Deviant Deviations - The Skrulls!

So it turns out that not only were Deviants featured in the very first comic book of the Marvel Universe, but they were the main villains in the second. Fantastic Four #2 featured the weird menace of the shape-changing Skrulls, who hearkened from the depths of space. These are just regular Skrulls in this adventure, beings who are able to invade and infiltrate a culture because they can become almost anything to disguise themselves. 

Turns out they are a variation of the Deviant stock created by the Celestials for a world far far away from our humble Earth. One of my favorite baddies is Super-Skrull who turns up first in Fantastic Four #18 and in addition to his natural Skrull shape-changing abilities he is gifted with the powers of the Fab 4 itself. 

Sometime later we learn that the Dire Wraiths, the malicious aliens battled by toy-gone-comic hero ROM are yet another variation of the Skrull line. Those nutty Celestials sure were busy in the Marvel Universe. 

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Deviant Deviations - The Gortokians!

In X-Men #41 we meet the Gortokians. This is yet another subterranean race which eventually will be yet another variation of Deviant genetic technology. They were specifically bred as slaves who were used to erect the sprawling underground cities occupied by the Deviant race. The race was almost completely destroyed by underground nuclear testing. 
 

The one exception was a particularly nasty chap named "Grotesk" who sought vengeance for his slaughtered people and tried to achieve by killing Professor Xavier, the leader of the X-Men. At that time the X-Men thought Professor X was indeed slain and the team eventually broke up for a brief time. But soon they learned that another mutant named "Changeling" had substituted himself for Xavier while the latter prepared for a massive alien invasion. 

It is suggested in some sources that the "Golden People" first and only seen in Marvel Super-Heroes #19 in a Ka-Zar story are a remnant of the Gortokians. 

Next time it's the ultimate Deviant deviation when we head into deepest space with the Skrulls. 

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The Eternals And The Dreaming Celestial!

With the advent of the direct-sales market in the 1980's, comic book companies were able to offer up limited series which came in the three, four, or sometimes twelve issue versions. These were remarkable because it allowed for some characters to get a peak at an audience without a full-blown commitment to a series which might need canceling after only a few issues of poor sales. Among the most famous of the limited series of course was Crisis on Infinite Earths for DC and for Marvel there was Secret Wars. But there was also at Marvel a twelve issue series for The Eternals. This one was one written by Peter B. Gillis and drawn by Sal Buscema with inks in the early issues by Al Gordon. But before the limited could kick off there was some necessary housecleaning concerning the Eternals. But it didn't really start there. 

In the sixth Iron Man Annual the spanking new Iron Man Rhodey Rhoades discovers the Eternals and the Deviants and finds the former enslaved by the latter due to pernicious mind mines which render the Eternals powerless. There is just one problem with this story, and that's there are not enough Eternals. They are rescued right enough, but only in the final pages where they clean up on the Deviants. Zuras, the leader of the Eternals has been murdered though and that will have consequences. 

Next the Eternals show up in a trio of Avengers issues by Roger Stern and Al Milgrom, in which for the first time Eros of Titan learns of his heritage and its connection to the Eternals and Inhumans of Earth. It all begins with a party thrown by Sersi (a common event in Eternals stories) and before you know it the Avengers are part of a scheme by the bizarre villain Maelstrom (who is part Deviant and part Inhuman) to gain power when the Eternals are within the Uni-Mind. The upshot of this story is that with the demise of Zuras, most of the Eternal population decide to leave the planet Earth and seek their fortunes among the stars. 

The Gillis-Buscema story picks up at this point and we find the remaining Eteranals are Ikarus, Thena, Makkari, Sprite, and Sersi alongside new Eternals Phastos, Korphyos, and Kingo. These seem to be Eternals who have done an especially effective job of blending into human society or have found singular purpose in the world. Thena seeks to become their leader and assume the power of Zuras and the others accept her but not with the respect she feels she deserves. Also on hand are the Deviant mutates Karkus and Reject (who is now called "Sweet Prince"). Also on hand is Margo Damian. 

The main villain of this story is High-Priest Ghaur a priest of the Deviant culture and despite some shenangians by Kro who eventually assumes the leadership role in Lemuria, it is Ghaur and his Deviant cultists who have a plan to give them immense power over not only Deviants, but also humans and Eternals, and perhaps even the Celestials themselves. 

We meet Phastos who is something of a recluse but is of great benefit to the Eternals in that he manufactures many of their primary weapons. In keeping with the Eternals conceit that they resemble in many ways the classic Greek Gods, Phastos of course evokes Hephaestus from that pantheon. 

Kingo on the other hand is a Samurai who just so happens to also be an actor in Samurai movies. He has taken "Sweet Prince" under his wing and is attempting to cool the ferocious mutate's temper and make him an even more effective warrior. 

Much of the story in the early episodes concerns itself with Thena and her troubles as leader of the Eternals. Two things prey on her mind, one is a perception that she is not respected by her peers as was Zuras and her heartfelt affection for the Deviant Kro. The latter might go to explain the former. 

On the other hand Ikaris is proving to be a warrior of a relentless nature pressing always for the few remaining Eternals to go on the offensive against perceived Deviant threats. When the Deviants breach the Pyramid of the Winds which had been guarded by the Polar Eternals for untold ages, Ikaris is convinced they are up to dastardly deeds and he would be right. Their plot concerns the "Dreaming Celestial" a member of the Celestials' Second Host, this renegade was put down by his peers and entombed beneath the Pyramid of the Winds. 

With Thena and Kro on the run from both the Deviants and the Eternals, as both are understood to be traitors to their kind, Ghaur gains access to the tools to revive the Dreaming Celestial and seemingly bend the mighty being to his will. 

My favorite single story in this entire run (with the debut issue a close second) is issue nine which showcases one of Sersi's wildly entertaining parties. Many familiar faces and costumes show up as this is essentially a raucous comedy issue. So well done by both Gillis and Buscema, it's a damn shame that this is their final issue in the series. 

With the ninth issue Walt Simonson takes over the writing and Keith Pollard steps into the penciling chair. All I can find out about the change is that seemingly Jim Shooter did not particularly like Gillis's scripts so I guess that moved him on. Why Sal Buscema left with him is unknown, at least to me. 

The story beings to wind up to its finale with the Eternals infiltrate the city of the Deviants in an effort to stop Ghaur's schemes. Thena and Kro as well as Margo Damien are in the city as well. 

Spoiler Alert: Sadly, this story sees fit to kill off Margo Damien, though the plot device is used to send an attack out on Ikaris. The death of Margo was unexpected and really didn't add up to much given how long she'd been in this storyline, from the very beginning in the original series. It left a sour tasted for certain. End of Spoiler Alert. 

Paul Ryan takes over the pencils in the finale with Ghaur having gotten the power of the Dreaming Celestial and seemingly having become him to some degree. How it all ends I'll leave out of this review, but I will note that weirdly the Eternals seems to fade from this final chapter and the newly organized West Coast Avengers handle a bit more of the fight that I'd have imagined. This is a series that begins with a great deal of energy and does a fine job of freshening the Eternals concept for the 80's Marvel Universe. It's a shame that Gillis and Buscema were not allowed to complete their work as I suspect the finale would've been a bit better. Still and all it's a rousing read for Eternals fans. 

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Deviant Deviations - The Lava Men!

The Lava Men were first revealed to the Marvel Universe readers in the pages of Journey Into Mystery #97 when he battles a lone Lava Man. I love the way that Jack Kirby and Don Heck rendered the Lava Man in this story, he's very distinctive and menacing. (I notice on the cover that Kirby has borrowed the old Alex Schomburg trick of having the hero and the villain presented much larger than the fleeing folks below.) This was of course at a time when Marvel was only just beginning to get a sense of each book participating in a larger universe, so the Lava Man was created without regard to any other subterranean race. 

The Lave Men show up as a race when they battle the Avengers in the fifth issue of that venerable run. Like the Moloids and the Tyrannoids the Lava Men were a variation of life created by the Deviants during their never ending experimentation with the genetic code imparted to them by the Celestials.  Spectacular stuff! 

More to come when we meet more disparate Deviants on Monday when the Gortokians show up. 

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Deviant Deviations - The Mole People!

As it turns out, thanks to the magic of Retro-Continuity the Deviants have been an important  part of the Marvel Universe fabric from the very beginning. In Fantastic Four #1 the Fab 4 confront the weird menace of the Mole Man and track the villain to his lair on "Monster Island". 

It turns out at least some of the denizens of Monster Island were Deviant Mutates and that Monster Island was in fact a portal of sorts to the underworld Deviant empire below the surface of the Earth. Of course Stan and Jack were not cognizant of this fact at the time, but later continuity mavens at the "House of Ideas" found this a nifty solution to explain the origin of these weird creatures. 

And then later when the Hulk battles the imperious Tyrannus in his underworld kingdom he is assisted by his own peculiar henchmen. It's in the fifth issue of the Hulk's short-lived original series. 

 

Eventually these little folk were dubbed the "Tyrannoids" to distinguish them from a similar population of small pale folk. All of these creatures were as turned out the product of Deviant genetic experimentation. 

The Mole Man gets his own little mob of little people in his return in Fantastic Four #22. His folk are commonly called "Moloids" to distinguish them from their counterparts in thrall to Tyrannus. 

More Deviants to come -- The Lava Men. 

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Dojo Classics - Death Of A Space God!

The saga of the Eternals comes to an end with a two-part tale which adds insight into the Celestials themselves. It seems that during the Second Host the Celestials battled among themselves. So much so that a weapon was brought to bare which not only defeated a Celestial, but destroyed him.

That information comes into the hands of Druig, one of the Polar Eternals and cousin to Ikaris. Druig wants power, specifically the power over the Celestials and to that end forces the Eternal scientiest Sigmar to reveal what he knows about this ancient killing. Turns out that the weapon has long been hidden by the Polar Eternals specifically and that Ikaris is the key to finding it.To that end, Druig captures his cousin and uses biological agents to extract the information which expresses itself as a brand on the forehead of Ikaris which points Druig to a Pyramid hidden in the frozen wastes of the north.

Druig goes to find the pyramid and the Celestial-killing weapon but is pursued by Ikaris and Sigmar (the latter quite unwillingly). At the same time a Celestial heads to the pyramid too. Ikaris finds and confronts Druig who has found the weapon, one designed for the hand of a Space God, and the two battle. Druig unleashes the power of the weapon but that proves to be his undoing as he is consumed in its power which then seems to spread uncontrollably. Ultimately the Celestial arrives and with a wave of his mighty hand absorbs the energy and ends the threat. Then just as inscrutably as he came the Celestial walks away, leaving Ikaris and Sigmar to ponder the power and mystery of the Space Gods.

And that's a wrap. With this issue the saga of the Eternals, at least as they are written and drawn by their creator Jack Kirby comes to an end. It's not the worst ending, we learn some of the secrets of Ikaris and his connection to the ancient weapon. And we see clearly that the Eternals, as mighty as they are, are creatures ruled by passions at least as complicated and conflicted as we mere humans.

While the Celestials have remained unknowns, powerful entities with frightening missions, we have learned over the course of the series that the Eternals, and by extension ourselves can be heroic or less so depending on the threat we face. We have learned that the myths we have lived by are based on even stranger facts, and that the world we know is far from the world as it is.

The Eternals is a series that on reflection is better than I remember, better than I thought it might be. But at the same time is a series that ultimately falls short of its potential, limited not by the imagination of its creator but by the rigors of the marketplace, where alas like so much of what Kirby imagined, it failed to find a toehold.

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Dojo Classics - Out Of The Crypt!

After Zuras dispatches the "Cosmic Hulk" the Eternals find themselves immediately embroiled in another battle, this time with "The Thing in the Big City Crypt". That "Thing" is an old Deviant it turns out, one named "Dromedan". Long ago he had been defeated by Zuras and was locked in a tomb beneath New York City with a giant helmet which stifled his ability to mentally control the will of others.

Dromedan proves to be a most worthy opponent battling Ikaris, Makkari, and Zuras to pretty much a stand still and threatening the subdue the will of vast populations on Earth when Sersi joins the fray. Her abilities turn the tide at last and Dromedan is finally destroyed when after Sersi has distracted him with multiple images of Ikaris, the Polar Eternal unleashes his powerful eye beams which seeminly disintegrate the ancient enemy once and for all.

Dromedan is an impressive looking enemy, but is dispatched with relative ease though admittedly it takes four Eternals to do the deed. What Dromedan does add to the narrative is an idea Kirby has played with much more thoroughly in other venues, and that's the idea that the power to subdue someone's will to your own is an awesome and frightening power. It seems in many ways to the core dread on Kirby's part. He explored the idea of course at length in the "Fourth World" with the Anti-Life Equation and to lesser degrees with villains like Dr.Doom, Loki, and as we see here Dromedan.

Here's a look at how the first Dromedan cover was developed.
More to come.

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Dojo Classics - Cosmic Hulk!

Now we come to one of the most confounding aspects of the The Eternals. Clearly Jack Kirby wanted the Eternals to occupy a separate universe from the larger Marvel Universe he himself largely constructed the foundations for. But there was clearly pressure from the editorial offices at Marvel, led presumably by the late great Archie Goodwin, to incorporate aspects of the MU into the Eternals. Kirby included SHIELD agents, though aside from a reference there's little to visually suggest that's what they are.

And he even included a weird moment when thanks to the Eternal power of illusion a human being suddenly has the head of old Blue Eyes himself the inimitable Benjamin Grimm, the Thing.

But the reference was vague, as if the Thing seen there was perhaps a fictional character in the Eternals universe. That's the same sense we get when, of all things, the Hulk guest stars for several issues. Now this is not the Hulk we know, this is not Bruce Banner, but rather a robot version of the Hulk created by two bright college students for a college prank. Their inspiration for the Hulk seems to have been the "Marvel" character and not once do you get the sense that the actual Hulk is something the humans are familiar with. So it is this robot Hulk who accidentally gets infused with ambient cosmic energy when Zuras unlocks the Uni-Mind which incorporated most if not all the Eternals themselves. Powered by the energy the robot Hulk becomes a raging menace who must be brought down by Ikais and Makkari and the rest of the Eternals in NYC.

The battle rages across the rooftops of the city, not unlike when Orion battled Kalibak in the last few issues of the New Gods. This time the struggle seems somewhat less significant though no less brutal. Ultimately after two full issues, the robot Hulk is drained of his cosmic might by Zuras and literally disappears when a new threat looms.

That though is not the last we see of the robot Hulk, who becomes a handy device to feature old Jadejaw's mug in several comics when continuity suggested it was unlikely. One of the most memorable turns was in an issue of Cloak and Dagger.

What the case might've been, Kirby was able to feature a guest star from the old Marvel Universe without actually doing it. I think I was somewhat frustrated at the time, but now I think it was a clever ruse on his part to meet the desires of his masters and yet still maintain the integrity of his story.

One note of possible irony is that according to the lore it was a Hulk poster produced for Marvelmania which was the final straw for Kirby before his departure for DC. He produced the poster, but it was not his work that was published, but that of Herb Trimpe who had done the work again and clearly was instructed to use Kirby's original as his source, if not template. Not getting credit for work he clearly was responsible for couldn't have left him feeling too happy.

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Dojo Classics - The Astronauts!

"The Astronauts" is one of the best Eternals stories and introduces one of the most fascinating characters. "The Forgotten One", an Eternal punished by Zuras for unnamed crimes has in Earth's past been a great hero. Later it will be revealed he was Gilgamesh, Hercules, and others.

When the Deviants send a flying bomb to the ship of the Celestials, Sprite, an always-young Eternal who inspired Shakespeare's Puck,  goes to the Forgotten One and enlists his aid. All the other Eternals are within the Uni-Mind, so with Sprite's help the newly clothed hero flies to intercept the kamikazi mission by the depraved Deviants. Also flying to the great ship is a space shuttle piloted by two American astronauts.

The One-Above-All, the hidden leader of the Celestials detects the threat and solves the problem with typical Celestial cleverness by shifting the crews of the three vessels. The American end up on the Eteranal ship which they are able to fly safely to Earth. The Deviants end up on the American shuttle which they crash, thus fulfilling their death wish. And the Forgotten One ends up on the Deviant bomb-ship which he disables before being transported to the great Celestial ship itself. The story ends with the hidden Celestial taking an interest in the nameless Eternal hero.

The matter-of-fact manner in which the Celestials deal with the puny threats they face from the races of Earth only reinforces their superior natures, their godlike aptitudes. They calmly and without seeming malice merely eliminate the threats with the most basic adjustments.

The Forgotten One is a great character who alas will get no more play in the relatively short run of the series.

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Dojo Classics - The Rejects!

The Eternals King-Size Annual one and only is an odd affair. It concerns itself with the Deviants Reject and Karkus who were taken under the care of Thena on her visit to Lemuria. The pair offer up an interesting contrast which underscores one of Kirby's themes in the story. In fact they function like adopted brothers, of distinctly different natures and it's perhaps appropriate that Thena, the one Eternal who fraternized with a Deviant, specifically Kro, would become their foster parent.

Reject is exceedingly handsome, often mistaken for an Eternal, but he is possessed of a violent nature which practically demands war. In contrast Karkus who as a Deviant Mutate seems most monstrous indeed by traditional measures demonstrates a poet's spirit and seems a most gentle soul, though one most capable of fighting.

These two find themselves cooling their heels on Earth while Thena attends to matters of an Eternal nature. Meanwhile warriors and creatures from the past are turning up and raising a ruckus throughout the city. A Deviant scientist is behind it and he does himself in when he conjures up Tutinax, a legendary Deviant warrior who give Reject and Karkus all they can handle. Thena returns in time to help out.

This story titled "The Time Killers" is perhaps a play on words as Kirby clearly seems for this one to contribute little to the broader unfolding saga in the main comic. I suspect Kirby was given the assignment of an annual and filled with a story which is entertaining, but properly isolated for those who didn't follow him over to the alternate title.

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