This week I continue my exploration of the recent Eternals series written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by John Romita, Jr., reviving the characters and concepts from Jack Kirby’s last great comics series. Both series are now available from Marvel in hardcover collections.
When I left off last week, I wrote about the scene in Gaiman’s first issue in which medical student Mark Curry is first confronted by a blond stranger with gold-colored eyes who says that Curry is actually “an immortal, indestructible being” who has lost his memory. Readers who are familiar with the Eternals will recognize the stranger as Ikaris the Eternal and will deduce from the name “Mark Curry” that Mark is another Eternal, Makkari.
As I noted last week, readers of Kirby’s original Eternals series may be surprised by Mark’s physical appearance. Whereas in the original series and his other previous appearances, Makkari has been portrayed with typical Caucasian skin color, in the Gaiman/Romita series he has brown skin. I am advised that this was intended to show that Curry was from either Greece or Italy, since people from Mediterranean countries have darker skin. Well, then, wouldn’t the other “Olympian Eternals” from Greece–Zuras, Thena, Sersi, and Ajak–have dark skin, too? There’s no established convention at Marvel or DC of portraying characters with Greek or Italian background with brown skin: think of Kirby’s Hercules in Thor, or Gaiman’s Orpheus from Sandman, or even Wonder Woman! Moreover, although Kirby never depicted Makkari without his helmet (A crash helmet for traveling in super-fast vehicles?), subsequent stories have established that he has reddish-blond hair (as noted here) and sometimes portrayed him with just plain blond hair (look at the picture of Makkari as a member of the Monster Hunters here), not Mark Curry’s black hair. John Romita, Jr. draws Mark Curry’s facial features distinctly differently than the unmasked Makkari’s looked in his appearances in series like Quasar.
So to make sense out of this in terms of continuity, I have to assume that Makkari’s physical appearance underwent a change at some point. As I hypothesized last week, possibly Sprite did it when he created a new identity for Makkari, or perhaps Makkari, as an Eternal with “absolute mental control” his body, did it himself.
By the way, in doing further research, I have discovered that Makkari previously went under the alias of “Mac Curry” (rather than Mark, which I still find preferable) in Roger Stern and John Byrne’s Marvel: The Lost Generation #2 (January 2001). (Lost Generation was a very imaginative series that created an enormous number of superheroes who operated between the Golden Age of the 1940s and the debut of the Fantastic Four–including a delightful female Eternal named Pixie–and deserves to be revived in a trade paperback reprint collection.)
Ikaris is indeed correct that Mark Curry has lost his memory of being Makkari. Further research has reminded me that Marvel has done this theme of godlike beings suffering amnesia before, only a decade ago. To stave off the threat of Ragnarok, Odin wiped out the memories of the Asgardians and created new identities for them on Earth. This “Lost Gods” story arc ran in the 1990s Journey into Mystery series while Thor was off in the “Heroes Reborn” version of The Avengers. This is a further indication that Gaiman is working with what seems to be an archetypal storyline: the seemingly ordinary mortal who is unaware of his true heroic or even godlike identity. Even Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s origin of Marvel’s Thor (Thor #159, December 1968), in which Odin transforms him into the mortal Don Blake, who is unaware of his godly identity until he finds his hammer, fits this pattern.
Mark Curry dismisses Ikaris’s message and walks away from him, but Ikaris has nonetheless triggered a memory: Curry thinks of Ikaris’s “gold-colored eyes I’m sure I’ve seen before” (Gaiman Eternals #1 p. 5).
Significantly, Curry thinks of Ikaris as “a religious maniac” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 6). Of course, Ikaris is correct about who and what Curry truly is. I am not arguing that Gaiman is literally making a case for religious faith in his Eternals series. The superhero genre deals in metaphors, and the Celestials, who created the Eternals, are “space gods” who are metaphors for God. But I suspect that through Eternals Gaiman is making the case that there is more to life, the universe, and individuals including ourselves, than meets the eye, or that can be defined by science. Indeed, this is a case that the literature of the fantastic makes just as religion does.
It is also significant that, following his encounter with Ikaris, Curry tells us how empty his life (which, Ikaris knows, is not his true life) is: he goes home to an empty apartment to find an unpaid bill, “no girlfriend, no cat, and nothing on TV” (Gaiman issue 1 p. 6).
The “nothing” that is on TV is a stereotypically stupid sitcom for “˜tweens called It’s Just So Sprite, whose title is its catchphrase. (Gaiman may have the same negative attitude towards sitcom catchphrases that Ricky Gervais shows in Extras.) This banal show, complete with a nonstop laugh track, fits the impression of emptiness in Curry’s solitary life.
Past Eternals readers will realize that the show’s lead character, Sprite, is another Eternal from the Kirby series. The TV refers to Sprite’s upcoming “all-star concert at the Hollywood Bowl.” In interviews Gaiman has said that he wanted to define the role of the Eternals in the Marvel Universe, as opposed to its other superheroes. Here Gaiman subtly introduces this theme. The Eternals are meant to serve the “space gods” and protect the Earth; Sprite, on the other hand, has embarked on a show biz career appealing to the lowest common denominator. (The Eternals‘ other show business star, Kingo Sunen, apparently worked with Akira Kurosawa and had a much more artistically respectable career.) It’s as if in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) Spider-Man continued performing stunts on TV instead of becoming a costumed crimefighter.
Curry is overwhelmed by exhaustion, which he attributes to his busy life. But I wonder if the real cause is his deep dissatisfaction with his life. “I want to sleep. I want to sleep so bad it hurts” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 6). This looks like a symptom of deep depression to me. It’s as if he wants to be dead to the world.
And then comes a tapping at Curry’s window, he responds, and it turns out to be Ikaris again, the Campbellian herald issuing the call to adventure for a second time, standing out on the fire escape. This time he identifies himself as “Ike Harris,’ his alias from Kirby’s The Eternals #1.
Again, “Ike” speaks in terms that could be interpreted as religious: “I’m talking about the purpose of life. The meaning of everything. Why we’re here” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 7). As a medical student, Curry responds with a scientific explanation, arguing that the creation of life came about by sheer accident. As far as Curry is concerned, there is no higher meaning to existence. Without allowing “Ike” to make his case, Curry rejects his “nutso-religion.” Notice how Curry identifies himself as a man of science, not of religion: “Dude, I’m a doctor. Well, I’m a med student.”
Even that “dude” has a certain significance. As The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe put it, Makkari “retains an adolescent fervor, especially for his interest in building and riding vehicles that move faster than he himself can with his superhuman powers.” (Trapped in a life that does not suit him, Mark Curry is pictured immobile and exhausted in his apartment, rather than racing at high speed. As “Ike” tells Mark on page 8, “You like going fast.”) The late Mark Gruenwald used to write Makkari in Quasar as a counterpart to the youthful, somewhat naive Lightray in Kirby’s “Fourth World” books. Mark Curry’s calling Ikaris “dude” suggests a certain adolescent spirit.
But rereading Kirby’s Eternals, I didn’t see his version of Makkari as having “adolescent” high spirits so much as he was short-tempered. Kirby’s Makkari is repeatedly short-tempered with Sersi, impatient with her lighthearted attitude. And you see Makkari’s temper in Mark Curry’s early interactions with “Ike Harris.”
Notice how in the fire escape scene Ikaris’s coat flies out behind him, as if it were a superhero’s cape. (Frank Miller employs the same trick for his heroes’ coats in Sin City. The black and white shot of Ikaris in the rain in the third panel of page 12 even looks like a Sin City panel.) Ikaris heads off for the “Royer Building” (Gaiman issue 1, page 8), whose name is a homage to Mike Royer, inker of the Kirby Eternals series.
The next pages reintroduce another Eternal, Sersi. She does not recall being an Eternal either, but one of her main interests in life–partying– remains intact: Sersi is embarking on a career as a party planner. She even wears green, the color of her Eternal costume, throughout the issue.
Gaiman’s handling of Sersi reminds me of other latter-day bohemian characters in his work. Sersi may be unkillable, but I can imagine her getting along quite well with Gaiman’s Death character.
On page 12 “Ike” stands on a small tower atop a building, which is the closest he can come to standing on a mountaintop, as “gods” traditionally do. Making the point explicit, Gaiman and Romita shift to what appears to be Ikaris’s memory of standing on an actual snowy mountaintop with his fellow Eternal, Thena, as they discuss their race’s affinity for cold climates. according to Kirby, Ikaris is a “Polar Eternal,” who dwelled on mountains in Siberia. On the other hand, Thena’s home was the Eternals’ city of Olympia, atop Mount Olympus in Greece, and Kirby drew the city to look as if it had an idyllic, sunny, warm climate. Thena may not really be that fond of cold weather; then again, we discover later in Gaiman’s series that Ikaris’s memories are imperfect.
Thena compliments Ikaris on being “a delightful bedmate. . . .But you do not think” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 13). Thena is modeled on Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, so thinking is especially important to her. Gaiman’s revelation that Ikaris and Thena are former lovers fits in with his later revelation that Sersi was once Makkari’s lover. Gaiman is suggesting that since the Eternals are so long-lived, over the millennia they would inevitably have gotten around to such sexual liaisons. (Now there’s an appealing fantasy: if only I and certain women I know were unaging immortals. . . .)
“Ike” is confronted by two sinister strangers, who will eventually be revealed as members of the Deviants, the Eternals’ perennial enemies. The Deviants attack Ikaris, clearly hurt him, and knock him unconscious. It is unclear whether Ikaris possesses his Eternal superhuman strength at this point in the story, but the two Deviants probably do. (These assassins, traveling in a pair, may remind Gaiman readers of Mr. Croup and the taller, stronger Mr. Vandemar of Neverwhere, albeit minus Mr. Croup’s gift for language. See “Comics in Context” #18.) The larger Deviant throws Ikaris off the top of the building, perhaps reminding us that Ikaris’ namesake, the mythological figure Icarus, fell from the sky to his death. The large Deviant throws a bomb after him, which detonates.
Sersi gets her first party planning assignment from Ivan Druig, Deputy Prime Minister of the fictional former Soviet republic of Vorozheika, which is now an independent nation. I’m amused by the lettering style used to indicate that Druig and his associate are speaking in Russian, translated for our benefit, with “N’s” and “O’s” made to look like letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. (Actually the letter resembling a backwards “N” represents an “E” sound, and the letter resembling a bisected “O” represents our “F.”) Walt Kelly used to use a similar trick for the dialogue of the Russian characters in Pogo.
“Ivan Druig” is really just plain Druig, who. like Ikaris, is one of the Polar Eternals. It’s appropriate that Druig is an official in a former Soviet republic, since he was a member of the K. G. B. in the Kirby series.
Druig was also the villain in the Kirby Eternals‘ final story arc. One of the flaws in the Kirby series is its lack of a great villain, to provide a worthy adversary for its noteworthy heroes. Zakka, Tutinax, Dromedan and the Deviants’ leader, Brother Tode, all suffer from one-dimensional personalities; they lack the sort of grandeur, color, and memorable individuality that we would expect from the co-creator of Doctor Doom. It’s as if, having created such a monumental figure of evil in Darkseid for the Fourth World books at DC, Kirby felt that he couldn’t top himself. (However, while he was doing The Eternals, Kirby was also writing and drawing Captain America and the Falcon, in which he admirably handled the Red Skull and created another memorable villain, Arnim Zola, yet another of his genetic engineers.)
Druig and Ikaris are cousins, reminiscent of Kirby’s many pairings of heroes with evil siblings: Thor and Loki, Professor Xavier and the Juggernaut, Black Bolt and Maximus, Orion and Kalibak. Druig also enjoys engaging in torture, a passion that links him to Darkseid’s underling Desaad. But Druig pales in comparison with all of these predecessors. As Gaiman’s Eternals continues, he improves upon Kirby’s characterization, sharpening the portrait of Druig’s sadism, but still doesn’t elevate him to star villain status.
The one truly distinctive and memorable adversary in Kirby’s Eternals series is the Deviant warlord Kro (who is not to be confused with Gaiman’s Deviant named Kra), yet Kro is arguably more an antihero than a true villain. Kro is one of the greatest characters in Kirby’s Eternals, so it surprising that Gaiman chose not to use him.
There is a potentially great villain in the Eternals mythos, but he appears in neither Kirby’s series nor Gaiman’s, as we shall see.
Learning of a “miracle survivor” of a bombing, Mark Curry somehow realizes that it is Ikaris (perhaps because Ikaris had implied that he was indestructible) and goes to his bedside for their third meeting. It seems right that it is in their third encounter that Curry finally responds to the “call,” at least in limited fashion. “Are you ready to listen?” asks Ikaris. “I guess,” Curry responds (Gaiman issue 1 p. 18). That may not seem a very positive response, but notice that this time Curry went to Ikaris, rather than Ikaris coming to him. Perhaps Curry is willing to listen this time because Ikaris’s survival of the fall and bombing does seem like a literal “miracle.”
Longtime Eternals aficionados might be surprised to see Ikaris covered with bandages and clearly seriously injured. In the past Marvel stories and Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries have treated the Eternals’ physical “durability” as if it were like Superman’s invulnerability. This is true even in what we see on panel in the Kirby Eternals stories. For example, when Ikaris combats the “cosmic-powered,” superhumanly strong Hulk robot in issues 14 through 16, Ikaris’s face is not bloodied and his bones are not broken.
In issue one of the Gaiman series, Ikaris has not fully regained his Eternal powers, as later issues make explicit. But it also appears that Gaiman is playing the Eternals’ indestructibility more like the “fast healing” ability popularized by Wolverine.
Dialogue in the Kirby series supports this approach. He emphasizes that “Eternals can be hurt but they cannot die” (Kirby Eternals hardcover, p. 48). When the cosmic-powered Hulk threatens to drop Makkari off a rooftop (a fate similar to what Ikaris suffers in the Gaiman series), Sersi worries that “the fall will not kill him–but it could injure him for eternity” (Kirby p. 284), suggesting there are limits to the fast healing power, Shortly afterwards during the battle with the robot Hulk, a concerned Ikaris warns Sersi that “you have a lovely neck, but it can easily be snapped” (Kirby p. 290). Some of us at Marvel found amusement in Kirby’s contention that “Eternals can’t die. . .but they can be twisted out of shape for all time!” (Kirby, p. 305).
Gaiman indicates that there are seemingly no limits to the Eternals’ self-healing power. In his last issue Makkari challenges the Deviant leader: “Take my head, and I will still come back, stronger, faster” (Gaiman issue 7, p. 16), implying that he could even grow his head back. (Or would the head grow its body back? This might also be an allusion to a classic work of medieval literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the latter survives beheading.)
On page 19 we learn that Thena, now known as Dr. Thena Eliot, is currently working for Tony Stark, developing a new weapon. This makes sense, inasmuch as Thena is based on Athena, the Greek goddess of both war and wisdom. Designing advanced weaponry combines both fields.
Although Mister Fantastic makes a brief cameo appearance, there are three longtime Marvel superheroes who play important roles in the Gaiman Eternals: Iron Man (Tony Stark), Yellowjacket (Henry Pym), and the Wasp (Janet Van Dyne). These are three major heroes of Marvel’s Silver Age who were not included in Gaiman’s previous Marvel series, 1602, so it is gratifying that Gaiman found ways to use them in Eternals.
This brings up the subject of whether Jack Kirby intended the Eternals to be part of the Marvel Universe. One of the premises of the series is that the people of ancient civilizations believed the Eternals to be gods. Hence, the ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped Zuras as Zeus, Thena as Athena, and Makkari as Mercury. Yet Kirby and Stan Lee had already introduced Zeus, Hercules, Pluto, and other Olympian gods into the pages of Thor.
Moreover, there is something odd about Kirby’s references to other Marvel characters in The Eternals. SHIELD agents turn up in issues 6 and 7, but they are new characters, not Nick Fury or any other previously established member of the organization. As noted, it is a Hulk robot that battles Eternals in issues 14 through 16, not the actual Hulk. The robot is referred to as “a computerized replica of a popular Marvel character” (Kirby, p. 301) and one character comments that “these comic fans think that all of Marvel’s characters are running amuck!” (Kirby, p. 297). The fact that people in these stories refer to superhumans as “Marvel’s characters” doesn’t mean that they aren’t also real. After all, as far back as Fantastic Four #10 (January, 1963), Doctor Doom visited Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at the Marvel offices, where they were doing the Fantastic Four comic! Still, this is strange.
Various people have hypothesized that Kirby did not intend the Eternals to be part of Marvel continuity, but Marvel put pressure on him to integrate the series into the Marvel Universe, so Kirby responded in these ambiguous ways.
This is certainly possible. However, it could also be that Kirby preferred working on new concepts and characters, and had no real interest in using past Marvel characters, even those he had co-created. Maybe he preferred not using his old characters since so many other writers had been using them during his absence from Marvel. It may be significant that even in Kirby’s work writing and drawing Captain America and the Falcon in the 1970s, he used surprisingly few of his previously established characters: Sharon Carter, the Red Skull, Magneto in an annual, and Bucky in Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles (1976). So maybe Kirby did intend the Eternals to be part of the Marvel Universe, but simply chose not to use any guest stars from other series.
It’s possible, too, that Kirby didn’t care one way or the other whether the Eternals fit into Marvel continuity. There have been plenty of Marvel editors and writers whose attitude has been to ignore continuity and leave it to others to try to make sense of it all (as any longsuffering writer of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, past or present, can tell you). Except for Stan Lee himself, it is writers and editors of later generations who care about continuity, not those of Kirby’s generation.
Not that long after the cancellation of the original Eternals series in 1977, a full thirty years ago, Roy Thomas began unmistakably integrating them into the Marvel Universe, first with a flashback in which Thor encountered Eternals at the time of the Third Host in Thor Annual #7 (1978), and then with stories set in the then-present day beginning with Thor #284 (February 1979).
Should this have been done? I believe Roy Thomas acted wisely, in that the Eternals would probably have vanished from sight if they had not started appearing as guest stars in series set in the Marvel Universe. The second Eternals series did not start until 1985, but it too was not a commercial hit, and so the Eternals resumed their guest star stints.
But in Kirby’s Eternals the Eternals and Deviants appear to be the only superhumans around, and the Celestials the only extraterrestrials. As Gaiman has said in interviews, he had to define what makes the Eternals and the Celestials unique on a Marvel-Earth in which super-powered beings and alien visitations are commonplace.
Tony Stark does not recognize Dr. Thena Eliot as one of the Eternals. At first I thought this was a mistake, but no, the Iron Man who visited Olympia and met Thena in Iron Man Annual #6 (1983) was a substitute, James Rhodes. But wouldn’t Tony Stark as Iron Man have met Thena when the Avengers and Eternals teamed up against Ghaur in Eternals Vol. 2 #12 (September 1986)?
Ikaris begins telling Mike Curry the backstory of the Celestials, the Eternals and the Deviants, while advising him that “There are. . .a few things that I don’t remember” (Gaiman issue 1, p. 21). In other words, Ikaris–and Gaiman–are warning that this flashback sequence will not be entirely accurate. The most obvious example is that Ikaris states that there were three “hordes” of Celestials that visited Earth. Actually, they were known as “hosts,” a word with Biblical overtones, and there were four of them, as Sprite points out later (Gaiman issue 4 p. 8). Similarly, Ikaris claims that the Egyptians called Makkari “Osiris,” but Sprite says (if he can be trusted) that they actually knew Makkari as Thoth. (By the way, the ancient Egyptian pantheon also exists in the Marvel Universe: the real Osiris made his Marvel debut in Thor #239, September, 1975. And the “Horde” in Gaiman’s Eternals turns out to be something different from the Celestial Hosts.)
It seems to me an odd strategy to present the series’ backstory through an admittedly unreliable narrator. In the Kirby Eternals, it was also Ikaris who recounted the history of the Celestials, Eternals and Deviants, but he was in full possession of his memories then and had no reason to lie; moreover, that version has been thoroughly established as canonical through subsequent retellings. However, the fact that the Ikaris of Gaiman’s Eternals #1 has a faulty memory gives me an excuse me to dismiss anything that he gets wrong.
For example, in the Kirby series the First Host experiments on human ancestors who are covered with fur and are clearly more apelike than human. In the Gaiman/Romita version, the “proto-people” don’t have fur and look more obviously human.
Through the Celestials’ genetic experiments on these “early hominids,” they created both the Eternals and the Deviants. Romita’s picture (Gaiman issue 1 p. 26) implies that Ikaris and Sprite were directly created by the First Host. Actually, Ikaris was a member of a later generation: Ikaris is the son of an Eternal named Virako and the nephew of Valkin, who is Druig’s father. Even Zuras is a second generation Eternal, being the son of Chronos; Zuras’s brother A’lars is Mentor, the leader of the Eternals of Titan, and father of Thanos, as seen in various stories by Jim Starlin. There’s no need to go into all this complexity in Gaiman’s series, but the picture is misleading.
According to the Kirby series, the Celestials also created the normal human race, namely us. In his interview in the back of his Eternals collection, Neil Gaiman reports that people at Marvel “mentioned that they were very concerned about Celestials creating humanity. They said, “˜Nope! Celestials definitely didn’t create humanity, but they did create the Eternals and the Deviants!’”
This was also the policy that Marvel applied to The Eternals when I was working there in the 1980s, and I understand why: they correctly didn’t want to alienate readers with strong religious beliefs about the creation of humanity.
It’s too bad that apparently no one at 21st century Marvel knows the alternate explanation that Mark Gruenwald’s editorial office established for what the Celestials did to the “normal” human race. As I myself wrote in the “Celestials” entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: “the First Host created two sub-species of humanity, the Eternals and the Deviants. Their sole legacy to the mainstream human race was the implantation of a dormant DNA complex which would one day permit benevolent mutations” (reprinted here). By this I meant not only X-Men-style mutants but all super-powered humans that arose in the late 20th century on Marvel-Earth. (I first postulated this in an article for the unpublished third issue of Mark Gruenwald’s magazine Omniverse, and this was long before DC came up with the similar “metagene” concept.) Presumably this explains why Arishem gave a literal “thumbs up” when Gaea, goddess of the Earth presented the Fourth Host of the Celestials with the “Young Gods,” humans whose evolution had been accelerated, giving them superhuman abilities, in Thor #300 (October, 1980). As far back as the end of the Kree-Skrull War in Avengers #97 (February, 1972), when Rick Jones briefly exhibited cosmic powers, Marvel (through Roy Thomas) had established that humanity would evolve into a super-race.
Gaiman titled his first issue “Intelligent Design” and has Ikaris say, “It’s like the arguments for intelligent design. I know my designers were intelligent. I just don’t know what they wanted me for” (Gaiman issue 1 p. 26). That neatly sums up the quandary that characters face in Kirby’s and Gaiman’s versions of Eternals: they know that the “space gods” (representing God with a capital “G”) are real, but they don’t know what the gods expect of them. Kirby’s Eternals is, surprisingly, the superhero genre’s venture into existentialism.
Here’s something I consider a mistake. It is true that the Deviants conquered the human race in prehistory, but Ikaris claims that the Eternals “called” the Second “Horde”/Host from outer space for help in defeating the Deviants (Gaiman issue 1 p. 30). I find it hard to believe that Kirby’s Celestials were at the beck and call of their creations.
In the Kirby version the Second Host arrived, presumably to monitor the progress of their genetic experiments. “When the gods appeared in those times, they were met by massive, hostile action.” we are told (Kirby p. 27). The Deviants “struck first and failed” (p. 28). In other words, this is a classic case of hubris and overreaching. The Deviants launched an unprovoked attack on their creators, thereby arousing the Celestials’ terrible wrath.
The Gaiman/Romita series shows the giant Celestials of the Second Host striding through the Deviants’ realm, picking up Deviants or shooting energy beams at them (Gaiman issue 1 pages 30-31). This seems to me to be rather mundane behavior for beings who are supposed to be “gods,” not just science fictional giants.
Kirby devised a much more resonant image. “The gods struck in turn, and succeeded in toppling the Deviants with a weapon “˜til then unknown to them.” Kirby shows us what is unmistakably a mushroom cloud, implying that this was a nuclear weapon powerful enough to affect the entire world.
Of course this image taps into our own fears of nuclear bombs, which not only haunted America during the Cold War but have revived in the present, due to the possibility that terrorists could acquire atomic weaponry.
Moreover, the “space gods’” destruction of the overreaching Deviants should remind readers of divine punishments from the Old Testament, such as the destruction of the Tower of Babel and the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah. The detonation of the Celestial weapon unleashed “tidal waves the size of mountains” that “drowned the land and all that lived upon it.” The Deviants’ homeland of “Lemuria and its sister continents vanished in just one dark day” (Kirby, p. 28). I suspect that Kirby meant us to identify one of those “sister continents” as Atlantis. And then comes the capper: Ikaris tells the archeologist Doctor Damian and his daughter that during the flood he guided a great ship to safety, and believes its passengers mistook him for a dove. The Damians realize that this is the Flood from the Book of Genesis, and the ship was the Ark (Kirby, p. 29).
Now doesn’t the Kirby version have considerably more mythic resonance?
And, yes, I know, I haven’t even gotten to the end of the first Gaiman/Romita issue yet. So please come back next week for further exploration of Jack Kirby’s last great creation, the Eternals mythos.
–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson
Back in February at the New York Comic Con, during the panel about the forthcoming movie Will Eisner’s The Spirit, executive producer Michael Uslan recommended that we all go see the exhibit “Reflecting Culture: The Evolution of American Comic Book Superheroes,” that was opening at the Montclair Art Museum this summer (see “Comics in Context” #
Another of my favorites was the original artwork for Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson’s cover for Green Lantern #26 (1964), in which Star Sapphire, shooting an energy beam into Green Lantern’s power battery, triggers another beam which unmasks the superhero as Hal Jordan. (It is reproduced on the cover of the recent Showcase Presents Green Lantern Vol. 2 paperback. It was a pleasure to be able to study Kane’s elegant linework, as inked by Anderson, up close. This also gave me the opportunity to consider the composition of the cover drawing. Star Sapphire’s downward descent, at a slight angle, is roughly echoed by her power beam. Green Lantern’s stance exactly parallels the other power beam which snatches off his mask. While Star Sapphire’s figure is nearly vertical and exudes confidence, Green Lantern/Hal stands at a decided slant, as if he is literally taken aback by his sudden unmasking. She is triumphant; unmasked, he is vulnerable and seems defeated. The two figures form a classical triangular composition, mirrored by their respective power beams.
Here’s yet another marker of how much popular culture is changing. Sir Ian McKellen has a large repertory of roles that ranges from Richard III and King Lear to Gandalf and, of all people, Magneto in the X-Men movies. And now, as the narrator of the film adaptation of the fantasy novel Stardust, he has taken on the part of the voice of Neil Gaiman. Or, rather, the authorial voice that Gaiman adopted as the narrator of Stardust the novel.
One of the major event in cartoon art in 2007 is Warner Home Video’s release of Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938, a DVD set collecting the first sixty Popeye cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studios. This is everything that a DVD set of vintage animation should be.
Then there are all the special features! The producers of this DVD cover Popeye’s history, in the comics, in animation, and even in Robert Altman’s 1980 live action film: its screenwriter, Jules Feiffer, and actor Paul Dooley, who played Wimpy, turn up in the set’s mini-documentaries.
Like the Fleischers’ Popeye and Superman cartoons, the Inkwell shorts usually present variations on a basic formula. A cartoonist, who is almost always played by Max Fleischer himself in live action footage, uses pen and ink to draw a clown–who was eventually given the name Koko–who comes to life within the cartoon “world” on the paper on the drawing board. Hence, Koko has emerged “out of the inkwell.” (That an animator is more likely to draw a character in pencil goes unmentioned. As for Koko’s name, which some cartoons spell “Ko-Ko,” I wonder if it is a reference to Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner and principal comedy character in Gilbert and Sullivan’s most celebrated operetta, The Mikado.) After going through various escapades in the cartoon world, Koko emerges from the drawing board into the real world, often to get even with Max, who is both his creator and his tormentor. In the typical ending to these shorts, Koko enters the ink bottle, which Max then seals with its cap.
Universal Home Video’s Woody Woodpecker and Friends DVD set, which was released on July 24, provided me with a rare opportunity to get in touch with my early childhood memories. It was as a young boy that I first saw various Disney animated features, and many, many Warner Brothers and early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, as well as the Max Fleischer Popeyes. I also watched the syndicated half-hour Woody Woodpecker Show on television, hosted by his cartoons’ producer, Walter Lantz, which packaged Lantz cartoons from the 1940s.
As soon as I got the Woody DVD home, I immediately watched the Woody cartoon that I most clearly recalled liking as a child: The Barber of Seville, from 1944. This appears to be the most celebrated of the Woody cartoons, having been selected in a survey of a thousand animation professionals and historians as one of “The 50 Greatest Cartoons” for Jerry Beck’s 1994 book of the same name. This cartoon also inaugurated what looks to me to be the prime period in Woody Woodpecker’s onscreen career. It was the first Woody cartoon directed by former Disney animator James “Shamus” Culhane, and was co-written by Ben “Bugs” Hardaway, who had created Woody (as well as a prototype for Bugs Bunny at Warners, hence Bugs’s name) and was now supplying his voice. Moreover, this cartoon debuted Woody’s new, sleeker character design, which was considerably more appealing than the grotesque appearance he bore in his first cartoon (1940’s Knock Knock), without devolving into the cuteness of the 1950s Woody.
In Crazy Mixed-Up Pup (1955) a dog gets a transfusion of human blood, and his owner gets a transfusion of canine blood, with the result that the dog acts human, and the human acts like a dog. Each time someone witnesses this unusual behavior, the top of his or head springs open, a cuckoo emerges, and flags sprout from his or her ears, all to signify that the witness has just gone nuts. Avery keeps repeating this device, but it grows no funnier: I prefer the wild takes that wolves and other characters did in 1940s Avery cartoons.
In reviewing The Simpsons Movie for The New York Times (
Back in May, when I bought the Warner Home Video’s DVD set Tex Avery’s Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection from a Best Buy store in midtown Manhattan, not only did the cashier break into a smile at seeing my purchase, but he even launched into a Droopy impression. Last month, I picked up the Woody Woodpecker and Friends DVD set at a different Best Buy, and the female cashier was already holding a copy of her own. Either this is coincidence, or Best Buy has a commendable policy of hiring animation buffs.
Always looking for material for this column, I thought, why not go to one of the big bookstore events on Friday, July 20 for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J. K. Rowling’s series? The biggest bash in New York City was the one at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square, where Jim Dale, who performs the audio book versions of the Harry Potter series, would start doing readings at 10:30 PM. There would even be live owls in the store!
In my childhood it was a special event when an animated feature film, almost always from the Disney studio, turned up in movie theaters. Nowadays, there are so many animated feature films these days that I wait to catch many of them when they reach cable TV.
Every summer I watch a good deal of the Wimbledon tennis championships, which this year were particularly plagued by rain, forcing continual delays. Repeatedly ESPN2 would show the sky overhead, as ominous clouds moved into view. And this year I found myself thinking, oh, look, it’s Galactus. The version from the new movie Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, that is.
The metaphorical premise of the rest of this storyline becomes: What if the Devil became all-powerful? What if Evil proved to be unstoppable? Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #58, my first issue, demonstrates that the Fantastic Four cannot defeat Doctor Doom, whose power now overwhelms theirs; the following issues show Doom wreaking havoc across the entire world, whose nations are likewise helpless to stop him. Ultimately it is Reed Richards, through his great intellect, who brings about Doom’s defeat by finding a way to turn the power of Galactus (that energy barrier enveloping Earth) against him.
Like Quick Stop editor Ken Plume and other individuals of discerning taste, I was a devoted fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (
Last week I wrote about how in Spider-Man 3 director Sam Raimi and his collaborators used the alien sentient “black costume” from the comics as a means of investigating the dark side of the title hero’s personality. When he wears it, the black costume draws out and magnifies Spider-Man’s his capacity for rage and violence and his egotism, 
This week’s honoree is Kyle Smith, film critic for The New York Post, who wrote in his 
In the brief sample of their documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist that director Andrew D. Cooke and writer Jon B. Cooke showed at comics-related events when it was still a work in progress, there was a clip from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941)–the panning shot of the exterior of Susan Alexander Kane’s night club–to make a case for its influence on Eisner’s work in comics. As I began recounting last time, I attended the world premiere of the completed documentary at Manhattan’s Tribeca Film Festival on April 26 (but not actually in Tribeca; the theater was in the East Village). That Kane clip was the only part that I remembered from the work-in-progress sampler, so the Cooke brothers had obviously considerably revised even that partial early draft of their film.
Well, Paul certainly deserves recognition in the pages of The New York Times. The paper not only quoted Paul, but ran a photograph of him. And his wife and “Monkey Talk” co-conspirator Misty Lee is in the picture, which is rather sweet. And the monkeys are in the picture, too.
There is a school of thought that any publicity is good publicity. I suppose that Marvel considers the furor over the recent demise of Captain America (see “Comics in Context” #
A little over four hours before I began writing this week’s column on Thursday afternoon, May 18, I was on television. Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a member of the staff at MSNBC asking if I would we willing to be interviewed about the notorious new Comiquette statue of Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man’s leading lady. So, early this afternoon I was picked up by a car service that MSNBC sent, and taken to a midtown Manhattan studio.
When I left off last week, I was being dazzled by the vast array of vintage comic books on display at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (
At the beginning of director Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300, we are told that that if the Spartans of ancient Greece decided that a newborn infant was physically unfit to grow up to be a warrior, they would throw him to his death. The baby we see onscreen doesn’t meet such a fate, but we do get to see a mound of infant skulls.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been writing about the fate of the creative artist, in both real life and in animated films, who takes a new, innovative path only to suffer rejection and failure. Last week I also referred tp essayist 
Last week I wrote about Dave Cockrum and Marshall Rogers, both of whom recently passed away, and whose innovative work as comics artists in the 1970s had considerable impact on the superhero genre. But tastes shifted, and neither artist was considered “hot” in the last few decades. Will their reputations continue to fade? Are the people paying tribute to their work doing so merely out of nostalgia? Or, as time passes, bringing new perspectives, will their work prove to be enduring classics, that survive the shifting tides of fashion?
I was sitting in Room 1E16 of the Javits Center, waiting for the start of the last panel I would attend at this year’s New York Comic-Con, “Dave Cockrum Remembered.” Cockrum is best known as a fan favorite artist on DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes in the 1970s, and as the co-creator of the “new” X-Men, who debuted in Giant-Size X-Men #1 back in 1975. For that landmark issue, Cockrum and writer Len Wein jointly created three of the X-Men’s most prominent members, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Storm, all of whom were derived from drawings in Cockrum’s legendarily voluminous sketchbooks. Cockrum, whom I interviewed decades ago for Fantagraphics’ X-Men Companion, was one of the foremost superhero comics artists of the 1970s and early 1980s. But a new generation of readers and editors seemed oblivious to his considerable talents. Worse, Cockrum became seriously ill with pneumonia and diabetes, and he finally passed away last November.
There I was in Room 1E12/13 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, waiting for the next panel at the New York Comic-Con to start: “NYCC’s Behind the Panels: The 60s Marvel Bullpen.” The panel was supposed to have begun at 4 PM, but for fifteen minutes I’ve been watching people milling about on the right side of the hall.
