Eternals (comics)
The Eternals are a race of humanoids appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. They were created by Jack Kirby, making their first appearance in The Eternals #1.
In the Marvel Universe, the Eternals are an offshoot of humanity known as Homo immortalis which were created one million years ago by the enigmatic alien Celestials to defend Earth with their superhuman powers and abilities. Their primary adversaries are the Deviants, who share a similar origin and pose a regular threat to humanity. Due to their virtual immortality, Eternals have largely secluded themselves from humans, with their god-like status forming the basis of various mythological figures around the world.
Since their appearance, the Eternals have had several of their own series, in addition to crossing into other titles, such as Thor and X-Men. They made their live action film debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with their own feature film Eternals, directed by Chloé Zhao, which was released November 5, 2021.
Publication history
In 1970, Jack Kirby left Marvel Comics to work at DC Comics, where he began the saga of the New Gods, an epic story involving mythological and science fiction concepts. Though he had planned for a definitive ending, the series was abruptly cancelled. Upon his return to Marvel, Kirby continued exploring his interest in mythological science fiction through The Eternals.Originally titled "The Celestials", Marvel changed the title to "Return of the Gods", whose comic book cover bore stylistics similarities to Erich von Daniken's book Chariots of the Gods?. To avoid potential legal issues, the name was again changed to “Eternals". The Eternals' saga was thematically similar to the New Gods' and it shared the same fate: Kirby’s new series also was eventually canceled without resolving many of its plots. Writers Roy Thomas and Mark Gruenwald used the Eternals in a Thor storyline that concluded in Thor #301, resolving those lingering plotlines. Subsequent to the Thor storyline, the Eternals have appeared or been mentioned in numerous Marvel comics. In particular, the Celestials' experiment on humanity has been used to explain how certain humans can develop super-powers. The Titanians and Uranians were later retconned as being Eternals as well.
The Eternals returned for a 12-issue miniseries in 1985 under writer Peter B. Gillis and penciler Sal Buscema. According to comic-book historian Peter Sanderson, "editor in chief Jim Shooter disliked Gillis’s scripts, so Walter Simonson wrote the final four issues."
In 2000, a one-shot comic called New Eternals: Apocalypse Now #1 featured an older conflict between the Eternals and X-Men villain Apocalypse. In 2003, writer Chuck Austen and artist Kev Walker rebooted the franchise for Marvel's mature readers-focused MAX imprint, resulting in The Eternal.
The Eternal series from Marvel's MAX imprint written by Chuck Austen was based on an idea he had been working on for a while: "I pitched this back when I first started working at Marvel, but Joe Quesada was against doing it. He saw no future in this particular old Kirby concept." Austen described the plot as involving "Ikaeden, the leader of the Eternals, who arrives on Earth at the dawn of man, and evolves humankind from homo erectus so he can use them as slaves to mine raw materials for the Celestials, his bosses, basically," as well as "Kurassus, who is the second-in-command of the mining mission, and who is determined to undermine Ikaeden and kill Ikaeden's precious slave-girl and son." In an interview with Newsarama he gave an outline of his planned plot:
Planned as an ongoing series, it was cancelled after six issues.
Neil Gaiman, with artist John Romita, Jr., created a 2006 miniseries, which helped bring the Eternals' role in the modern Marvel Universe up-to-date. Solicited as a six-issue series, an extra issue was added to the run, because, according to editor Nick Lowe, "There was too much story to fit into the structure we set for ourselves. Neil was starting issue five and told me that he might need a seventh issue. He just had too much story to fit in six issues."
A fourth Eternals series ran as an ongoing series for nine issues and one annual from August 2008 – March 2009.
The Eternals returned in Jason Aaron's Avengers, a story arc involving the Dark Celestials, which saw the Eternals all killed in the fourth issue. However, the characters were resurrected in their new ongoing series launched in January 2021 by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Esad Ribić.
Fictional history
When the Celestials visited Earth 1,000,000 years ago and performed genetic experiments on early proto-humans, they created two divergent races: the long-lived Eternals, and the genetically unstable and monstrously grotesque Deviants. These experiments also led to the capacity for super-powered mutations in humans. They also performed this experiment on other planets with similar results.Despite looking human, Eternals are much longer-lived, and that kept them from having much contact with their human cousins. Eternals have a low birth rate; they can interbreed with humans but the result is always a normal human. Despite this, the Eternals have in general protected the human race, especially from the Deviants, with whom they have always had an enmity. The Eternals also developed advanced technology.
Long ago, a civil war broke out amongst the Eternals over whether to conquer the other races, with one faction led by Kronos and the other by his warlike brother, Uranos. Kronos's side prevailed, and Uranos and his defeated faction left Earth and journeyed to Uranus where they built a colony. Some of Uranos's group soon tried to return to Earth to re-kindle the war, but they were attacked by a passing Kree ship and forced to land on Saturn's moon Titan. There they built another colony.
One day, Kronos's experiments in cosmic energy caused a catastrophic release of energy throughout the Eternals' city, Titanos, destroying it, activating latent genes in the Eternals, and disintegrating the scientist's body. The Eternals now found they could channel large quantities of cosmic energy themselves, granting them near-godlike power. The accident left Kronos in an immaterial state, so a new leader had to be chosen. For the first time, the Eternals merged into a single being, the Uni-Mind, to decide which of Kronos's sons, Zuras or A'lars should be the new leader. Zuras was chosen to be the Prime Eternal, and A'lars chose to leave Earth to avoid causing another civil war and journeyed to Titan.
There he found that a war had erupted on Titan and wiped out all but one member, a woman named Sui-San. A'lars fell in love with her, and in time they repopulated Titan. Due to the mix of activated genes from A'lars and unactivated ones from Sui-San, these new Titanian Eternals are not as powerful or immortal as Terran Eternals, but are more powerful and longer-lived than the earlier pre-civil war Titanian Eternals.
While Zuras ruled, three new Eternal cities were built. The first was Olympia, located in the mountains of Greece, near the main portal between the Earth dimension and the Olympians' home dimension, which led many ancient Greeks to confuse some of the godlike Eternals with members of the Olympian pantheon. Eventually, an agreement was reached with the gods where some Eternals, such as Thena, would impersonate the Olympians before their worshipers. The other two Eternal cities were Polaria and Oceana.
18,000 years ago, the Celestials returned to Earth. The Deviants attacked them, but the Celestials counterattacked, resulting in the sinking of Mu and Atlantis, and much worldwide havoc. The Eternals helped rescue many humans. An Eternal named Valkin was entrusted by the Celestials with an artifact of great power for safekeeping.
At some point during the early centuries, Ikaris and the Eternals came into conflict with the immortal mutant, Apocalypse. This conflict ended when Ikaris and the Eternals defeated him. Ikaris believed Apocalypse was dead.
1,000 years ago, the Asgardian god Thor encountered some Eternals, but the encounter was erased from his mind, to prevent him from learning about the Celestials, who were about to return to Earth. An Eternal named Ajak became the Celestials' spokesperson, and put himself to sleep when the Celestials left, to wait for their return 1,000 years later to judge humanity.
During the early 20th century, a human scientist made contact with the Uranian Eternals and was taken to live with them along with his young son, who would later become Marvel Boy. The Uranians were eventually killed by Deathurge. After World War II, some Eternals allied with humans and Deviants to form the Damocles Foundation, which tried to create a new breed of superhuman to rule Earth. Some Eternals, such as Makkari, were also active as superheroes, or living amongst humans, keeping their true nature hidden. The Eternals also helped to move the Inhumans' city to the Himalayas to keep it hidden.
At some point, Thanos of the Eternals of Titan nearly destroyed their colony, but they rebuilt it, and would help Earth's heroes to oppose him on several occasions.
Modern Age
In recent times, Ikaris met the archaeologist Daniel Damian and his daughter Margo, and accompanied them into an old Eternal city in the Andes, where he awakened Ajak. Ajak began the process to receive the Celestials. These movements alerted the Deviants, who decided to attack New York and to provoke fear in the humans against the coming celestials. When the Celestials returned to judge the worthiness of their creations a few years ago, the Eternals found themselves clashing with the Deviants again, and decided to publicly reveal their existence to humanity. Zuras feared what would happen if the Celestials judged unfavorably. They encountered Thor again, and were attacked by Thor's father Odin and the Olympian gods, who tried to prevent their interfering with the gods' plans to attack the Celestials. Eventually, the Eternals decided to help the gods and formed a Uni-Mind to assist the Destroyer's assault on the Celestials.They were forced to dissolve back into Eternals by the Celestials, and the shock of the attack killed Zuras. Before his spirit fully left the material plane, he instructed his daughter Thena to take his people to explore space. Since then, the Eternals have helped Earth's heroes, particularly the Avengers, against several menaces. They also discovered the existence of the Titanian Eternals.
Some time later, the Deviant's aristocracy, led by Brother Tode, attacked Olympia, kidnapping the Eternals and intending to disintegrate them. The hero Iron Man rescued the Eternals and helped them defeat the deviants. Then the Eternals transformed the deviant's aristocracy into a synthetic cube, killing them. The Eternals formed a Uni-Mind to discuss their future on earth, after which most of the Eternals, went to the stars. But a handful – those most heavily involved in Earthly affairs – remained behind on Earth. Thena came to lead the remaining Eternals but she wasn't very respected by her subjects.
With the ascension of Priestlord Ghaur as leader of the Deviants, the Eternals joined the Avengers in defeating him after he absorbed the power of a Celestial and tried to gain godhood. Meanwhile, Ikaris questioned Thena for her poor choices as leader of the Eternals. She was subtly being controlled by a brain mine put in her by Kro. After a special ceremony, Ikaris succeeded her as leader of the Earth's Eternals. The lover of Ikaris, Margo Damian, was captured by Ghaur's minions and was killed as a result of a Deviant experiment on her.
After the death of his daughter, Daniel Damian decided to take revenge against the Deviants and the Eternals. With the help of ancient Eternal machines, he forged a prophecy to incite war between the two races and transformed Ajak in a murderous monster. When his plan was discovered by the Eternals, Ajak reverted to his original form and regretted the killings that he had committed, so he killed Damian and himself.
The Eternals Gilgamesh and Sersi briefly became part of the Superhero team Avengers. When Sersi became sick with the Mahd Wy'ry disease, a uncurable degenerating Eternal disease, Ikaris and other Eternals tried to bring her to Olympia and perform a rite of Cleansing. Sersi rejected the idea, on the basis that the ritual was designed to kill the infected Eternal, and solicited his family to perform the Gann Josin bond between her and her lover the Black Knight. Ikaris was furious and performed the bond without consent of the Knight. Later Thena and other Eternals helped the Avengers in the battle against the Gatherers and Proctor, who was an alternate Black Knight and who infected Sersi with the Mahd Wy'ry disease for spite.
The Eternals fought once more against Ghaur and the Deviants, with the help of the Heroes for Hire. The mad priest tried to form an Anti-Mind with some captured eternals, to defeat any invasion of the Celestials. Later they were at odds with Apocalypse and briefly posed as a superhero team called the New Breed.
Image:New Eternals 1.png|thumb|right|Cover of New Eternals: Apocalypse Now #1 by Joe Bennett