I’m happy to announce that my Guide to The Eternals is now available to all CK readers as part of the Crushing Comics Guide to Collecting Marvel Comics! This guide covers ever Eternals series and every major Eternals character!
This Eternals guide was originally launched in 2021 thanks to the ongoing support of the eternally awesome Patrons of CK. I’m launching it today to coincide with Marvel’s big summer event – Avengers / X-Men / Eternals: Judgment Day!
Part of what is so interesting about The Eternals at Marvel is that their separation from human society in continuity is mirrored by their isolation in publishing.
The Eternals have rarely made guest appearances aside from some arcs of Thor while they had no title of their own, plus Sersi’s time on Avengers). They’ve never had a series run more than 20 issues, and they’ve often gone for a half a decade or more with no series or significant appearances.
(That last bit was truly surprising to me. Even the previously obscure Inhumans and Guardians of the Galaxy had a way of turning up every few years before their fame. Not so for the Eternals – they really keep to themselves!)
That means, of all of Jack Kirby’s concepts that launched at Marvel, The Eternals in their way remain one of the purest. Aside from Neil Gaiman briefly breathing new life into the group in the mid-00s, it doesn’t feel like anyone has strayed especially far from his blueprint.
In the run-up to The Eternals film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel began paying more attention to their progenitors – The Celestials. They centered them in Jason Aaron’s 2018 Avengers run (which, by the way, kicked off with his wholesale genocide of all of the Eternals), and then relaunched the group into their own headlining title from Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, and Matthew Wilson in January of 2021.
Gillen & Co’s Eternals is a thrilling comic because it hews closely to Kirby’s legacy for the characters while also showing the connections between their history and Jonathan Hickman’s recent “Dawn of X” relaunch of the X-Men line.
The book is deliberate, intricate, but often laugh out loud funny as it follows the rebirth of The Eternals and their discovery that there is a serious flaw in their regenerative code… in the form of one of Marvel’s most-recognizable villains!
Gillen’s Eternals feels almost like a compressed version of the first two years of the entire X-Men line… which turned out to be a very intentional similarity as the Eternals come to blows with The Avengers and The X-Men in Marvel’s 2022 summer event – Avengers / X-Men / Eternals: Judgment Day!
Now you can read EVERY appearance that leads to that series by following my Eternals Guide! Nothing can stop you, since they’ve now all been reprinted in color and they’re all on Marvel Unlimited!
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