Hello internet - and welcome back to the nerdiest channel on YouTube - Top 10 Nerd, the place
where we love ourselves some symbiotes just as much as the next guy.
As per usual - I’ll be your host Jack Finch, as we rewrite 20 years of Klyntar origination,
hope to high heaven that The Light can save us, and shudder at the vile visage of The
Living Abyss himself - and take a look at the Top 10 Knull The God Of Symbiotes Shocking
Facts.
Roll the clip.
Oh man - for me, Marvel just keeps getting better and better, and their recent rewrite
of the symbiote mythos is no exception.
It’s just so damn good.
In Marvel’s newest run of Venom, Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman rewrite everything we’ve
ever known - or thought we knew about the Klyntar symbiotes.
A hell of a lot of new and awesome stuff is going down in Venom right now.
There’s giant symbiote dragons, all-powerful necrotic weaponry - and an Eddie Brock showdown
that tugs at those heartstrings.
Before we jump into all that though - you know the drill by now - if you’re a fan
of this video, Venom, the Symbiotes - or just Top 10 Nerd in general, then be a dear and
hit that thumbs up button.
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On with the show.
Kicking off at Number 10 - He’s Like a Billion Years Old
At least 13.7 billion years old to be precise.
Knull is an ancient malevolent deity whose existence predates the universe itself.
He possesses amortality - existing before the genesis of concepts such as life and death
themselves, and as it comes with the territory - his weird little symbiotic eyes have seen
a lot of shit as he floated wistfully through the endless cosmic abyss.
Created by Jason Aaron, Butch Guice, Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman, Knull serves as an
intellectual foil as to the origin of the symbiotes that we’ve all grown to love over
the years, giving them a depth and narrative niche that is more than just - weird, amorphous
alien lifeform.
First seen in 2013 in Thor’s God of Thunder Number 6, Knull the God of Symbiotes is an
anciently relentless figure tightening the screws on everything we know about Venom,
Carnage and their ilk.
Coming in at Number 9 - He’s The Living Abyss.
Yeah - it comes with the territory really.
When you’re an ancient being of malevolent eldritch energy - you could say that there’s
a few all-powerful perks.
Knull has many names, God of the Forge, God of the Symbiotes, Lord of the Abyss, The First
God of the Abyss - he’s got many facets and many symbiotic faces - one of which is
a symbiote-dragon, but we’ll get into that later.
As a primordial god of darkness, Knull possesses the superior ability to create, control and
manipulate an entire energy force of eldritch darkness - which is a manifestation of the
primordial void that existed before the universe itself.
In essence, Knull is capable of manifesting his dark shadow to create symbiote life from
this living abyss - which he first demonstrated when stranded on a desolate world, and discovered
that he could infest lesser creatures with his abyssal energy - creating the first army
of symbiotes to conquer the universe.
Also, he’s one of the few creatures that seems to be capable of surviving completely
unaided in the vast vacuum of space, which is pretty dope.
Or scary.
Depending whose side you’re on.
Next up at Number 8 - He Hates The Celestials
This is really the crux of Knull’s origination, and his aeon long war with the Celestials
as they created the universe.
As an ancient eldritch being, Knull utterly despises the Celestials and their creations
- and is pretty hellbent on ushering in an all-out genocide against them.
Knulls ultimate weakness though is as a product of his own surmise - and thus is vulnerable
to a metaphysical force he refers to as The Light - a life force that was spread through
the Abyss by the celestials, manifesting itself through concepts such as honor, benevolence
and nobility.
Also - after chopping off the head of a Celestial God in his initial crusade, that severed head
would later become Knowhere - a ramshackle galactic city and scientific station at the
edge of space - and as we’re talking about chopping off heads -
Coming in next at Number 7 - All-Black the Necrosword
Yes.
The most metal object in the whole of the Marvel Universe.
All-Black the Necrosword, while also being a pretty awesome death metal band name - is
the living creation of Knull’s first ever umbrakinetic symbiote - the All-Black, a being
created by the very shadow essence of Knull himself.
Also known as the Godslayer, which was tempered with the divine power of a slain Celestial,
this was the symbiotic weapon wielded by Knull during his chaotic campaign against the divine
beings of the universe.
It was so powerful that Knull could decimate entire armies of Celestials single handedly.
According to Old Galactus, All-Black the Necrosword is the same weapon that carved the first dawn
from the stone of the endless night.
It has the eldritch power to control and manipulate darkness from the living abyss - and even
be used to create sentient shadowy beasts, known as the Black Berserkers.
It has a long, nightmarish history of corrupting its many users into commiting divine atrocities
- but seemingly was subservient to its creator, Knull.
I say was - as we lead onto our next point - because during a particular scuffle with
an army of Golden Celestials, All-Black the Necrosword was stolen by a certain someone.
Which leads us to our Number 6 point - Gorr The God Butcher
The second person on the list of god-hating beings in the Marvel Universe, is an alien
from an unnamed planet - who would go on to be the second wielder of All-Black the Necrosword
- Gorr the God Butcher.
Created by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic - Gorr first appeared in God of Thunder Number 2
- as the son of a nameless father, and an outcast from a forgotten world - he was taught
his entire life to trust in the divinity of the gods, but to his rage - they never answered
his prayers.
That is until Knull crash landed on his planet, and Gorr witnessed him battling the golden
armored gods.
To his surprise, the gods actually existed - but it did nothing to sate his rage, and
after stealing the Necrosword from an unconscious Knull, he went on a thousand year campaign
butchering any god that crossed his path.
It wasn’t until Thor - well, three Thor’s in fact - took on the power-crazed-god-butchering-alien
- and with the help of the All-Black itself, they finally killed him.
Also, as a small aside - Gorr’s unnamed homeworld in God of Thunder Number 6 is the
same planet seen in Venom’s flashback in Dark Origin Number 4.
Interesting, eh?
Coming in at Number 5 - He’s Got a Pet Dragon
Called Grendel - kind of - and no, it’s not spritely and cute - it’s a horrific,
twisted symbiote mess.
In actual fact, it’s a fleet of dragon-shaped symbiote-conglomerates seized under the control
of Knull - traveling across the cosmos devouring entire civilizations.
It was pretty much the lynchpin of Knull’s cosmic campaign of carnage - until it attacked
Earth during the early medieval period, and came into contact with everyone’s favourite
Mjolnir wielding badass Thor - and this time, Beowulf wasn’t around - and so the God of
Thunder had to sort things out by trapping the symbiote beast in a glacier.
It later emerged when S.H.I.E.L.D screwed things up a bit - but we’ll get to that
in a second - and was reawakened by Knull to wreak havoc in downtown New York, alerting
Eddie Brock and Miles Morales to its presence - hellbent on retrieving a missing part of
itself.
Grendel is seemingly destroyed in a hotter-than-the-sun furnace in Venom Number 6 - but we’ve got
an inkling that it’s not the last we’ll see of this abyssal dragon.
Next up at Number 4 - S.H.I.E.L.D Screwed Up.
As we mentioned in our previous point, S.H.I.E.L.D’s misfortune plays quite a large part in the
historical events of Venom Vol. 4.
In the late 1960’s - the frozen body of Grendel was discovered by S.H.I.E.L.D - who
did the one thing you should never do when you find a strange, alien lifeform - they
subjected it to tortuous experiments, after realising that the writhing symbiote mass
was very much still alive.
This kind of really pissed it off - and they only succeeded in creating ravenous offshoots
of the Grendel mass that ended up going on a killing spree in Vietnam following the Sym
Soldier program - which we’ll get to in a moment.
Turns out that S.H.I.E.L.D had been powering up Project Rebirth for quite some time before
their eventual collapse - and their involvement with symbiotes had lead to some pretty interesting
super-soldier advancements in the Marvel universe.
Which leads us to our Number 3 point - The Tyrannosaurus Symbiote
Which throughout the latest Venom run, comes in the incarnation of Vietnam war veteran
Rex Strickland - or at least, an image of him - and is the one thing that Knull needed
to fully morph into his amorphous dragon-shaped symbiote colossus and wreak havoc across the
universe.
It turns out, that during S.H.I.E.L.D’s excavation and subsequent experimentation
of the Grendel symbiote - five of its symbiotes were extracted and bonded to wounded soldiers
from the Vietnam War.
Enraged at the hideous acts on its symbiote-progenitor, Rex’s symbiote - codenamed Tyrannosaurus
- corrupted its host and went on a rampage across the jungles of Vietnam, prowling and
devouring any soldier that they came across.
It took Logan and Nick Fury to take them down, and during an act of compassion which ended
up with Rex Strickland dying, the Tyrannosaurus symbiote broke free from Knull’s chaotic
influence and essentially - became a good guy - pledging his life to saving his symbiote
brethren no matter the cost, in constant fear of the eldritch power of Knull.
Next up at Number 2 - Venom’s Spooked, and so are the Klyntar.
And also - he’s got wings now.
After having a brief connection to Knull and his primordial symbiote Grendel - it unlocked
new abilities for our favourite Eddie Brock spandex suit, which came in handy when him
and Spider-Man were hurtling through the atmosphere after being ejected from Grendel the symbiote-dragon.
In essence, the overarching theme of Venom Vol. 4 - as well as drip-feeding us some awesome
symbiote goodness, is the battle between Knull and his conflict with seemingly compassionate
Klyntar.
As we see in Issue 2 - Knull can pretty much strip the goodness straight out of Venom’s
DNA - leaving Eddie Brock with a ravenous, rampaging symbiote under the hive-mind sway
of The Living Abyss, Knull.
We learn throughout Venom that during Grendel’s first mission to Earth, Thor’s power severed
Knull’s connection to the hivemind - trapping his consciousness in the symbiote-dragon’s
body.
Afterwards, the symbiotes were freed from his control - and they subsequently rebelled
against their god - imprisoning his body at the heart of an artificial planet they called
Klyntar - which in their alien language, was their word - for cage.
Holy shit, come on, isn’t that awesome?
Also Venom might be dead, but he can’t be dead - because he loves Eddie Brock and as
we know, Knull is a love-sucking fun-sponge.
And at our final point 1 - We Know Pretty Much Nothing About Him.
Yeah - short and sweet, really.
There’s still so much more to be explored with this blockbuster storyline, that we can’t
even begin to imagine where this narrative nailstorm will take us.
We’ve got gods trapped in planets - dragons made of symbiotes - several intricate threads
that have slowly weaved their way to fruition since the early 2000’s - it’s really anyone’s
guess as to how this will change the Marvel Universe - and the wider implications that
it will have on the nature of symbiotes as we know them.
Issue 7 is set to be released on October 10, 2018 - set to feature Venom veteran Iban Coello,
who promises to turn the Venom story on its head once again.
It carries the tagline that Eddie Brock is going to be put through an emotional meat
grinder, the likes of which haven’t been seen in the Marvel Universe ever before - and
if we’re following the events of Issue 6 - then I think we’re about to see Eddie
Brock on a pretty gut-wrenching journey through the symbiotic abyss.
Well, I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.
Unfortunately folks, that’s all we’ve got time for in today’s list - cheers for
sticking around.
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As per usual, I’ve been your host Jack Finch, you’ve been watching Top 10 Nerd - and until
next time, take it easy.