The Origin of Knull the God of Symbiotes
Before we head out into December’s King in Black crossover from Marvel written by Donny Cates with art by Ryan Stegman, its time to take a look at the origin of Knull the God of Symbiotes who first appeared in the ongoing volume of Venom also written by Cates!
Before we proceed, SPOILER ALERT
The whole first appearance of Knull started in the first story arc of the current Venom storyline. When Venom and Spider-Man Miles Morales team up to take down this symbiote dragon known as the Grendel which was sequestered by the US government and used to make a team of symbiote soldiers.
Miles successfully takes down the Grendel and that’s when Knull makes his appearance beating down Miles and starting a conversation with Eddie whom he refers to as “Host”. He tells the story of how he came to be and how he hates all things from “The Light”.
During the process, Knull also started to corrupt Venom’s symbiote.
According to Knull, he was already there when the Celestials started making the universe. His sleep was pretty much interrupted with the activities of the Celestials in the cosmos.
They tried to take him down but because of his rage, Knull was able to conjure a weapon strong enough to kill a celestial.
The Celestials are angered by this and they cast him back to the darkness. It was in this banishment and this area where he refined the blade he created, hammering on the forge on and on until he made the blade. Eddie Brock says that this was the reason why symbiotes are afraid of the fires and the sonic sounds. Deep in their DNA, they remember their creation.
From there, Knull started killing planets and people. The weapon he used, which he later called the “All Black” aka “The Necrosword”.
It doesn’t last long as he was eventually defeated and landed in a planet. It was there that Knull lost the Necrosword and was left to die.
Only he didn’t die. Rather, he waited for an organic host that he can use to get life.
He then converted the whole planet into a planet of symbiotes, all bowing and submitting to his will. He sent his symbiotes all around the cosmos with the hopes of snuffing the life and the light in the universe.
Except that ended in Earth where he found somebody that was able to withstand the dark and the Grendel he sent over. This was the first few pages of the first issue where these Norsemen have started looking for Beowulf before being eaten up.
So Thor’s lightning and thunder was able to defeat the grendel dragon. But as a byproduct, this also disturbed the connection between the symbiotes and Knull.
And because of the broken connection, it also broke Knull’s connection with the symbiotes in other planets as well. They rose up from their god and attacked him.
They dogpiled on him, swarmed him to keep him down.
Cates definitely retconned the story that Brian Michael Bendis wrote during his run on Guardians of the Galaxy where the Klyntr were revealed to be sentient beings that only wanted to live with their host. During Cates’ run, the Klyntr are hiding a secret, that “planet of the symbiotes” wasn’t actually a planet but rather a living prison for Knull, held captive by the symbiotes he himself spawned.
Of course, by the end of Absolute Carnage, we know that Carnage was successful in waking up Knull and the god of the symbiotes is on the way to Earth to exact his revenge on Eddie Brock and his allies, setting up the events of King in Black!
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