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Post by pinkfloydsound17 on Jan 3, 2021 19:51:35 GMT -5
Totally agree that grouping Eternals into the Marvel Universe was the error. That series was clipping along nicely and then bam, you had Marvel characters come in and it was a mess.
Someone needs to start at issue 12 or 13 or so and just reinvent a proper ending to that series.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 3, 2021 20:39:41 GMT -5
He had been a publisher and lost his shirt when the 50s witch hunts took hold. That led to him having to eat crow and be treated like crap, at DC, on Green Arrow. Jack had a family to feed and wasn't ready to take that much of a leap of faith. I also don't think he could have competed, without serious financial backing, before the Direct Market was well established. By that point, Jack had found stability and better remuneration in animation. Makes sense. I guess I'm thinking in an alternate reality , what if he wasn't scared to start his own comic company in 1972 and created New Gods , etc for an independent line. He would have made a mint. If the Direct market had been around in 1970, I would tend to agree. Still, even with Hugh Heffner's backing, Harvey Kurtzman wasn't able to make a go of Trump, because Heffner had his own publishing woes with Playboy. Jack and Joe Simon had also had the backing of Al Harvey, in the 50s, but failed to launch a winner. The possible scenario I could see is Kirby reunited with Harvey, to publish and distribute Kirby's line of books, with Kirby as a financial partner. then, i could see them being a real challenger; though, Kirby's idea was to have others working on the books. How would the audience have reacted to that, vs Jack doing them? Some of his ideas were pretty radical, for the time, like graphic novels and collected editions; would the audience have been willing to shell out for higher priced formats? As usual, I think Kirby was too far ahead of his time (about 20 years too far), which is probably the fate of a pioneer.
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Post by james on Jan 7, 2021 14:49:19 GMT -5
Yeah, the Celestials were cool. I kind of remember the series not going anywhere and finishing like the New Gods did. The Celestials were cool! I first was exposed to them in Thor 283. I just was in awe of John Buscema's rendition and how majestic they were and they never said a word! I'd do almost anything for a really good Celestials figure!
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 7, 2021 22:15:14 GMT -5
Yeah, the Celestials were cool. I kind of remember the series not going anywhere and finishing like the New Gods did. The Celestials were cool! I first was exposed to them in Thor 283. I just was in awe of John Buscema's rendition and how majestic they were and they never said a word! I'd do almost anything for a really good Celestials figure! See, that storyline started out really well, with the Eternals brought back, in the only decent handling within the Marvel Universe proper; but, after Hero turns up (the future Gilgamesh), the Eternals pretty much get dumped from the story and only the Celestials reman as a threat, while they do a travelogue of other pantheons and come to a rather disappointing conclusion, for me.
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Post by berkley on Jan 8, 2021 0:27:24 GMT -5
Yes, it's really the Celestials that were the important element in Thomas's Thor. The Eternals weren't handled all that well even when they did appear - for example, the rather drearily unimaginitive meeting/battle with the MU Greek Gods (who themselves have not been written particularly well in Marvel comics, historically) .
Not that anyone else has done any better, mind - I saw a more recent comic, some time after the Gaiman miniseries, featuring a meeting between Thena and Athena that was just as dumb, and in much the same way, if I remember (petty rivalry/jealousy bwtween the two namesakes).
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 8, 2021 17:08:42 GMT -5
As an aside... today I'm re-watching "CLASH OF THE TITANS" (1980) and can't get over how talky, slow-moving and boring it is, compared to "JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS" (1963) from the same producer, writer & effects wizard. And Laurence Olivier is terrible as Zeus, when compared to Niall MacGinnis.
Too bad they couldn't get director Don Chaffey again...
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Post by String on Jan 8, 2021 20:24:24 GMT -5
Yeah, the Celestials were cool. I kind of remember the series not going anywhere and finishing like the New Gods did. Marvel insisting he abandon his concept to shoe horn it into the MU. Did it happen like that though? Recently, I've acquired Marvel Masterworks The Mighty Thor Vol 18-19 which contains Thomas' Eternal Saga. I've yet to read the entire story even though my first ever issue of Thor I got as a kid was #283. (Imagine that, first introduction to Thor also included a Celestial. Every panel by Buscema is etched into my memory, love that issue). Anyway, Thomas makes this assertion in his introduction to Vol 18: "However, despite the fact that crossovers were Marvel's lifeblood, Jack preferred to keep his Eternals in what seemed to be a separate 'universe' all his own........When Jack departed Marvel a second time in the late '70s, though, the powers-that-were at Marvel and I agreed that now nothing stood in the way of fully integrating the Eternals, the Celestials, the Deviants, (etc) in the Marvel Universe. While in an earlier day such a melding might've been more likely to take place in Fantastic Four , certainly Thor made sense as the venue."
Now I know that 's only one side of the story but it appears that Kirby still had enough influence to keep the Eternals apart from the MU while he was there. I don't the full exact details of what may have drove him away for the final time or how much pressure, editorial or otherwise, he may have felt to merge his concepts with the MU but Thomas appears to have been wiling to wait till his departure before proceeding with any such moves. Further in that introduction, he does concede to the inherent problems of the Eternals being based on Roman-Greco mythology with the MU already having the Olympic gods introduced. He admits that his attempted resolution of these two separate yet oh-so-close pantheons may not have been the best. Thomas begins his Eternal Saga in Thor Annual #7. Later in his introduction, he makes this interesting comment: "But the meat of the story was Thor's encounter with the Celestials.....The recent Annual had mostly been well received, but there were a few souls out there who felt the Eternals should be forever separate from the Marvel Universe. Then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and I forcefully disagreed with that viewpoint."
So it would seem inevitable that the rather overpowering concept of the Celestials would overtake the Eternals within the story. However, given Thomas' stated love of classic myth works (such as Homer's Illiad) I could see where the breadth and energy of Kirby's concepts (rooted as they are in myths) were too tempting to resist leaving alone and separate from the larger MU. To his credit, he admits that he tried taking his time within this story to (re)introduce elements and characters so as not to overwhelm any new readers. He was wary of introducing any new characters as well (it wasn't until Thor #290 that he introduced a brand new Deviant character).
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 8, 2021 20:33:11 GMT -5
The whole Hulk robot in the later issues was Jack giving in to bringing in the MU. He fought it,, but had to give concessions. The interference in the later issues did hurt the series.
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Post by berkley on Jan 8, 2021 22:28:17 GMT -5
The whole Hulk robot in the later issues was Jack giving in to bringing in the MU. He fought it,, but had to give concessions. The interference in the later issues did hurt the series. My impression is that Kirby was still resisting this pressure and thus the "cosmic-powered Hulk" was from one POV a grudging concession to connecting the Eternals with the MU while actually keeping them their own thing for a little longer. But the presence of even this false Hulk killed the unique atmosphere of the book for me. It just looked and felt so wrong, the Hulk visually and in every other way was so much less interesting than the Eternals, Deviants, and Celestials.
And the story itself was a simple extended chase and fight scene that went on far too long and would have suffered in comparison to the earlier issues even with a different opponent. Because the other big concession Kirby made in those last 6 issues was to simplify the book and write more straightforward super-powered adventures with a single lead character, Ikaris, who was the closest thing the Eternals had to a traditional alpha-male superhero (and at times, in fact, a critique of that very trope).
He did manage to sneak in a Thena + Reject & Karkas story in the Annual and there are still many interesting and informative moments scattered throughout all those late issues - scenes and incidents, bits of dialogue and narration that are important for reaching an understanding of what the whole Eternals thing was about. But they're sprinkled here and there in the midst of these relatively conventional stories: the epic scope was gone, the innovative ensemble narrative structure, with no single lead character, that was gone, the whole thing felt less exciting and original in comparison to the first 13 issues.
I should finish my re-read soon and get back to talkng about the Eternals concept in general and how it's been misconstrued by later writers up to the present day.
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 8, 2021 23:27:08 GMT -5
Good analysis berkley
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 8, 2021 23:30:04 GMT -5
As an aside... today I'm re-watching " CLASH OF THE TITANS" (1980) and can't get over how talky, slow-moving and boring it is, compared to " JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS" (1963) from the same producer, writer & effects wizard. And Laurence Olivier is terrible as Zeus, when compared to Niall MacGinnis. Too bad they couldn't get director Don Chaffey again... So true, some truly outstanding Harryhausen stuff, especially Medusa. But way overproduced.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 9, 2021 0:15:18 GMT -5
I just read that Maggie Smith was responsible for getting her friend Laurence Olivier involved. Sadly, he was ill the whole time they were making the movie. I noted the ONLY actor the film had in common with " JASON..." was Jack Gwillim, who played Poseidon; in the earlier film, he was unforgettable as King Aetes. It struck me, HE would have been a better fit for Zeus! I keep remembering when my late best friend Jim once compared the plot structure of the film to a "Rube Goldberg" device. the characters have to go here to do this, in order to then go there and do that. And on and on it goes like that. It doesn't feel like it's building to a climax, it's more like a 30s newspaper adventure strip or movie serial, with a stream of incidents one after another. The end just sort of arrives, after far too much time and tedium, rather than being an actual climax. (I just realized, I just described the "Flash Gordon" newspaper strip in the 1930s. It had one big storyline that went on and on for 9 years, until it just sort of STOPPED.)
And I wouldn't normally say this, but while it's "only" 118 minutes, it feels much longer, and anywhere from 15-30 minutes feels like it could have been trimmed out and improved the whole feel of it.
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Post by berkley on Jan 10, 2021 4:32:21 GMT -5
The whole Hulk robot in the later issues was Jack giving in to bringing in the MU. He fought it,, but had to give concessions. The interference in the later issues did hurt the series.
And the story itself was a simple extended chase and fight scene that went on far too long and would have suffered in comparison to the earlier issues even with a different opponent. Because the other big concession Kirby made in those last 6 issues was to simplify the book and write more straightforward super-powered adventures with a single lead character, Ikaris, who was the closest thing the Eternals had to a traditional alpha-male superhero (and at times, in fact, a critique of that very trope).
As it happens, I just earlier tonight reached this point - the "cosmic-powered Hulk" story, #14-16 - in my re-read, and while I wouldn't retract my earlier comments, I think there are at least a couple things Kirby was doing in these issues that I don't remember noticing before:
1. The false Hulk's rampage through the city is presented in something like the way Garth Ennis might have done it if he'd included a Hulk analogue in The Boys: IOW, the emphasis is on the terror of ordinary people and the menace of this out of control force that is very likely going to cause a lot of innocent deaths if it isn't stopped.
2. when Zuras seizes the Hulk-thing (it's a robot constructed by university students) to release the cosmic-energy out of it, he says, 'I shall now relieve him of the mystery he was not meant to bear ... Behold the flight of cosmic matter from the vessel in which it was trapped by a whim of fate.' - which strikes me now as a comment on Kirby's being asked or perhaps just feeling pressured to bring MU characters like the Hulk into his book. As if he was saying, 'OK "whim of fate" (i.e. editorial or just the weight of opinion), I did what you asked, I brought a popular MU character in - but he was never meant to be part of this, he doesn't belong here, and now he goes'.
Actually, there was more than just those 2 things but I don't want to gt too deeply into it yet. The farther I get into this re-read, the more tempting it is to do an issue by issue analysis, but I want to stick to my earlier idea of giving a general overview first.
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Post by dbutler69 on Jan 11, 2021 10:45:03 GMT -5
Might be time to revisit it. I will be. Have the collected Kirby trade of Eternals which came out in 2020. Then late January will ship collected trades of the Roy Thomas Thor/Eternals/Celestials saga along with the trade collecting the 1st ever Eternals 12 issue mini series. I haven't read these since they were new and sold years later without re-reading so will be like brand new to my tired aging mind. Thanks to the MCU upcoming movie there is plenty of early Eternals to read now. Thanks to the MCU upcoming movie the Eternals back issues are pretty expensive, which is why I bought the TPB, which was really nice, at least.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 11, 2021 12:37:08 GMT -5
See, that storyline started out really well, with the Eternals brought back, in the only decent handling within the Marvel Universe proper; but, after Hero turns up (the future Gilgamesh), the Eternals pretty much get dumped from the story and only the Celestials reman as a threat, while they do a travelogue of other pantheons and come to a rather disappointing conclusion, for me. I've discussed this before, but the only Eternals use in the mainstream MU which I like at all is the Roger Stern tribute to Kirby which appeared in Marvel Universe. The appearances of the characters in Thor only annoyed me.
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