Eternals vol. 1: Only Death is Eternal

It’s that time again.

You know.  The time when a new Marvel concept makes it to the silver screen and Marvel the comics publisher decides to launch a new comic alongside it.  This time the lucky recipient of such treatment are the “Eternals.”  Best known as one of Jack Kirby’s more out-there creations for the company, they are a group of characters that have had, at best, cult appeal.  Kirby may have created them, but they weren’t graced with the kind of success that his other Marvel characters enjoyed.  There was also that time where Neil Gaiman (Neil!  Gaiman!) took a crack at them with John Romita Jr. and the results were… alright.  Now, Marvel has thrown another two of the industry’s A-list creators at the concept — Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribic — in the hope that they’ll deliver a take on it that isn’t cancelled prematurely.

The concept behind the Eternals is pretty straightforward:  They’re a race of godlike humanoids created by the Celestials to protect Earth from the threat of the Deviants.  Eternals are also immortal as they’re capable of being resurrected by the Machine — a.k.a. The Earth itself.  This is all well and good until Ajak, the Prime Eternal is murdered by an unknown assailant and it’s revealed that the Machine is starting to break down.  This is not just a threat to all Eternals, but to All Life on Earth.  So it falls to them to find out who would do such a thing and, more importantly, why?  

In case you’ve looked at the back cover and have concluded that the individual looming on it is the culprit, you’re wrong.  You have, however, been spoiled for one of this volume key reveals.  While that’s a shame, it’s mitigated somewhat because you haven’t actually been spoiled for how Gillen writes this character.  If you’ve thought that this character’s grandiose personality and pitch-black sense of humor would be a great fit for the writer, then you’d be very correct.

He’s also pretty good with the rest of the cast.  Ikaris, the most straightforwardly superheroic of the cast, is made out to be someone who can do his job well, yet isn’t quite clever enough to see the big picture in order to ward off tragedy.  Meanwhile, Sprite, the physically youngest of them is graced with an insatiable curiosity and enough amusing one-liners to make her energetic nature more endearing than grating.  Others like the obviously treacherous Druig and steadfast Phastos are more than they seem, while Cersi and Thena make impressions with either their cutting words or blades.  Then there’s the Forgotten One, Gilgamesh, who is described as the Eternals’ answer to Frank Castle, which I think says it all.

So the series has a solid cast, and they’re graced with a narrative that does demand some commitment from the reader.  While the saga of the Machine’s latest breakdown may seem simple enough, Gillen has spun A LOT of plot around it to hold the reader’s interest.  In addition to reintroducing the core Eternals, we also get more than a few flashbacks to flesh out their characterizations and show that Druig isn’t completely evil (just a gigantic troll at heart).  There are also several info pages sprinkled throughout each issue to expound upon larger concepts of the mythos such as the Titan Schism and the Eternal Consciousness model.  If you’ve been enjoying the data pages in the Krakoa-era “X-Men” books, these are basically the same thing.

The end result is a comc that’s a much denser read than you’d expect from your average Marvel comic.  I’m fine with that, though those looking for a light, breezy read might be disappointed.  If there’s any real issue I have with the story here, it’s that it comes close to being one of those first volume as first issue experiences.  Much of the first volume is Gillen reintroducing the cast and setting out his stall for his take on them.  It isn’t until the final issue that we get an indication as to what the series is actually going to be about.  To be fair, it does look to be an interesting one with the potential upending of the Eternals’ key rivalry.  It just demands patience and commitment from the reader to get there.

Helping that along is the art from Ribic.  He’s a great choice for this series as one of his strengths is his sense of scale as he’s quite good at making things look larger-than-life.  This is clear from the jump in scenes such as where Ikaris is resurrected and Sprite gets her first look at present-day New York City.  Ribic is also good with the action, making the many fight scenes feel like they have the appropriate crunch, or have some flair to the more esoteric forms combat takes.  Such as when one individual has their blood set on fire by a growth of mushrooms.  One quirk about Ribic’s work, though, is that a lot of his characters have a familiar “slack-jawed” look to them when they express surprise or occasionally when they speak.  This is something that’s still quite present in his work within this volume.

The end result still impresses.  Gillen and Ribic do good work here as they sell the epic scope of their take on the “Eternals.”  Better still is the fact that the writer gives every impression that he has a plan for his run, and this is going to be one of those with a definite endpoint to it as opposed to seeing how long the story can be strung out for.  That’s one thing that no “Eternals” series has had to deal with before, but maybe we’ll get lucky here and this will be the first one to tell the entirety of its story in the course of its run.