Explore the dark redesign of Jean Grey and the Venom-Moon Knight prose story that both push the limits of symbiote storytelling in Marvel’s alternate-universe tales
The Marvel multiverse keeps producing unsettling variations on familiar heroes, and two recent entries demonstrate just how far those permutations can go. One is a striking variant cover by Kendrick Lim for The End 2099 #4 that imagines Jean Grey corrupted by a hybrid of Knull and Galactus. The other is a prose What If entry by Mike Chen that pairs Venom with Moon Knight, twisting identity and cosmic patronage into a tense, character-driven chase. Both pieces play with the same core idea—what happens when a symbiote hooks into an already complicated host—and both raise questions about power, identity, and the limits of cosmic forces.
The visual and narrative experiments share a common throughline: the Venomizing or Knull-ified treatment of heroes changes not just looks but stakes. Lim’s artwork and Chen’s story use corruption as a device to test how established abilities interact with alien agency. In each case, the result is more than a gimmick; it’s a way to examine whether ancient forces like the Phoenix Force or deities like Khonshu can resist or be co-opted by a consuming symbiote presence. The following sections unpack the Jean Grey variant, the narrative risks it implies, the broader trend of Knull variants, and the Moon Knight Venom tale that echoes the same anxieties.
Kendrick Lim’s alternate cover for The End 2099 #4 presents Jean Grey in her classic Marvel Girl attire, but transformed into a nightmarish host. Lim renders her with scaly, clawed hands and a dark, oozing symbiote texture threading through exposed veins. Distinctive marks associated with Knull appear on her body, including a spiral rune on the forehead, while her eyes burn an unnatural red. The image situates Jean not as an unwilling victim but as a warped vessel, a visual shorthand for the terrifying possibility that a symbiote-infused entity has commandeered one of Marvel’s most powerful psychics. It’s designed to provoke and unsettle while promising high stakes in the pages it represents.
Jean Grey is an Omega-level telepath and telekinetic—one of the few characters whose raw psychic reach rivals Professor X. A symbiote or a Knull-like entity gaining access to those capacities would change the calculus of multiversal threats. If a hybrid such as the Abyssus concept (a merger of Knull and Galactus) were to exploit Jean’s talents, it would not only extend its physical dominion but also its psychic influence. Furthermore, the design teases the possibility of contact with the Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity that has historically chosen Jean as a host. That pairing—symbiote plus Phoenix—raises a chilling question: could a soul-eating power and a primordially destructive force be combined into something unstoppable?
The Phoenix Force has shown unusual abilities, from creation-level destructiveness to acts of purification; it once removed vampirism from Jubilee. That suggests the Phoenix might offer a path to undoing a Knull-ified condition, but the Force’s own nature is volatile. If a symbiote or an Abyssus-like entity were to harness the Phoenix rather than be purged by it, the result could amplify menace rather than neutralize it. The interplay between these cosmic elements creates a narrative tension: the Phoenix is both a potential remedy and a terrifying power multiplier if misused.
The practice of “Knullifying” heroes—applying symbiote aesthetics and corrupting arcs—has become a recurring visual and storytelling motif. Fans have enjoyed seeing distorted versions of icons from Captain America to Rocket Raccoon, and Lim’s Jean design feeds into that appetite. But the trend also speaks to creative choices: by grafting Knull’s mythology onto existing characters, writers and artists can quickly raise the stakes. Knull’s history of challenging gods and killing Celestials shows that he’s no mere costume upgrade; combined with abilities from other hosts, he could threaten the cosmic hierarchy. That makes variants more than curiosities: they’re hypotheticals about how far symbiote influence could reach.
Beyond shock value, repeated appearances of Knull-like crossovers risk saturating the concept, but they also open paths for inventive storytelling. A Knull variant with Jean’s psychic reach or Ms. Marvel’s cultural influence would reshape conflicts with gods, devils, and celestial beings. The variant cover hints at these larger conflicts—Mephisto and Abyssus are mentioned as opposing forces in the broader The End 2099 scenario—and the question becomes whether writers will use these designs for lasting changes or temporary what-if scenarios.
Mike Chen’s prose What If entry explores similar themes through a different lens: identity under invasion. In his tale, an alternate Marc Spector becomes host to Venom, while the displaced Khonshu ends up linked to another Marc body. That setup allows Steven and Jake—the dissociative alters—to cooperate with Khonshu in pursuit of Venom’s agenda, while the main Marc is subsumed into a hive mind. The structure cleverly stages multiple perspectives without confusing the reader: the Venom-occupied Marc provides a predator’s viewpoint, and the conscious trio working with Khonshu follows the hunt, blending psychological complexity with symbiote menace.
Chen’s book also arrives as part of a connected What If range, where America Chavez functions as a Watcher-like throughline and other titles explore divergent histories. The audiobook production, featuring Keith Szarabajka as Marc and Xavier Casals as Venom, reinforces character distinction through performance: Szarabajka handles multiple human voices while Casals gives Venom a filtered, singular presence. Together, these recent works show that whether through cover art or prose, Marvel’s alternate-universe playbook is exploring how symbiotes rewrite not only appearances but the underlying forces that govern power and identity.