Queen in Black #2: Adopted Ties

While the beginning of Queen in Black left me positively “whelmed,” the second chapter in Al Ewing’s latest symbiote saga took me by surprise. While it does still lean heavily on crossover schlock to fill its page count, the team introduces a new, character-driven set of stakes to this story that I was not expecting to see in the pages of this tale.

As for the plotting of this issue, it pushes things forward an inch without really escalating Hela’s attack on Earth in any new ways. There’s a ton of epic team-up moments in this issue that are illustrated with plenty of flair and feature a good amount of entertaining banter that isn’t particularly deep, yet still manages to elicit a smile from me nonetheless.

The major beat in this issue is Dylan stepping up to face Hela, redonning his role as the Codex and placing himself directly in our antagonist’s sights. While this development was predictable, what I didn’t expect was for that moment to force admissions of care from Mary Jane and Dylan for one another that grounded this event in something emotionally rich. The two have had a strange relationship, given the unorthodox development of MJ as Venom and her fostering of Dylan, but the boy without a mother and the woman who lost her children forging a bond of care out of such messy circumstances hit me hard in the feels.

On paper, it sounds odd, but Ewing has managed to subtly weave together an interesting character arc for MJ beneath all the cheese of his work with her that has the potential to pay off greatly in the finale of his time with Venom. Pair that with the symbiote’s own paternal view of Dylan, and its commitment to his growth from a kid into a young man since he debuted back in 2018, and somehow Ewing has stumbled headfirst into some rather heavy stakes and emotionally satisfying ideas. They weren’t properly seeded leading into this event, but they do give me hope for the rest of Queen in Black rising above its rather mediocre premise.