Ratings25
Average rating3.5
Great book. Lots of cool ideas and revelations on Gaiman's part and Romita's art evokes and updates Kirby's at the same time.
I read this after watching (and being somewhat confused by) the movie and found it to be enjoyable and entertaining–I was already sort of primed for the weirdness of it. Predictably I was very charmed by the America's Next Superhero reality show C-plot.
Eternals by Neil Gaiman
I am not a prolific reader of graphic novels. So, I get lost when we move beyond the top tier of superheroes. However, with the Eternals movie coming out, I thought I'd get a preview.
So, apparently, a million years ago a group of Very Advanced Beings - maybe God (or gods) - called “Celestials” came to Earth and designed three species of humanity, Homo Deviant, Homo Immortalis, and just us, “Vanilla Humans.” The Deviants are individually different with tentacles, claws, teeth, bad body odor, and a tyrannical attitude. The immortals are “Eternals” who are beautiful, super-powered, and have good hygiene habits. Plain vanilla humans are stupid. The Eternals have names like Ikarus, Makuri, Thena, etc., and were the corresponding gods of ancient human civilizations.
That is a complicated backstory, but it gets worse. It seems that the Eternals have lost their memory because of the machinations of one of their number, who wants to grow older than 11. We get an introduction to the main Eternals. The Eternals is set in the Avenger universe so Iron Man and Wasp play a role.
The writing is supposedly done by Neil Gaiman, but I didn't discern anything particularly Gaimanesque about it.
If you are a reader of this genre, you may like this. On the other hand, I'm not sure I need to complicate my life with another layer of myth.
This collection is Neil Gaiman's attempt to do a soft reboot on Kirby's Eternals concept from the 1970s, and for the most part it works. Kirby was great at putting forward these grand, madcap sorts of ideas, like alien gods who created not only human civilization, but who also genetically engineered a race of super-powered humans who would protect the Earth (but from what?! FROM WHAT?!) and inspire many of our myths about the gods. Gaiman, on the other hand, is an absolute master of taking grand mythological ideas and bringing them down to the level of the individual. It's a good mix of strengths, and makes for an enjoyable read.The main problem I had with this volume is that there's only the one - it reads like a set up and introduction to the characters, with a fairly straightforward “the world is in peril” plot, and then it ends. Not just the volume, but the series - why bother spending all this time re-introducing characters if you're not going to do anything further with them? The art can be kind of ugly at times as well - JRJR's great at Kirbyesque landscapes and giant Celestials, but his people all look stilted and unattractive. The Eternals should be more magnificent to look at.which, as the introduction of the book states, was a belief put forward by Erich von Daniken shortly before Eternals was first published.