Donny Cates

Donny Cates built his entire Venom mythology toward a single apocalyptic event: the return of Knull, the God of the Symbiotes, an ancient dark god who created the symbiotes as weapons of darkness. King in Black is the conclusion of years of cosmic horror setup, and it brought the full Marvel Universe into the fight against a villain of genuinely overwhelming power.

Donny Cates and Ryan Ottley reimagined the Hulk for a new era with a concept that is both simple and genuinely disturbing: Bruce Banner has trapped the Savage Hulk inside a mental construct resembling a massive starship, piloting him like a weapon. The Starship Hulk premise allowed Cates to explore the Banner/Hulk relationship in a fresh way while Ottley — best known for his decade-long run on Invincible — brought explosive, large-scale action that pushed the book's visual ambition to new heights. This is one of the most distinctive modern Hulk runs, collecting a complete creative vision in a single oversized volume.

Donny Cates and Nic Klein deliver one of the most explosive Thor runs of the 21st century, collecting Thor (2020) #1–25 and related material. The premise is audacious: Thor becomes All-Father, inheriting Asgard at the worst possible moment as Donald Blake goes insane and the Black Winter — a universe-devouring entity — arrives. Cates writes cosmic horror with the same relentless energy he brought to Venom, and Klein's art is thunderously atmospheric. The run introduces the God of Hammers as a genuinely frightening villain and closes with a Ragnarok unlike any seen before. A must for fans of modern high-concept Marvel.

Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman's Venom run is the most consequential take on the character since the original McFarlane era — introducing Knull, the King in Black, a god of darkness who created the symbiotes as weapons of conquest billions of years before Venom bonded with Eddie Brock. What started as a horror-inflected superhero title escalated into a universe-shaking mythology that recontextualized every symbiote story ever told. Stegman's kinetic, visceral artwork matched Cates's cosmic ambition panel for panel.