… The frivolity in which The Eternals is written is what I am complaining about. “Above all, Jack Kirby’s new series, The Eternals, offends me. Kirby wasn’t keen on referencing Marvel’s other ongoing titles within his book, though due to editorial demands he compromised and introduced a handful of SHIELD agents he quickly dispatched and the Hulk, albeit a cosmically powered synthetic version. Much of the pushback came from readers who either wanted the Eternals to be part of the Marvel Universe or separate from it.

As soon as the series debuted, fan letters poured in proving the title divisive among comic readers. Seeds of Kirby’s work here would go on to further define Marvel and DC, but also influence sci-fi films like The Matrix Trilogy.īut as fondly as we may look upon Kirby’s Eternals work today, this was not the case at the time.

Zeus and Athena, Gilgamesh, Satan, vampires - all stories formed around the existence of these strange beings, born of a cosmic experiment. Within those 19 issues, Kirby not only explained the origins of life on the planet but attributed all of humans’ legends of gods and monsters to two cousin races, Eternals and Deviants. Eternals was Kirby’s chance to do something different, separate from the larger and more familiar Marvel Universe. Largely inspired by Erich von Däniken’s Chariot of the Gods, which made bold claims about alien influence on early civilizations, Kirby’s Eternals was a marked shift for the creator who had defined the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men and most of the Marvel Universe. Strangeįor what it’s worth, I think Eternals is one of the best MCU entries to date and an ambitious love letter to superheroes as modern mythology, something Jack Kirby was innately interested in exploring later in his career. 'Doctor Strange' Sequel Teaser Introduces a Darker Version of Dr. While audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes are significantly higher (84 percent), Eternals clearly isn’t working for everyone, which makes the film all the more fascinating within the framework of the MCU and the ever-growing number of comic book adaptations. So, it came as a surprise when Eternals opened to a divisive response, evidenced by the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score for any MCU entry (48 percent) along with the lowest CinemaScore (B) within that same category. Zhao, fresh off Academy Awards wins for best director and best picture for Nomadland (2020), pitched her concept for the film to Marvel Studios in 2018, and the film was developed as a passion project for the filmmaker, whose previous features Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017) were well-received indie dramas. Based on Jack Kirby’s epic 19-issue series The Eternals (1976), the film explores a group of immortal aliens’ relationship to the people of Earth, and each other, across millennia. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was shaken up this weekend with Chloé Zhao’s Eternals.

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