The Eternals

I keep trying so hard to say that I don't like Marvel because all they ever do is rehash superheroes and create spin-offs to sell more comic books by making mega-plots that involve multiple monthly titles. Marvel keeps trying to convince me that they're okay by doing things like getting Neil Gaiman to write for them. I started out as a comic book fan. After a brief acquaintence with his short fiction, I became a Neil Gaiman fan. Later on, I became a fan of Gaiman's comics, too. The woman who owns my local comic book shop knows that if Gaiman wrote it, I'm going to want to buy it, so she saved back the first two issues of "The Eternals" for me.

This is a six issue mini-series that is supposed to revitalize Jack Kirby's Eternals series that was created 30 years ago. That was before my time, which still probably doesn't give me any excuse to have not read any of the original Eternals series. After all, I know who Jack Kirby is. I've seen other books that he's done, but as far as I'm concerned this is a completely new thing. I'm starting from scratch.

The story opens with Mark Curry, a medical intern with too little sleep, having some weird dreams about evil monsters that rule the world executing humans. He wakes up and goes into the bathroom to splash water on his face, when a tall blonde guy comes in and tells Curry that he's essentially invincible and that he's lost all memories of his true age. The intern, naturally, dismisses the other man as some kind of bizarre religious fanatic. Meanwhile, in a world where superheroes really do exist, the reality television craze has spawned a search for the next superhero on national t.v. There's also a big party planned for a large group of prominent scientists by the ambassador from a small formerly-Soviet bloc nation. Just when it seems that there's going to be an endless supply of plot threads, things start knitting together in the end of comic two and it becomes apparent that all of the things going on in the pages are going to be related.

The first two comics do bear a little patience, as they seem to skip around, very much akin to a movie with fast-cut scene changes. The plot really isn't hard to follow, nor is it particularly difficult to identify the individual characters, and I have faith in Gaiman's skill as a writer to bring everything together into a cohesive whole. At the same time, I'm feeling a few misgivings because the plot seems so expansive. As with 1602, a previous effort from Gaiman, he's probably going to write the first mini-series, then leave it up to others who have the time to dedicate themselves to a big story arc. As a reader, I find that the quality really diminishes without him at the helm. I'm wondering if six issues is really enough for this story to come together and really give a sense of satisfaction and I'm worried that in handing over the reigns to someone else, I'm going to be vastly disappointed with what comes after these initial six comics.

The artwork itself isn't anything to really hold my fascination. The real draw for this comic for me is the writing. There are some beautifully done two page spreads in the first comic, but in the second it rapidly goes to standard smaller panels with a few oversize ones thrown in to show off what the colorist does. This is not to say that their colorist isn't doing a fine job, it's consistent throughout the book and the drawings would be even more two-dimensional without it. The artwork does seem very flat, though, especially compared with the attention lavished on the two page spread that shows Mark Curry's dream. All of it seems less like a sleek, stylized modernization of the old superhero look and more like a rush to meet a deadline and getting the bare minimum of lines in to depict what needs to be shown. The drawing and coloring on this book is nothing that I haven't seen before done better by different teams.

Did I hate these books? No. Did I feel like they were a total waste of money? Of course not. Am I going to buy the rest of the series? Yeah, I will, because I do want to find out what's going to happen and how they finally convince Mark Curry to join their team and whether or not six issues is really going to be enough.
But I'm probably not going to buy any more of them once Neil Gaiman finishes his stint as writer. I can't see this series really taking me anywhere I haven't already been.

Other Reviews of works by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders - Feb 26, 2007

American Gods - May 26, 2006

Anansi Boys - Dec 13, 2005

Neverwhere - Dec 24, 2004