KING IN BLACK #4 - The God of Light

Written by Donny Cates, with art by Ryan Stegman

 

In the introduction for the review of the previous instalment for this event, I stated that I hadn’t been sure as to whether I had liked it or not. Never fear, this time around it is a much more definitive answer, with that being a resounding “God no!”, as this was likely the weakest instalment of the whole thing so far, and considering that this is the penultimate chapter, that is not a good sign at all. That being said, when looking through each of my reviews for this event, it is quite clear that the quality of the book has declined with every subsequent release, so I guess it is not really too much of a surprise that this one was not at all great.

To begin with, I will talk about the biggest, most glaring problem within this entire story: the fact that nothing really happened. I could definitely understand if Donny Cates were going for a more relaxed vibe for this instalment, in preparation for the massive climax that will be the final chapter of this “epic”, but I don’t think he was going for this at all, which just resulted in the entire book being one of the more joyless, boring reads that have come about in recent times. Due to this viewpoint, to me it felt as though the entire sequence with Jean Grey and her telepathy was simply used as a device to unnecessarily draw out everything that was going on, purely so that it gave the readers the illusion of an in-depth story that we should deeply care about. All of the exposition that was given here could have been condensed into a much shorter window, maybe with Jean initiating the mind read on Knull, and then having her say “oh no” (or something to that effect), before then immediately finishing with Reed telling us about the Enigma Force. It was very nearly a good method of distracting us from the whole load of nothing that happened, nothing interesting anyway, but sadly it did not manage it in the end. The only real piece of action that was even seen in this issue was when the heroes discovered how to defeat the symbiote dragons, as the usual fire and sonics wouldn’t cut it, which basically just amounted to everything that is not one of those two things, used one by one by the likes of Doctor Strange, Thor, and Storm. The coolest part of that “action” sequence was when Cyclops whipped his visor off and utilised the full power of his eye beams to take out (or at least weaken) a good chunk of the dragons. It was definitely the best visual out of the entire issue, and it is not something that we get to see all that often, as it is not the easiest power for Scott to control, due to the force that it generates.

Staying on the subject of the artwork of this story for just one more second, I have to say that apart from how cool the Cyclops part was, none of Stegman’s work here really appealed to me all that much. Normally, I would be a big fan of his style, but for some reason this issue was quite a downgrade in quality in comparison to his usual work. Now, I am not sure if it was just an off day for Stegman, or some sort of error with the colouring, or anything else, but I can really only hope that this was just a one-time thing, and he will be returning to his very best for the finale of this event, along with his and Cates’ farewell to Venom in the pages of “Venom” #200. I will, however, commend him on his design for Doctor Strange here though, as it looked pretty cool. Having seen what his staff could do in the most recent issue of “Black Cat”, I was looking forward to seeing what would happen when Strange used it, and it certainly did not disappoint, with the gold accents on his outfit, along with the long hair and beard, making him look exactly how someone with the title “Sorcerer Supreme” should look, and I would not be against seeing the design used again. With that being said, it does start to make me thing that the entire story over in “Black Cat” could be some kind of hallucination or dream, which I guess would make some sense, as everything does seem a bit too easier at the moment.

Finally, it was certainly no surprise that, once it had managed to get on to the planet Earth, that the Enigma Force had chosen Eddie Brock as it’s new champion. Thankfully, the appearance of the Enigma Force did put to bed my frustrations from last issue, where I had pre-emptively decided that Silver Surfer was this “God of Light”, and I am certainly thankful for some clarification, and would hope that this teaches me not to jump to such conclusions in the future, although I do highly doubt it. Using Eddie as the champion makes absolute sense, considering that this is after all a Venom story at its core, which some of you may have forgotten, considering that he hasn’t actually appeared for the last three issues, except when he died, being relegated to the tie-in story in the main “Venom” title. In terms of the timeline, this would have to firmly placed after the events of that title, as we are currently dealing with Eddie inside the Hive of Knull, in some attempt to escape, alongside Flash Thompson From this point on, we just have to assume that ever tie-in happens before or during these final two issues, as they would likely not make sense anywhere else, considering that everybody was freed from the Hive by Dylan here, and certain tie-in stories reach their logical end point as well, such as Namor being accompanied by the Black Tide.

To conclude, this was certainly nowhere near the quality of storytelling or visuals that I would expect from the likes of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman. Nothing of particular note really took place, with only a couple of sequences and images worthy of being remembered at any point in the future, while a lot of the story was unnecessarily padded for some reason, when that space could have been used to further advance the story in a logical way. Hopefully, the final instalment of the event will be one full of mind-blowing action, that will cement this as an event that was actually ok, rather than the carnival of mediocrity that it is currently threatening to be.

This instalment of the "King in Black" event recieves a "C-" grade.