30: Eternally Yours

I've covered Peter Gillis' Eternals warm-up here and here. Suffice to say, when What If and Micronauts editor Ralph Macchio was assigned a 12 issue Eternals maxi-series, Eternals expert Gillis seemed the obvious choice to write it...

"My feeling about The Eternals, is that this is what I came to Marvel to do. This is my chance to do prime Marvel Comics, with the sense of grandeur, combined with the sense of fun. Sal and I are doing our tribute to Jack Kirby with this book. It's one of the most quintessentially Marvel books that we've done."

The Eternals #1-4 (1985)

Pencils: Sal Buscema
Inks: Al Gordon, Keith Williams

Following their mass migration to Titan in the Avengers, only a handful of Eternals remain on Earth. Thena becomes leader after the death of her father Zuras, although Ikaris, Makkari and Kingu are too preoccupied with continuing their neverending conflict with the Deviants to pay much heed. The Deviants are also undergoing a leadership change, with scheming Kro seizing power, only to find he is merely a puppet to the mystical priests behind the throne, led by a new big blue bad, Ghaur. 

These opening issues (re-)introduce the large ensemble cast, plus the first black Eternal, Phastos, a pacifist engineer. Sersi plays a peripheral role as her usual party loving self, with a human entourage. In #3 she saves a lonely average joe named Dave from suicide and takes him under her wing as a pet project of sorts. It's an unusually mature theme for Marvel to be tackling at the time, one that Gillis approaches with a reasonable measure of sensitivity. Gillis uses this to highlight the theme of mortality; how do immortals such as the Eternals view a mortal's life span? Does anything we accomplish in such a short time really matter? Also, there's spaceships and giant monsters.

Gillis and Buscema are clearly having fun playing in Kirby's OTT sandbox, and this is certainly the most action heavy of all PBG series, with this first act culminating in a huge battle between Ikaris' warriors and the Deviant fleet. It zips along nicely, but somehow it all feels a little inconsequential, lacking the weight of Gillis' finest series.

Told you there was a giant monster.

Next, the middle and... final third?