Eternals #6 (1976)
by Jack Kirby
Thena and Makkari mercifully hijacked the series in the previous issue, and now they take the cover.
Their fight against the Deviants pretending to be space demons is going great.
With his army now in shambles, Kro is faces the police.
The Eternals are surprised to see Kro, since Deviants are not supposed to be immortal.
And yet the last time they saw him was “in the days of the flood”; Kro calls it being an event from a thousand years ago, but future stories will first make this THE flood (you know, the one from the Bible) and then the flood linked to the sinking of Atlantis.
To put this into perspective, taking into consideration Marvel’s timeline and further additions to the lore… Kro is roughly 20,000 years old at this point.
Little tangent here.
One of the things that I loved about the Eternals prior to the 2000s was that they had VERY different ages but most of them looked like they were the same age.
For example Zuras was over 500,000 years old, Ikaris was something like 100,000, Thena was at least 20,000, Sersi around 8,000 and Makkari was “only” 4,500 years old.
And yet, only Zuras looked SLIGHTLY older.
Which A) went to show how little time matters to immortals B) still allowed the Eternals to be unique enough.
While there’s a lot to love about the Volume 3 and Volume 5 reboots, the fact that it made EVERY Eternal exactly one million years old has always bugged me.
Back to the story, in retrospect it’s kind of hilarious that Thena and Makkari are surprised to see Kro here, since A TON of previous encounters have been retconned in.
Heck, Kro is retroactively the bad guys in all the appearances of Makkari’s Golden-Age retcons!
But this is when Kro grows out of the stereotypical role he’s had so far and grows into a more complex character, proposing a truce that will help both Deviants and Eternals.
It might look strange to see him propose the truce after he’s been leading the attack against New York, but if you remember he’s not exactly loyal to the Deviant leadership.
You might remember that Margo and Sersi were captured by the Deviants, and the latter is having fun with it.
Yeah I have no doubt she would have left on her own even without the truce.
Oh come on, things were JUST beginning to get interesting, why did you have to bring Ikaris back!?
Sersi, I also share your enjoyment of making fun of Ikaris, but believe me it’s not worth it.
And FINALLY there’s some resemblance to a point for the series.
The disagreement between Eternals and Deviants is now clear: the Eternals believe humans can co-exist peacefully, while the Deviants believe humans will screw up everything.
Can’t say I blame the Deviants for thinking that.
Margo is finally given a plot relevant role: finding a different human that can be useful to the plot.
Notice Thena believing that the best way to teach humanity about a radical shift in everything they know is through “academic sources”.
Which from a 21st century perspective is depressingly outdated, but it’s appropriately very Ancient Greek for Thena.
More importantly, will the new character be hot?
I feel obligated to defend humanity a little here (don’t get used to it).
The emphasis on humans fearing what they don’t understand is misplaced here, because while it’s true…
…can you blame humans for fearing what BURNS ENTIRE CITIES!?!?
Yeah in case you forgot, THIS has been going on in the background for several issues!!!
I wonder if Sersi will indeed find this guy hot.
Apparently the best way to teach all humanity that they’ve been sharing the planet with superpowered immortals is show them off in a splash page at a college.
At least there’s a caption telling us it’s been a week since THE CITY WAS ON FIRE BECAUSE OF AN ALIEN INVASION, otherwise it would’ve been ridiculous they’d be accepted so soon.
Also, while I have no trouble believing Thena is taller than Sersi… holy crap is Makkari tall here!
Also, and I’m reeeeally nitpicking here… sometimes Kirby has a lot of trouble drawing feet.
Unless Sersi is transmuting one into a snake.
This guy is supposed to be one of the leading authorities on anthropology, so he better have a good argument to change everything we know about human evolution.
And his thesis is “trust these random guys I just met”.
Sounds legit.
When that doesn’t work, they demonstrate their powers.
Is this guy a reference to someone? From randomly giving his name to his face having a slightly different design from all others, I think he might be.
This is one of the more infamous moments in the series: to demonstrate this isn’t a trick, Sersi transmute a guy’s face into The Thing.
Notice that the scene would play exactly the same if all characters involved believed The Thing was just a fictional character. But things will get complicated.
But that plot thread will continue next time, because we close the issue with humans reaching the citadel of the Celestials. In the previous issue it was a transparent dome, but now they can’t look inside.
This is supposedly the moment the series enters the Marvel Universe, because these “agents” are said to be working for Nick Fury.
They’re then captured by the second Celestial to be named, Gammenon.
Historical significance: 8/10
The Eternals officially revealing themselves to the world, plus the uneasy truce with the Deviants, will play a big part in the rest of the series. Also the start of a problematic relationship with the Marvel Universe.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
People sure are quick to forget NEW YORK WAS ON FIRE AND UNDER SIEGE BY SPACE DEMONS a week ago.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
We’re finally starting to go somewhere. The story is still painfully short and with too many lore dumps, but at least Ikaris is less unbearable when he has other characters to bounce off.
Plus, as mentioned there’s finally a point to main plot, which is definitely more than I could say about the New Gods at the same point of their publishing history.
Does this fit the Marvel Universe? 5/10
Okay, this is where things get weird.
We can dismiss the scene with the guy turned into the Thing since nothing indicates he believes he’s a real person, but we have an explicit reference to Nick Fury.
Technically speaking, at this point it’s not necessary for him to be the same Nick Fury: in fact some Eternals purists might argue this could just be a parallel timeline.
But I think that’s dumb: Kirby wouldn’t use Nick Fury, a character he co-created, without considering him to be the same guy. Granted, the idea to integrate the Eternals with the rest of the Marvel Universe is almost certainly not Kirby’s idea. And later issues will make things even more confusing.
Having this story in the Marvel Universe helps in a couple ways: it makes the fact that the invasion is dismissed so rapidly more believable, as having the cops being so calm dealing with aliens.
But it also has its negatives: in addition to the ridiculousness of no superhero intervening during the attack, it’s laughable to think that the Eternals demonstrating superpowers would mean anything to the students, in a world where there’s plenty of those!
Splash pages: 2 out of 17 (12%)
Splash + double splash pages: 3 out of 17 (24%)
Celestials named: 2
Only Arishem and Gammenon have been named so far. The latter is definitely less iconic, but he gets around.
Most Kirby panel
Most WTF panel
Great way to introduce yourself to humans, Kro.
