This Article Contains Spoilers for King in Black #1!
Well, the cat's out of the bag, milk's spilled from the glass, world's eternally benighted in a layer of impenetrable yet gooey aliens, what have you. Knull, the God of Symbiotes has taken over the earth in a single day in the first issue of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman's King in Black company-wide crossover. This was not a delicate affair either, as earth's forces were overwhelmed almost immediately, with The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, and The X-Men, along with allies, fighting a desperate yet losing battle as Venom, aka Eddie Brock, tried and failed to use his symbiote connection to the dark god to bring the battle to a stand-still. Now, the Marvel Universe appears to be on the brink of absolute catastrophe. It stands to question: given the time and preparation Captain America and the rest of the Avengers had in coming up with a suitable plan, how did they manage to collapse so quickly and completely?
It should be noted that, among those heroes shown fighting the incoming symbiote menace, the members of the Fantastic Four played a comparatively minor role throughout the issue than would've been expected, being mostly absent aside from brief cameos by the Human Torch and The Thing. This is a quite noteworthy absence, as in previous story-arcs, when confronted with symbiote threats like Venom and Carnage, it was usual for Spider-Man, Peter Parker, to get aid from Mr. Fantastic and use his sonic-gun. While previous updates by Cates on the matter show Knull's new symbiotes to be immune to this weakness, as well as psychic incursion, it would serve to have Reed Richards devise a new solution, especially given his prevalence in the form of alternate versions of himself in recent issues of Cates' Venom. However, solicits have shown that indeed the Fantastic Four will go on a dark adventure tied to this very crossover, and one of them will be taken over by symbiotes.
So, how did the resolute and strategically-minded Captain America and co. lose this battle so badly? Well, let's look at the plan in how it was supposed to play out. Using their knowledge of one of their only remaining known weaknesses, that being fire, the Avengers prepared a blockade around earth made up of the now derelict alien spacecrafts in their possession left over from the failed Kree-Skrull invasion during the previous crossover Empyre - which they'd rigged to blow up upon contact. This, they hoped, would take out enough of the symbiote dragons to cause a sizeable dent in their forces. The dragons were the only sort of troop they would've been aware of, having seen a few over the course of history, most notably the one fought by Venom in the Absolute Carnage story-arc. After this, the Avengers planned to have a force of heroes centered around New York City in order to protect Venom, whom they believed the dark god was coming for, who would be able to handle evacuating civilians and taking down whatever forces of Knull remained. This force would've been comprised of some of the heaviest hitters in the Marvel Universe, including the X-Men's Storm and Jean Grey as well as Dr. Strange. While these forces attempted a spirited defense, Venom himself would use one of the last remaining symbiote spires in New York to attempt to wrest control of a portion of his forces from Knull psychically. Should it come to it, The Sentry, who exhibited enough power to kill a symbiote possessed Celestial, was considered to be the final line of defense and could take on Knull one-on-one.
What ended up playing out was that the bombs didn't do enough damage, Knull had forces among his reserves which were infinitely more powerful than the Avengers could've guessed and the symbiote god's ability to control each and every part of the powers of the void enabled him to resist what turned out to be a laughably weak effort by Eddie to take the symbiotes from him. On top of this, Knull had a secret advantage over The Sentry's greatest weakness: The Void, a secondary, and incredibly destructive persona within him created when he acquired his powers. During the invasion, Knull demonstrated the ability to rip The Sentry apart from the inside simply because, being the God of the Void, he literally could control The Void. He went so far as to claim he was The Void. While a few heroes vocalized that Thor's presence might've been helpful, given Knull's dominance, it's likely that he wouldn't have been enough to turn the tide of battle even if he weren't off-world.
There's something somewhat morose about the affair. It wasn't just that Cap and the Avengers underestimated Knull's power: it was that they lacked the imagination necessary to come up with a plan that would counter such a formidable force. It is one thing to try to battle against Carnage and an army of symbiotes as they did in Absolute Carnage, but it's another thing to try to deal with thousands of invulnerable dragons amidst a cadre of corrupted gods. And even if they possessed the necessary might to hold the line against such overwhelming odds, Knull's godlike abilities over the symbiotes and the void that birthed him would've likely been too much to overcome anyway.
What they might have been able to exploit, if they'd been less concerned with immediately protecting him, would be Eddie's son Dylan's psychic abilities connected to the symbiotes, a key factor which will likely come up in future issues. Dylan has already used these abilities to defeat Carnage in the past, and no doubt that will only serve as necessary experience in his future battles with Knull.
How can the Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Universe fight against the overwhelming power of Knull? Find out in future issues of King in Black written by Donny Cates and drawn by Ryan Stegman.