Queen in Black #3: Plastic Fisticuffs

Queen in Black marches on this week with its third installment, and unfortunately, this issue marks a noticeable downturn in the quality of the event as Al Ewing and the gang succumb to action-figure slop. A superhero action book built around bombastic thrills is not inherently a bad thing, but those thrills need to be supported by stakes, character progression, or a sense that the conflict is meaningfully changing the world and the people caught in it.

Queen in Black has continuously struggled to establish any of those things within its main title, particularly when it comes to building up its central antagonists. If you turn your attention to the myriad tie-ins, you can find much of the depth missing from the core story, but tie-ins should be supplemental. They should enrich the main narrative, not serve as necessary pieces of a story that already has its own dedicated title.

That problem becomes even more glaring with Hela and Knull. Both characters should have an enormous influence on this story, yet neither has been given enough development or presence to justify the weight they are supposedly carrying. Knull, in particular, is meant to be a looming force that spurs Hela’s tactics, but the event has done surprisingly little to make him feel like an active, threatening presence in story. Hela has the opposite problem in some respects. Her arrival should fundamentally complicate the characters and the conflict, especially given her connection to the larger mythology at play, but she is introduced without enough meaningful exploration of what her involvement does for the story thematically.

There are no stakes to a big, end-of-the-world symbiote invasion if it doesn’t meaningfully threaten the status quo of our protagonists or spur some newfound growth within them. Dylan and Eddie being rebonded with symbiotes should be a major turning point for both characters, but it does little to push either of them in a new direction.

This issue is the one that had the opportunity to build on all of that, particularly by playing with MJ’s motherly protectiveness toward Dylan. Instead, that potentially rich conflict devolves into one-note debates over the morality of lethal force that ultimately go nowhere. Worse, the argument primarily exists to give Spider-Man something to do in a story where his presence actively steals time away from the characters who should be serving as its emotional focus. Peter isn’t inherently a problem, but his inclusion starts to feel less like an organic part of the narrative and more like editorial obligation.

An issue filled with empty action does at least give the artists an opportunity to shine. Both Medina and Coello deliver dynamic work that helps distract from the utter fluff Ewing is delivering on the writing side. Coello especially shines in the momentum and fluidity of his work from panel to panel, with his style giving the action a real sense of movement and spectacle. He manages to bolster the thrills of what is ultimately a fruitless symbiote invasion, making the book look far more exciting than the story underneath it actually is.

There is nothing wrong with Queen in Black wanting to be a big, ridiculous superhero event. The problem is that the spectacle increasingly feels like a substitute for substance. When your villains aren’t being developed, your protagonists aren’t meaningfully changing, and the biggest character conflicts resolve without consequence, another round of symbiotes throwing each other through walls and slashing open stomachs can only carry the book so far.