Queen In Black #1 // Review
Knull. The God of the Void. Looks kind of like an ancient bride at a wedding ceremony. He’s radiant in white. And honestly it kind of sounds like he’s got indigestion. “The burning in me,” he says, “the delicious agony of it. It spurs to commit the ultimate act of degradation.” Yep: definitely indigestion. But this IS the indigestion of the god of the void...the god of primordial darkness from before the universe’s seventh iteration. And that can only mean one thing: a big crossover event. That crossover event spills over into its own first issue in The Queen in Black #1. Writer Al Ewing and artist Iban Coello launch the major central pillar of a huge crossover. And it doesn’t entirely suck.
So...Knull is building an army. He’s still weak to Asgardian magic, though. He was forced into the light and forced to forfeit his powers of darkness and pass them over to Hela. You would think that soething like that would have left him at least a little bit weak, but he’s embraced the light and found...indigestion or whatever within it that actually feels kind of good. And so now he’s going to attack. Hela’s got a plan, though. It involves the Earth as a weapon that she’s going to take over with a bunch of symbiotes. What could possibly go wrong?
The Marvel Universe never really works terribly well with the simple, “good versus evil” dichotomy. It's not like they haven't been successful with that sort of thing before. However, deeper concerns about loves, passions, and motivations are at the heart of even the more cosmic end of Marvel's best stuff. And so as a result, the central Knull vs. Hela thing at the center of this story feels strikingly boring. Some of Ewing’s basic framing DOES work. acing and dialogue are both okay.
There’s just no way to make an assembly of heroes this large look anything other than xsilly. They look like they’re mostly just there to pose and look cool while the talk about interpersonal politics and things. That aside, of the overall work of the series does have some cosmic weight to it that field pretty interesting. And with Knull looking as much as he does like Eddie the Head...it all feels so very metal. And that’s not exactly a bad thing for this type of series.
Theoretically, there could be a lot going on here that would develop into something. It's kind of hard to really appreciate where it is in respect to a much partner event. However, it lacks the kind of gravity that makes for a really good cosmic level in actio it's all just politics between gods and nature that never really works very well at the heart of any major story. There needs to be something more earthbound and relatable, even in cosmic entities. Something more than just abstract, lost for power or whatever.
