Knull

Knull's History

Origins

Knull was an ancient malevolent deity whose existence predates the universe itself, and was originally content to drift through the endless abyss that existed before time began. When the Celestials began creating the universe, Knull was awakened by the "Light of the Creation" and outraged by his kingdom of darkness being despoiled. Knull retaliated by creating a sword of living darkness, the All-Black, from his newly-cast shadow, decapitating one of them. Cast back into the void by the other Celestials, Knull used the slain Celestial's severed head as a forge to temper his sword in its cosmic energies. Intent on devouring the divine light that had usurped his kingdom of darkness, Knull manifested a symbiotic suit of armor from the eldritch darkness he commanded and embarked on a genocidal campaign against the other gods, becoming a legendary figure of terror for divine beings even billions of years later.

Symbiote Hive

Knull created an artificial planet from the living abyss to serve as his throneworld and base of operations, manifested a horde of wyvern-like monsters made out of living abyss; and began conquering countless planets, devouring entire civilizations, extinguishing stars, and smothering entire planets in eldritch darkness. The few gods Knull spared were forcibly drafted into his army; enslaved to his will and transformed into monsters using the living abyss, placed as sentries to guard the worlds he'd conquered.

At some point during this stage of Knull's war against the Light, he encountered the time-displaced Silver Surfer when the former Herald of Galactus freed a world from Knull's control using the Power Cosmic. After a brief but intense fight, Knull defeated the Silver Surfer and bonded him to a symbiote to enslave him. However, the Silver Surfer was freed by Ego the Living Planet, who helped Radd escape when Knull pursued him on a symbiote-dragon. Knull hunted the Silver Surfer down and dueled him, intent on reclaiming him for his army. Knull nearly succeeded in doing so, but was defeated when the Silver Surfer expended the last of his Power Cosmic to conjure a star right in front of him, bathing him in stellar plasma and blasting him across the cosmos. This defeat proved temporary, as Knull recovered and resumed his conquest of the cosmos.

At some point afterward, Knull engaged an army of gold-armored gods in combat and slaughtered all but one of them. Pursuing the survivor, Knull managed to impale him on All-Black but was himself impaled through the head by the enemy god's spear. Knull and the dying god crash-landed on a desolate planet, where All-Black left the incapacitated Knull for one of the indigenous inhabitants, Gorr. Despite this setback, Knull chose to not hunt the thief down and reclaim All-Black, though he remained aware of Gorr unwittingly following in his footsteps as the God Butcher. After recovering from his injuries over the course of a century, Knull began experimenting with his powers and discovered that he could manifest amorphous parasites called symbiotes from the Living Abyss symbiotes and bond them to lesser lifeforms. During this time, Knull began using the Exoteric Latitude as a dumping ground for imperfect symbiotes and other failed experiments, which millennia later became known as the Exolon.

Knull's reign of terror came to an end in the sixth century CE, when two symbiote dragons - one black and one red - arrived on Earth and were named the Grendel and Grendel's Mother by the Geats. The Grendel's rampage was stopped by Thor, who blasted it with divine lightning and severed Knull's connection to the vast majority of symbiotes. As the symbiotes bonded to benevolent hosts, the hive-mind became tainted with notions of honor and nobility, leading to them rebelling against their god and imprisoning him at the heart of the throneworld, which they renamed Klyntar - their word for "cage". Forming an order known as the Agents of the Cosmos, the symbiotes of Klyntar subsequently attempted to expunge their dark origins and redeem themselves by acting to protect the cosmos they'd once terrorized.

While serving as a herald of Galactus, the Silver Surfer came across Klyntar and was devoured by it, its constituent symbiotes attempting to imprison him alongside Knull at the artificial planet's core. However, the Surfer was able to free himself and escape.

Modern Times

Centuries later, the Grendel symbiote-dragon was unearthed by S.H.I.E.L.D. and its living abyss was used to create a super-soldier initiative called the Sym-Soldier Program. Slowly awakening due to the psychic link between himself and the Grendel symbiote-dragon, Knull began attempting to assert his influence over its offshoots, causing them to rampage and driving their hosts insane.

Decades later, Knull fully awakened and seized control of the symbiote-dragon, reabsorbing four of its five offshoots. Knull sent the Grendel symbiote-dragon on a rampage through downtown Manhattan, but it was stopped by the combined efforts of Venom - whose symbiote had been adversely affected by Knull's awakening - and Spider-Man. Using the Grendel to manifest an avatar of his true form, Knull stripped the Venom symbiote from its host and attempted to purge it of the benevolence and compassion it had obtained during its time on Earth; intending to reconnect it to his hive mind and absorb it into the Grendel symbiote to become stronger. When confronted by Eddie Brock, Knull showed him the true origins and history of the symbiotes; mocking him for believing the lies told to the Venom symbiote by the Klyntar hive-mind. Re-forming the Grendel around his avatar, Eddie, and Spider-Man; Knull flew into space and revealed his plan to obtain the missing pieces of the symbiote-dragon, use it to free his true body from Klyntar, and resume his conquest of the universe - starting with Earth.

Venom escaped with help from Spider-Man, but Knull chose not to pursue them and instead began hunting for the Tyrannosaurus symbiote - one of the remaining pieces of the Grendel symbiote-dragon. When the Tyrannosaurus symbiote bonded to Venom and reconnected to the Hive Mind, Knull attacked using the Grendel symbiote and attempted to devour Venom. When the Grendel was destabilized by sonic grenades, Knull's manifestation engaged Venom in a brutal one-on-one battle, Venom's arsenal of high-tech weapons proving ineffective. Knull stripped Eddie of both symbiotes and began absorbing them, but his gloating was cut short when Eddie detonated the entire arsenal - the blast affecting even Knull's real body at the core of Klyntar. Shaken and enraged, Knull coated his manifestation in the Grendel symbiote, but before he could attack the Tyrannosaurus symbiote coiled around his avatar and dragged it into the heart of a blast furnace - telling Venom to hold the door shut. Knull's avatar was subsequently immolated, his connection to the Grendel symbiote seemingly severed and his body remaining sealed at the heart of Klyntar.

A few months after the battle, an Earth-based cult dedicated to worshipping Knull - led by Scorn - obtained a sample of the Grendel symbiote and Cletus Kasady's body, intending to turn him into Knull's avatar and facilitate his awakening. When the sample of Grendel symbiote was bonded to Cletus, Knull psychically communicated with the serial killer and attempted to seize control of him through the symbiote; though the nature of their conversation is unknown. Cletus resisted Knull's control and their connection was severed when the Grendel symbiote absorbed the codex - trace remnants of living abyss left in former symbiote hosts - that the Carnage symbiote had left in Scorn's body. Cletus desired to communicate with Knull again and decided to help free him by collecting enough codexes to reconnect the Grendel symbiote to the Hive Mind. As his connection to his self-proclaimed apostle grew stronger, Knull began awakening and exerting his influence to corrupt both the symbiotes of Klyntar and those stranded on Earth -- namely the Riot, Agony, Phage, Lasher, and Scream symbiotes.

After Dark Carnage was killed by Venom, who absorbed the Dark Carnage symbiote and remaining codices, Knull was reawakened and promptly destroyed Klyntar, coalescing its constituent symbiotes into a fleet of symbiote-dragons. Manifesting a suit of draconic armor, Knull was confronted by Zak-Del, an Exolon-infected Kree. Initially bemused by Zak-Del accusing him of stealing his soul, Knull revealed the true origin of the Exolon as imperfect symbiotes and stripped Zak-Del of his, transforming it into a new Necrosword. Leaving Zak-Del for dead, Knull resumed his conquest of the cosmos; unknowingly hunted by his opposite - a God of Light. Using his living abyss to smother entire planets, Knull also began communing with Eddie's "son" Dylan Brock - a human-symbiote hybrid spawned by the Venom symbiote - by appearing in his nightmares.

Using his living abyss to smother entire planets, Knull also began communing with Eddie's "son" Dylan Brock - a human-symbiote hybrid spawned by the Venom symbiote - by appearing in his nightmares.[34][35] Blazing a swath of destruction across the Kree/Skrull Alliance's colonial territories en route to Earth, Knull laid traps to waylay ships sent to investigate; thereby claiming several prominent warriors from both species for his army. Intent on settling his eons-old grudge against the Celestials, Knull hunted them down and infected them with living abyss.

Invasion of Earth

Arriving on Earth, Knull and his horde easily ploughed through the minefield of derelict Kree and Skrull ships left over from the war against the Coatli. As his dragons rained down on the planet and quickly overwhelmed the planet's superheroes, Knull emerged from one of the Celestials and declared his intent to destroy the planet - offering to make it quick and painless if given the human called Brock. Knull was attacked by the Sentry, who attempted to fly him into orbit and rip him in half, but easily broke free and reversed their positions. Knull tore the Sentry apart and seized control of the dark entity that had been indwelling him, absorbing it into himself. Growing bored of the conflict, Knull used symbiotes to seize control of the Avengers, X-Men, and other heroes that had rallied to oppose him before encasing the Earth in a shell of living abyss. Out of desperation, Venom offered to serve Knull if Earth was spared, but Knull refused - remarking that the Brock he was interested in was Dylan - and ripped the Venom symbiote off Eddie before throwing him from the top of the Empire State Building, satisfied that Eddie could no longer prove a pest to his plans once he succumbed to his wounds and his consciousness was trapped within the Hive-Mind as a codex.

When Dylan Brock entered the battlefield and began using his powers to free the people and heroes Knull had enslaved, Knull attempted to capture him but was attacked by Thor - who he recognized as the one who had almost killed the Grendel centuries prior. Furious, Knull confronted the God of Thunder, who was unimpressed and dismissed him as merely one of hundreds of gods of destruction he had vanquished. Knull overpowered Thor, but was attacked by Dylan. Casually subduing the boy and cocooning him in living abyss, Knull was distracted long enough for Thor to knock him off and rip his lower jaw off with a full-power blow from Mjolnir. Enraged, Knull activated the symbiote-controlled Celestials and ordered them to raze the planet. Before Thor could leave to confront them, Knull - forming a new lower jaw from living abyss - manifested a Necrosword from his symbiote-armor and impaled him from behind; sneering that he could sense Thor was acquainted with All-Black and that he was its creator. Leaving Thor impaled, Knull turned to confront Dylan and voiced his intent to claim the boy as his son; commanding the symbiotes he controlled within the Hive-Mind to imprison the symbiotes that Dylan and Thor had purged his influence from. Unbeknowst to Knull, Eddie Brock was reunited with the codices of Agent Anti-Venom (Flash Thompson) and Tyrannosaurus (Rex Strickland) within the Hive-Mind, and where able to take advantage of Dylan and Thor injuring Knull to infiltrate the core of the Hive-Mind, the God Hive. When Agent Anti-Venom's codex bonded to one of the symbiotes that Knull couldn't control and was reborn into the world of the living as a white symbiote dragon, Knull immediately realized what was going on and furiously hijacked the Tyrannosaurus symbiote, confronting Eddie again with the intent of killing him once-and-for-all.