Eternals

Comic Info

Eternals (Limited Series) #6

Reprints Eternals (Limited Series) #1-7 (August 2006-March 2007).  The Eternals are gods who walk among us.  They have been here since the birth of time and have shaped the course of man…and they don’t even know it.  The Eternal Sprite has done a bad thing and the Eternals and most of the world have forgotten who they are.  When some of the Eternals memories begin to come back, the Deviants also make a move for power.  As the Eternals try to regroup, the Deviants begin their plan to awaken the Dreaming Celestial…and the world could be destroyed as a result.

Written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by John Romita, Jr., Eternals is a seven issue limited series which builds off the team created by Jack Kirby.  The series was well received.

I enjoy the Eternals.  Like many of Kirby’s creations, they always seem a bit underdeveloped and this is essentially the Marvel version of Kirby’s New Gods.  The original Eternals really weren’t supposed to be part of the Marvel Universe but Marvel had him bring in the Eternals for the standard universe.  Here, Gaiman helps tie in many of Kirby’s looser themes and make them an official part of the Marvel Universe.

Eternals (Limited Series) #7 Variant

The story is dense, very dense.  Gaiman asks the reader to know a lot about the Eternals before they enter the series, and I don’t know that the average reader does know a lot about the characters that virtually disappeared (except maybe Sersi) after their second limited series in the ’80s.  I have read most of the Eternals appearance, so I halfway knew what was going on at the start of the series, but I don’t know that everyone would.

I did like the little “scare” that Gaiman gave the readers.  It appeared that the series was going to be a relaunch, but Gaiman soon showed that it was in canon with the other comics.  Sprite had written Eternal history to age and made everyone forget (which led to a shocking death at the end).  It is unfortunate that the series had to land during the middle of Marvel’s Civil War series which led to some unnecessary plot aspects.

John Romita, Jr. is at his best here.  Sometimes he is great and other times, he seems too basic.  Here he finds the perfect balance of simplistic and complex to really draw out the characters.  In his style there is also a slight throwback to Kirby’s original designs for the Eternals and that too is fun.

Eternals is a worthwhile series, but readers probably should read up on the Eternals and their members before reading.  The series led to a new continuing series, but that series only ran for nine issues plus an annual.