What do the Eternals DO?

[jtd]

They weren't created from scratch, though, they're three variants that the Celestials engineered from the proto-humans (likely Homo habilis or Homo erectus, or maybe a later early Homo sap type) already present on Earth when the First Host got here. I believe the pre-Celestial hominids are the 'one' that you're thinking of.

vitruvian, thank you for this answer. Makes perfect sense. I had forgotten the panels where we see pre-humans existing on Earth when the Celestials arrived.

Well, yes, it's been explored some. It's the whole reason there are any superheroes at all, outside of magic.

MyriVerse, can you let me know where this is from? Was it in the Kirby original series or elsewhere? Thanks.

[vitruvian]

vitruvian, thank you for this answer. Makes perfect sense. I had forgotten the panels where we see pre-humans existing on Earth when the Celestials arrived.



MyriVerse, can you let me know where this is from? Was it in the Kirby original series or elsewhere? Thanks.

When they fully merged Kirby's Eternals with the rest of the MU, in storylines such as the Eternals Saga in Thor, they had to integrate them with everything else. It's definitely not in Kirby's original series, but in Eternals appearances later on crossing over with the rest of the MU.

So, in Thor, they explained that the Eternals were not the same as the 'real' Olympians and Asgardians and other pantheons, but were sometimes mistaken for them... and the Eternals of Olympia led by Zuras had actually reached an accord with the Olympians of Olympus led by Zeus, where the former would sometimes act as representatives of the latter in the Earth dimension while the real 'gods' relaxed in their pocket dimension.

And pretty much everywhere else the Eternals appeared, it got mentioned that when the Celestials created the three species of Eternal, Deviant, and regular human from the proto-humans, they had inserted the potential for varied superpowered mutation into the regular humans, even though it didn't manifest in actual superhumans much until the modern day. This was meant to explain both mutants, born with their powers (even if they didn't manifest till adolescence), and characters like the Fantastic Four and Hulk and Spider-Man and Electro and so on who acquire their powers from accidents and exposure to mutagens in life. It was also around the same time that things like the Sentinels in Days of Future Past hunting down other superhumans suggested that mutants and 'accidentals' had commonalities, and that the seeds for both had been planted by the Celestials. I'm not sure why they didn't just go whole hog and say that some people with the active X-gene had their powers manifest at adolescence or birth, while others had powers that remained latent unless they met with some other form of trauma that then became their 'origin'.

[Darth Tigris]

When they fully merged Kirby's Eternals with the rest of the MU, in storylines such as the Eternals Saga in Thor, they had to integrate them with everything else. It's definitely not in Kirby's original series, but in Eternals appearances later on crossing over with the rest of the MU.

So, in Thor, they explained that the Eternals were not the same as the 'real' Olympians and Asgardians and other pantheons, but were sometimes mistaken for them... and the Eternals of Olympia led by Zuras had actually reached an accord with the Olympians of Olympus led by Zeus, where the former would sometimes act as representatives of the latter in the Earth dimension while the real 'gods' relaxed in their pocket dimension.

And pretty much everywhere else the Eternals appeared, it got mentioned that when the Celestials created the three species of Eternal, Deviant, and regular human from the proto-humans, they had inserted the potential for varied superpowered mutation into the regular humans, even though it didn't manifest in actual superhumans much until the modern day. This was meant to explain both mutants, born with their powers (even if they didn't manifest till adolescence), and characters like the Fantastic Four and Hulk and Spider-Man and Electro and so on who acquire their powers from accidents and exposure to mutagens in life. It was also around the same time that things like the Sentinels in Days of Future Past hunting down other superhumans suggested that mutants and 'accidentals' had commonalities, and that the seeds for both had been planted by the Celestials. I'm not sure why they didn't just go whole hog and say that some people with the active X-gene had their powers manifest at adolescence or birth, while others had powers that remained latent unless they met with some other form of trauma that then became their 'origin'.

Wasn't that mostly Earth X explanations? I loved that epic, but I also know that it's not exactly canon.

[vitruvian]

Wasn't that mostly Earth X explanations? I loved that epic, but I also know that it's not exactly canon.

No, Earth X went way beyond what I'm talking about. The interaction with the pantheons of gods are right in Mighty Thor around #280-301 in the Eternals Saga, and the stuff about them introducing the potential for superpowered mutation covering both mutants and those who get their powers through radiation accidents and stuff was all over the 616 universe around the same time starting in the early 80s. Earth X came waaay later, and while it played with some of these ideas, it also contradicted some important stuff (especially with regard to the Asgardians and the Elder Gods and Thor specifically) in doing so.

[organichalyon]

i am sorry, but wasn't there some kind of mindwipe where the Eternals forgot everything and started to life a regular life among humanity?

[runguy]

There was but in Gaiman's Eternals mini-series their memories were restored

[organichalyon]

There was but in Gaiman's Eternals mini-series their memories were restored

Oh, ok. I love this cosmic stuff at Marvel, but sometimes it gets confusing.

[vitruvian]

Oh, ok. I love this cosmic stuff at Marvel, but sometimes it gets confusing.

And by sometimes, we mean often or always... ;-)

[Hypestyle]

... Much like the New Gods, they were seemingly created by the esteemed Mr. Kirby for a finite story, but in the aftermath of his departure from DC and Marvel, people have been constantly trying to revive them and make them relevant. Both companies have failed, relatively speaking. DC has not succeeded at all, except using Darkseid as a big-deal cosmic level villain. With Marvel, only the Celestials (which a writer can create from scratch if need be) have had a minor lingering presence, if a plot calls for some kind of super-galactus level threat without being Galactus.

[Deniz Camp]

No, Earth X went way beyond what I'm talking about. The interaction with the pantheons of gods are right in Mighty Thor around #280-301 in the Eternals Saga, and the stuff about them introducing the potential for superpowered mutation covering both mutants and those who get their powers through radiation accidents and stuff was all over the 616 universe around the same time starting in the early 80s. Earth X came waaay later, and while it played with some of these ideas, it also contradicted some important stuff (especially with regard to the Asgardians and the Elder Gods and Thor specifically) in doing so.

Right, Earth X postulated that all the gods were simply the 'next stage of human evolution' brought on by the tampering of the Celestials, and that in that stage one would become a kind of amorphous un-being with limited potential but with zero agency. These beings were whatever they believed themselves to be, and what they believed themselves to be was largely imprinted UPON them by others. Thus, the Asgardians/Greeks/all the rest were humans who the ancient greeks/norse/whatever believed to be gods, and so they became gods. In this way they had to keep Franklin Richards 'believing' he was Galactus, because only Galactus could stymy the Celestials.

In the MU proper they actually went further to reveal that the Celestials had experimented on MANY races. The Skrull, for instance, are in point of fact the deviant equivalent of the original Skrull race; these Deviants gained power and destroyed both the 'normal' or 'baseline' Skrulls and the Eternal population. We saw (the last) 'normal' Skrull in the hyper-obscure Blackwulf series (also the introduction of the rather cool villain Lord Tantalus, a deviant supremacist), who gained super powers upon being woken up from suspended animation. One of the main frictions of the Kree, historically, has been that they're at a genetic dead end; that's because they are one of the races that was NOT experimented upon by the Celestials. The creation of the Inhumans, though now parsed as an effort to create an army of super warriors, was in point of fact originally ALSO meant to be a means of replicating the work of the Celestials in the Eternals (after a subsection of the original Earth Eternals, lead by Uranos, destroyed a Kree Sentry and gained their ire the Kree attacked and killed many of them, dissecting their bodies after). The whole Hickman "Universal Inhumans" idea is actually (unknowing, I'd bet) a theft of the original Eternal/Celestial origin. The Kree, lead by the Supreme Intelligence, subsequently jump started their evolutionary process with the explosion of the Nega Bomb and the creation of the Ruul.

(Note: the one contradiction here is the existence of Ultimus, a member of the Kree Starforce and the last remaining Kree Eternal).

It should be noted that there are two distinct 'off shoots' of Earth Eternals. In times past, there was Kronos who led the Eternals of Earth. He had a brother, Uranos, and the two fought for leadership (standard disagreement; Uranos wanted to conquer the earth, Kronos didn't). Kronos won, and Uranos left earth with his followers. That's when they found the Kree Outpost on Uranus; they destroyed the Sentry, the Kree sent a fleet to see what happened, and MOST of the Eternals were killed by the fleet. A few survived, and settled on Titan. However, there was a civil war between the survivors (due to an outside element called Dragon of the Moon, which you might be familiar with from the Avenger/Baldy Moondragon) and all but one died, a woman named Sui-San.

Back on Earth, Kronos - a scientist as well as a leader - was experimenting with cosmic energy, and a great accident occurred. He, and all the Eternals in the city (all those who had stayed behind/sided with Kronos), were bathed in this cosmic energy. Kronos, being closest, slipped the surly bonds of earth and became the universal embodiment of Time; you might recognize him from Infinity Gauntlet and some other Starlin stories. The accident had also imbued all the Eternals of Earth with a great deal more power than they had ever had before; previously they were just long lived and physically vigorous with relatively minor mental powers, but now - with practice and concentration - they could heal from almost any wound, fire energy blasts, fly, rearrange matter, had vast telepathic abilities, amp their strength even further, etc.

With the ascension of Kronos, it fell to his two sons, Zuras and A'lars, to rule the Eternals. Rather than start a war, they simply created a uni-mind and asked who the Eternals wanted as a ruler. They chose Zuras and, to avoid conflict, A'lars left earth to travel the stars. There he encountered Sui-San, the last Uranian Eternal, on the planet titan. The two repopulated Titan and started their (relatively) utopian society there, independently. Two of their children are the happy go lucky Eros, and the more well known Thanos. Both of them mutants in their own race.

That is to say, the two distinct offshoots (not many Titans left, after Thanos decimated them) are different in power, history, and purpose. At least theoretically, the Titanians should be much less powerful than their Earth offshoots.

It should be noted, this is all very much post-Kirby, and seems to have been washed away by Gaiman's (excellent) mini series.

Phew. Fun to reminisce.

[Deniz Camp]

Reading Kirby's Eternals now.

As an aside, he stated quite a few times that Deviants, Humans and Eternals can all trace their ancestry back to one created by the Celestials. That struck me as very interesting. I wonder if this has been explored further? Or has it simply become three separate races that the Celestials created separately?

So in the original series, Kirby postulates that the Celestials created all three races, that's correct. However, due to...concerns raised by religious comics fans, subsequent retellings have had to skirt this issue by saying that humans ALREADY existed, and that the Celestials created the Celestials/Deviants as offshoots of that proto-race, along with experiments resulting in the greater potential for super-human power (mutants, etc).

Gaiman himself acknowledged that Marvel wouldn't allow the original origin to be in place due to worries over how it would be taken. It's a shame, because that's kind of the crux of the whole thing; the Eternals was exploring the "Chariot of the Gods" style idea of "What if our gods were aliens, and human beings were the creation of aliens?". Ikaris himself, in the original, corrects the notion of the Celestials as gods, say "No --!! They are not gods, just --- OLDER!!!" (paraphrasing). That's in stark contrast to Kirby's New Gods, which was a completely different effort, one to explore the notion of what modern gods might look like. Magic-masquerading-as-technology rather (New Gods) vs Technology-masquerading-as-magic (Eternals).

[Billy Batson]

Eternal things.

[Billy Batson]

... Much like the New Gods, they were seemingly created by the esteemed Mr. Kirby for a finite story, but in the aftermath of his departure from DC and Marvel, people have been constantly trying to revive them and make them relevant. Both companies have failed, relatively speaking. DC has not succeeded at all, except using Darkseid as a big-deal cosmic level villain. With Marvel, only the Celestials (which a writer can create from scratch if need be) have had a minor lingering presence, if a plot calls for some kind of super-galactus level threat without being Galactus.

Walt Simonson succeeded very well with the New Gods.

[vitruvian]

So in the original series, Kirby postulates that the Celestials created all three races, that's correct. However, due to...concerns raised by religious comics fans, subsequent retellings have had to skirt this issue by saying that humans ALREADY existed, and that the Celestials created the Celestials/Deviants as offshoots of that proto-race, along with experiments resulting in the greater potential for super-human power (mutants, etc).

Even in the original, it was creation in the sense of modifying them from (hairy, ape-like) proto-humans, at least as I recall it. After all, it was shortly after Kirby had done the 2001 comic book, and the Celestials were Kirby's new take on the idea of the Monolith.

Gaiman himself acknowledged that Marvel wouldn't allow the original origin to be in place due to worries over how it would be taken. It's a shame, because that's kind of the crux of the whole thing; the Eternals was exploring the "Chariot of the Gods" style idea of "What if our gods were aliens, and human beings were the creation of aliens?". Ikaris himself, in the original, corrects the notion of the Celestials as gods, say "No --!! They are not gods, just --- OLDER!!!" (paraphrasing). That's in stark contrast to Kirby's New Gods, which was a completely different effort, one to explore the notion of what modern gods might look like. Magic-masquerading-as-technology rather (New Gods) vs Technology-masquerading-as-magic (Eternals).

Or Clarke's Third Law, the two being indistinguishable because they were so far beyond us it made no difference what you called it.