

But everyone seems to be rewriting The Beyonder right now. Derek Landy and Greg Land in last week's Avengers Beyond gave the Beyonders a daddy.

While Eve L Ewing has her own version of the Beyonder and is rewriting the origin of Monica Rambeau to fit into that.

While Al Ewing isn't content with this, he also wants to tie it all in with his Immortal Hulk tun and the history of the Eight Iteration of reality, as it becomes the Ninth. Who will be waiting at the end of time to be the Galactus of the Ninth Iteration? Franklin Richards? The Hulk possessed by The Leader?

Or could it even be Eddie Brock? Get your flowcharts out and start flowing….

VENOM #18
MARVEL COMICS
FEB230747
(W) Al Ewing (A) CAFU (CA) Bryan Hitch
"ILLUMINATION" STARTS HERE!
As Dylan Brock builds an army, his father and the original Venom, EDDIE BROCK, finds himself more alone than ever before, working through a change unlike any he's been through ever before! But the real question is: what will Eddie become once he's on the other side? Rated T+In Shops: Apr 05, 2023 SRP: $3.99

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