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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 23:59:28 GMT -5
Maybe that was it. I was wondering if maybe they meant Marvel's cosmic beings like Galactus, the Watcher, the Stranger, etc - but Kirby never systematised them into a pantheon and besides, there are a whole bunch that weren't his characters, like Eternity and all the other Doctor Strange ones. Regardless, anyone who thinks that the Eternals are fourth-rate Kirby probably isn't the best choice to write their series - though of course the problem is that you'd be hard put to find a writer who doesn't think that, let alone one who agrees with me that it's actually a first-rate concept and that Kirby's series was one of the most original things Marvel ever published. Well the thing to remember about Gillen is that he is a formalist ( referencing McCloud's breakdown of tribes of comic creators/storytelling here detailed in Making Comics). He is more interested in how you tell the story than in the story itself being told. It doesn't matter so much to him if it is a personal favorite mythos or not, it matters if he thinks he can do something interesting with the execution of the storytelling that he is doing. Kirby was much more of the narrative sort (an animist) than a formalist (though he did push the boundaries of storytelling too). So I am guessing the challenge that excited Gillen about doing Eternals is what he can do in/with the storytelling, not the mythology of the story. Expecting "reverence" for the animist tribe from Gillen is just setting yourself up for disappointment, that's not what he is about as a storyteller. -M
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Post by berkley on Oct 6, 2020 0:43:01 GMT -5
Maybe that was it. I was wondering if maybe they meant Marvel's cosmic beings like Galactus, the Watcher, the Stranger, etc - but Kirby never systematised them into a pantheon and besides, there are a whole bunch that weren't his characters, like Eternity and all the other Doctor Strange ones. Regardless, anyone who thinks that the Eternals are fourth-rate Kirby probably isn't the best choice to write their series - though of course the problem is that you'd be hard put to find a writer who doesn't think that, let alone one who agrees with me that it's actually a first-rate concept and that Kirby's series was one of the most original things Marvel ever published. Well the thing to remember about Gillen is that he is a formalist ( referencing McCloud's breakdown of tribes of comic creators/storytelling here detailed in Making Comics). He is more interested in how you tell the story than in the story itself being told. It doesn't matter so much to him if it is a personal favorite mythos or not, it matters if he thinks he can do something interesting with the execution of the storytelling that he is doing. Kirby was much more of the narrative sort (an animist) than a formalist (though he did push the boundaries of storytelling too). So I am guessing the challenge that excited Gillen about doing Eternals is what he can do in/with the storytelling, not the mythology of the story. Expecting "reverence" for the animist tribe from Gillen is just setting yourself up for disappointment, that's not what he is about as a storyteller. -M Oh, I'm already disappointed, don't you worry.
I think the point you raise is a red herring, as it was when people said similar things about Tom King's criminally over-rated Mister Miracle. If you're working with an existing concept, some of the parameters are already set and part of your job is to come to grips with them while at the same time making use of them for your own purposes, formalist or otherwise. A good writer will understand these parameters and manage to adhere to them while pursuing his or her own artistic goals. An exceptional writer will bring some insight to the concept and show it in a new light - again, while addressing his own artistic concerns through it. All this is obvious, or should be.
But all this is irrelevant because Gillen acknowledges that much himself. The problem is that when he thinks of "The Eternals", he isn't thinking of the Kirby series, he's thinking of the Marvel Universe and how the Eternals have appeared in it up until now: to him, the Kirby series is just one version among many others, and not even, to him, the most interesting.
I think this is a serious artistic misjudgment on his part: the Kirby Eternals is a qualitatively different - and IMO far superior - thing to everything that came later. Of course Gillen, like anyone else, doesn't have to agree with me. But I reserve the right to express my own opinion, as wrongheaded or even incomprehensible as it may seem to anyone else.
I also think he's probably making a big mistake even on his own terms - for example by making Thanos the "Big Bad" - which looks suspiciously like a sign that he thinks the Eternals are a failed New Gods and need a Darkseid figure to complete them. Which is a mistaken idea in itself (the Eternals are a very different kind of idea to the New Gods) and also in the detail of choice of character - because Thanos is quite likely to overshadow the relatively obscure Eternals and leave them as at best minor appendages to that character's Marvel mythos.
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