Marvel Comics has just revealed some incredible new artwork for their upcoming King in Black event, which will see Venom rallying the heroes of Earth to combat the invading forces of Knull, the Symbiote God. Knull is no joke, as he's seeking to assimilate the entire Earth into his symbiote kingdom after being released by Venom (who had no choice in the matter to save his son). King in Black will no doubt be a massive battle between symbiotes, heroes, and symbiote heroes. With that in mind, Marvel has released the artwork for the first issue: a wraparound cover featuring every major symbiote in the Marvel Universe.
In recent issues from Marvel, Venom has been struggling to be more of a hero, an has even received an invitation to join the Avengers. However, current Venom host Eddie Brock does feel a certain amount of guilt for releasing Knull after the events of Absolute Carnage. Venom did recently come clean to the Avengers about the actions he was forced to take to save his son, but he hasn't had much time to prepare with the Avengers for Knull's incoming invasion. This is because he and Dylan have currently been trapped in an alternate dark future where Eddie's son grows up to become Codex, using his mysterious powers to control and manipulate symbiotes to take over the entire world. However, it's assumed that Eddie and Dylan will soon find a way to get home after defeating Codex, just in time for Knull's attempts to take over the world. A Lethal Protector's work is never done.
The impressive variant cover artwork in question comes from Todd Nauck and Rachelle Rosenberg, seeing every symbiote that's ever been introduced and created for the Marvel Universe. This of course makes it a collector's must-have, especially with the wraparound cover and sheer amount of characters featured. For the first time, every symbiote is assembled in one place, making for an extremely epic cover. Here's the full artwork released by Marvel Comics:
Of course, Venom, Carnage, and Knull are heavily featured front and center on the cover art, although there are several other worthy inclusions such as Agent Venom, Gwenom, The Grendel, the fearsome and amazing Venomsaurus Rex, and even fairly recent additions such as Scorpion's new symbiote. However, there looks to be about 21 symbiotes in total on the cover, which is certainly impressive and just plain awesome.
However King in Black goes down, it's going to effect all the symbiotes in the Marvel Universe in some pretty big ways. Regardless of Knull winning or losing in his invasion, it's expected that there will be some pretty big reveals and status quo changes not just for Venom and Eddie Brock, but for any Marvel character bonded to a symbiote in general. As a result, this cover art is extremely fitting, indicating that the event is going to have quite the impact on the symbiote community at large. Here's hoping Venom and his allies are up to the task of repelling an entire symbiote army.