Warning: Spoilers ahead for King In Black: Namor #2!
The King in Black continues his rampage through the Marvel universe in the latest issue of King in Black: Namor, except this time the comic features a cameo from a long-forgotten Marvel Cinematic Universe villain who, against all odds, managed to avoid being taken over and corrupted by Knull. While the King in Black continues to infect dozens of superheroes during his invasion of earth in the present day, this minor Captain America villain has already encountered the god of the symbiotes in the past and lived to tell about it.
Unlike other tie-in issues to the ongoing King in Black event, King in Black: Namor is a prequel series by Kurt Busiek and Ben Dewey that tells the story of the Swift Tide – a group of female Atlantean warriors from Namor’s past who were once banished from Atlantis and are now set to play a major role in fending off the King in Black’s invasion in the present. The prequel comic takes place in the 1930s, a time before Namor had ever sworn revenge on the surface world. Unfortunately for Namor, however, living in the 1930s means having to deal with the likes of Baron von Strucker and the Thule society.
For those uninitiated, the Thule Society was a real life German occult organization formed in 1918 with loose connections to the early Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. In the Marvel world, the Thule society deals with actual magic, and it’s headed by recurring Captain America and SHIELD villain Baron Von Strucker, who MCU fans might recognize for his role as the head of Hydra in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Von Strucker appears in King in Black: Namor #2 as he tries to obtain the “unforgotten stone,” a magical artifact unearthed in Russia that is believed to contain the power of the Great Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Naturally the Atlanteans don’t want humans on the surface to get their hands on such a powerful artifact, so Namor and the Swift Tide travel to the USSR to retrieve it. But by the time they get there it’s already too late. Von Strucker was so blinded by his lust for power and loyalty to the Thule Society that he recklessly bombarded the stone with x-rays until he accidentally woke it up. But his tampering with the stone would unleash something much more dangerous than Cthulhu – it released Knull instead.
Although not explicitly stated, the King in Black has been identified by Marvel as a corrupting evil from the start of the universe, meaning that the black magic that corrupted Swift Tide could technically originate from Knull himself. This would also mean that Von Strucker actually managed to summon a portion of Knull’s evil to the earth when he experimented with the stone. But while Von Strucker somehow managed to avoid being infected by Knull’s evil, the tiny portion of the King in Black that he summoned was enough to transform Swift Tide into the villainous Black Tide, setting up both their role and Namor’s in the current battle against Knull. King in Black: Namor #2 is available for purchase now!
