Much has been disrupted by the pandemic, which has now reached over a year of separating us. Especially with theaters closed, the movie industry has been thrown into chaos. No production house wants to release movie in theaters that only allow sparsely packed auditoriums. The standard move then has been to delay. Push back those release dates. Maybe a break through will come upon us and people can pack the halls again and we can see those massive blockbuster numbers.
We know all this but it seems to have allowed an interesting opportunity. The MCU was supposed to have seen the release of the Eternals. Needless to say it has not happened yet… Maybe later in 2021. BUT despite its own delays, the comic book publishers have not had quite the pause that the movies have had so the new series of Eternals, likely meant to augment the movie push, has hit the shelves far ahead of its silver screen adaptation.
The Eternals, for those who are unaware, are the creation of Jack Kirby, brought to life after his departure from DC comics and to be fair have a good bit of resonance with his New Gods property which he created there. The basic premise though is that long ago alien space gods traveled to Earth and created beings of massive power. Their presence and especially their Machine are necessary for the continued existence of the Earth. While not actual gods per se, they certainly appear to be. Their Machine will resurrect them.if they die. They are not moored to time itself. Their fallen capital TItanos exists in a superposition between three seconds from now and two seconds ago. Their existence you see is not one bound by the linear flow of time nor the constraints of physical space.
This particular incarnation of these beings is brought about by the team of Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic and Matthew Wilson. To think about eternal beings of great power, Gillen is good choice, given his work on The Wicked & The Divine, a tale of a pantheon of gods who arise every so often and blaze like meteors in the public eye. The excellent work he did there will help a great deal in this new take on the Eternals. Esad Ribic’s art, along with Matthew Wilson’s colors provide an impressive bit of art that gives Eternals a distinctly alien feel . Low contrast muted colors, often purples and yellows, make it clear that the space the Eternals inhabit is not rooted in ours.
And while there is not a huge stack of back issues that readers can go to for source material… if I read correctly, there are only something like 70 issues total of specific Eternals books… the people who have worked on them are impressive. Of course, the aforementioned JAck Kirby, but also a small arc by Neil Gaiman, and while technically part of his Avengers run, Jason Aaron penned the arc where the Eternals were destroyed from within. And that is where this new run begins as Ikaris is the last Eternal to be resurrected following that destruction. Well Ikaris and Sprite, the Eternal who betrayed them before.
If a reader is not familiar with all of this, they should not worry. Gillen and company work to provide background as needed. The landscape might be foregn but there are guides along the way. And while the language of resurrection might bring to mind echoes of Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X, there is some clear connection in the way that the creative team provides very Hickman-esque charts. Maybe not as many mind you, but they are helpful. Rosters of Eternals, history of their schism of the Second Age.
This history is vital because it bears directly upon the action of Eternals #2. It is this schism described in the chart that sees the creation of a new race from Eternals, the Titans. And that means Eternals #2 does not deal with any Titan, but THE Titan… The MAD Titan. Thanos is back. Thanos is the main and most obvious suspect in the killing of Zuras, the leader of the Eternals. And of course the Machine is broken. No resurrections. The tension builds throughout this issue.
Time and space are played with masterfully across this issue. And it seems that time and narrative will not always be linear. Elements of story in one issue might not come back around. We see scenes and images between time, and when we expect to go from point A to point B, we find a point Z tossed in the middle. I expect some interesting devices could happen as the series progresses. What does time mean to entities who can appear at one moment and then later at an earlier one? And how does that sentence even work in English?
While issue #1 was simply setting the stage, Eternals #2 sets a number of things of on fascinating trajectories. We are introduced to more characters. The tension is thick with Thanos on the loose after the murder of Zuras. The malfunctioning Machine means permanent death for Eternals, but also for humanity as well as the Machine keeps the Earth’s biosphere stable. There is much to look forward to in this series. I hope it lives up to its start. I might have picked it up due to the coming film, but as it stand right now, I want this book to continue on its own.
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