WARNING: The following contains spoilers for King in Black #5, by Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin, Jason Keith and VC’s Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Throughout the course of Knull’s invasion and everything that led up to King in Black, the dark god of the symbiotes has proven himself to be nearly unstoppable. With All-Black the Necrosword at the ready, Knull has felled countless opponents and innumerable heroes during his conquest. Fortunately, Eddie Brock made a triumphant return to put an end to the terror once and for all, and the first step was stripping Knull of his favorite weapon in King in Black #5.
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Before the Avengers and X-Men can give Silver Surfer any backup in the final standoff against Knull, the newly returned and cosmically empowered Venom arrives to take care of things on his own. Knull is unimpressed by the return of a host and symbiote he has killed before, even with Eddie having been blessed by the fabled God of Light, better known as the Enigma Force or Captain Universe.
As the dark god stands firm with All-Black in hand, Eddie reaches out and calls forth both Thor’s hammer Mjolnir and the massive blade fashioned from Silver Surfer’s board. Eddie fuses the two together into a massive ax resembling his own iconic emblem and gives chase to the now fleeing Knull. And once he catches up to him, Venom destroys All-Black by barely touching it.
Since the All-Black had already been severed of its connection to the unliving corpse of the Celestial known as Knowhere before this encounter, the blade had already lost some of its power. Even still, the fact that Eddie singlehandedly destroyed one of the most powerful ancient symbiotes without any effort whatsoever is shocking, to say the least. Apart from being wielded by Knull, All-Black has fallen into many hands over the years, and it has never ended well for its temporary owners even while gorging on their victories. All-Black’s origin is about as dark as it gets, but its future proved it was nearly as dangerous as Knull himself.
When it first appeared in 2012’s Thor: God of Thunder #2 by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic, All-Black was in the possession of Gorr the God Butcher, who had taken it from the incapacitated Knull following the dark god’s first defeat at the hands of the God of Light. During Gorr’s deicidal rampage throughout the cosmos, All-Black ended the lives of many gods from all manner of pantheons.
When Gorr brought the blade into the far future, he used the Necrosword to build his own artificial world at the edge of space, one that would eventually infect even the mighty Galactus before nearly bringing the universe to its end.
All-Black may have only been a creation of Knull and not a direct extension of his powers, but the Necrosword was still undeniably one of the most powerful weapons to have ever existed in any corner of the Marvel Universe. While its destruction isn’t lingered upon, it’s still a cause for relief for Marvel’s heroes, almost as much of one as the end of Knull himself. While it may not have had the universal reach of something like the Infinity Gauntlet, the sword was still an impressively powerful weapon that shed an enormous amount of blood.
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