The King in Black event continues in Donny Cates and Iban Coello’s Venom #31, which ends with the apparent death of a major Marvel character.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Venom #31 by Donny Cates, Iban Coello, Jesus Aburtov, and VC’s Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Marvel kicked off the biggest event of the year with King in Black #1, which saw Knull, the ancient and powerful god of the symbiotes finally attack Earth after years of buildup. When he first arrived, the cosmic villain unleashed an army of symbiote dragons on the world that overwhelmed both the Avengers and the X-Men. Plus, he killed the Sentry and revealed he had an army of symbiote Celestials before he covered the entire globe in a planet-wide symbiote.
But Knull didn’t stop there. During his initial attack, he finally came face-to-face with Venom atop a skyscraper, where he ripped the Venom symbiote off of Eddie and let the hero fall to his apparent death in a shocking cliffhanger ending. Now, Venom #31 picks up right where King in Black #1 left off, with Eddie falling. And by the end of the book, it sure looks like this could be the end of the road for him.
Venom #31 is an issue that only spans, as the chapter’s title indicates, “32 seconds.” At the start of the book, Eddie gets dropped from a skyscraper by Knull, and we remain with him as he falls towards the ground. Without his symbiote, Eddie is helpless. There are no heroes available to save him, and he realizes that death is a likely outcome. In that time, Eddie does the only thing he can: he starts praying. But he doesn’t pray for his own safety, only that his son might be safe when he’s gone.
Despite falling to his death, Eddie continues to prove himself a hero, even without a symbiote. A helicopter near him is under attack, and he’s able to push off the building to catapult himself towards the airborne vehicle. But before he can help, the helicopter is destroyed by a symbiote dragon, and the resulting explosion sends Eddie hurtling towards the ground.
Before he hits the pavement, Eddie is smashed around the railings of two neighboring buildings. Each impact smashes his bones and Venom #31 ends with a beaten, bruised and bloodied Eddie Brock finally hitting the ground.
Considering the shattering impacts he just went through, there’s a legitimate question about whether or not Brock could possibly have survived a fall like that. After all, this is a fall that no normal human could ever walk away from. What’s more, the accompanying narration from Rex Strickland openly wonders when Eddie’s luck will run out, which would also seemingly hint that the character is meeting his end.