The Eternals #1
Both DC and Marvel reprinted some landmark issues from Jack Kirby’s history with their respective companies on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Jack’s time and creative output were both much greater at Marvel and this issue is from his return to Marvel after a short run at DC (This is all in the 1970’s after he’s been a superstar in comics for many years already. As a younger artist he freely worked for many publishers including DC and whatever Marvel was called at the time) He had agreed to come back to Marvel with the promise of full creative control and the Eternals was the comics title he’d been trying to sort out for most of the 1970’s. At DC he had created the New God/4th World that had a lot of thematic and visual similarities to the Eternals. Jack was clearly exploring a theme of aliens coming to earth and being perceived as Gods among us and the wars that erupt under their influence.
This first issue throws a lot of concepts and characters very quickly. We meet three groups characters. Celestials who are the aliens/gods on an unimaginable cosmic level. The Eternals who are the beautiful demi-gods who received the favor of the Celestials during their last visit to Earth. The Deviants who are powerful but genetically unstable race who are determined to win the favor of the Celestials for themselves or prevent anyone else from having it. Humans play a part in all of this as well, but it’s hard to know what role they will fulfill in the Celestials modern coming since they seem to be the only ones with no knowledge of Celestials and no racial historical knowledge of what happened in the last arrival of the Celestials.
As this book opens we find an Eternal in disguise accompanying two human archaeologists into a ruined Mayan temple. It’s clear that he has some sort of inside information that he’s trying to pass off as intuition. This is the find of a lifetime that practically proves that Mayans had contact with and worshiped some extra-terrestrial beings. But clearly he’s looking for something specific and powerful among the temples artifacts because he doesn’t even slow down to look at any of the amazing finds.
It turns out that he’s racing against the clock an needs to find a beacon before the Deviants do and they’re on their way. It’s not clear if this beacons will call the Celestials or if they’re headed to Earth and this is just a marker but both sides seem willing to kill to secure it. The Eternal reveals himself as Icarus (previously in disguise as Ike Harris, naturally) as the Deviants find their way into the Mayan temple and attack. Icarus and the humans prevail but the arrival of the Celestials happens as the issue closes and we’re left to wonder if the world as we know it will survive their arrival.
The Eternals is probably my favorite of Kirby’s later career if not his entire career. When I think Kirby, I think of these massive cosmic beings that crackle with power and diverge from the human form. The reproductions of these old 1970’s comics are not great representations of how great the King’s work was, but if you get a chance to see some of the uninked pages, his genius becomes clear.
Too much great stuff has been written about Jack Kirby for me to try to find something new to contribute to the conversation so I’ll just say this: I think it’s great that they’ve decided to celebrate Jack’s 100th birthday and it’s really worth your time to look into Jack’s work. It has tremendous merit on its own and doesn’t just have value as part of the historical record.
Comic read on 11/10/2017 on an outbound New Jersey transit train.
