Marvel's next event is dark and heavy metal: King in Black

(Image credit: Marvel Comics)

Earlier this month Marvel teased that "Knull is coming," and now we know when and how: December with an event series titled King in Black.

Co-creators Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman reunite after Absolute Carnage and their Venom work together for Marvel's next major event following the Empyre, which itself is just days away.

(Image credit: Marvel Comics)

"As far as event books go, this is the coolest, darkest, most heavy metal, Cthulhu dark horror thing I've ever been able to do," Cates says in the announcement. "I still can't believe that Marvel is letting us go as dark and scary as we're going."

Knull is the evil god of the Symbiotes (alien beings known as the Klyntar that bond with host lifeforms, the most famous of which is Eddie Brock/Venom), an evil warrior deity who created the Klyntar and their rivals the Exolons as well as All-Black the Necrosword, an important artifact in the Thor mythos.

Known for killing other gods, Knull has played an important role in the background of writer Donny Cates's ongoing Venom run, with Cates also incorporating Knull into his Silver Surfer: Black limited series and Guardians of the Galaxy run.

Here's a video which accompanied the announcement:

King in Black "conquers the Marvel Universe this December" according to the publisher, and will come face-to-face with the Avengers, X-Men, and of course Eddie Brock/Venom.

"One of the things I'm most proud of in this series… is the creation of the character Knull," Stegman says. "We have some new designs that we'll be unveiling throughout the series that are really cool and really creepy."

When asked about the length of the series past a first issue, Marvel declined to specify.

Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)

Latest in Marvel Comics
Close up on Emma Frost's face as she sits on a throne on the cover of Emma Frost: White Queen #1
"Bow down to the White Queen" as Emma Frost gets her own X-Men solo comic that flashes back to her time as a villain
Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider #12
Gwen Stacy and Loki team-up for a cosmic adventure in Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider #12
An alien attacks.
Xenomorphs have taken the island as Alien: Paradiso nears its endgame
Doombot and the Runaways.
4 years after Marvel's Runaways ended, the gang is back – and Doctor Doom is coming for them
Kamala Khan holds Jean Grey's body in an homage to the cover of Uncanny X-Men #136
45 years after the original Dark Phoenix Saga, Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan will travel back in time to save X-Men history
Doctor Doom facing off with the students of Doom Academy
Doom Academy #5 brings the series to a close with a confrontation between Doctor Doom and his students
Latest in News
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Daredevil recap: The Defenders
Marvel fans are discussing which of the Netflix series characters would have survived the Blip