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selenakThe Eternals were created by Jack Kirby several decades ago, but I haven't read any of their appearances; Gaiman's miniseries, due to its premise, makes it possible to follow events without background knowledge, considering it starts out with most of the main characters having amnesia.
All the same, I can make an educated guess which part of the mythology he added/retconned/revamped. Because as the story unfolds, we get two versions of the whole origin story of the Eternals. The first one, given to Mark Curry (aka amnesiac Eternal Makkari) by Ikaris, the only one of the Eternals who already has his memories when the story starts, seems to be the one inherited: the Eternals (superhumans, only more so, good looking) were created by the Celestials (alien gods) to look out for humanity and battled the Deviants (fast breeding horrible looking monsters). The second story, given to Mark by one of the Deviants, is significantly different, and at the same time a meta critique: the Deviants were in fact created by the Celestials to serve as their food, both body and soul (hence the superfast breeding). According to the tale as told by Ikaris, the Celestials returned to stop the Deviants take over the Earth; according to the tale as told by the Deviants - or Changing People, as they call themselves - the Celestials returned to feast, and were only stopped by the Celestial who was subsequently imprisoned and brought to sleep, and upon whose awakening the overall plot centers.
Said Dreaming Celestial comes across as a Luciferian figure in the William Blake sense - it remains ambiguous whether he turned against the others for self serving reasons or whether he did indeed champion the cause of the Deviants - but overall, one tends to assume the later. More about him in a moment.
The general amnesia - the Eternals believing themselves to be human, and not being aware of their powers until various events take place - turns out to have been caused by one of them, and this is where I had distinct flashbacks to the character Kenny in Highlander: The Series, and to my one story dealing with him, because Sprite in The Eternals expresses pretty much the same opinion on Peter Pan I let Kenny express. Sprite, after spending millennia locked in an eleven years old form, has accessed the power of the Dreaming Celestial via various methods to affect a shift in the universe - to become mortal and grow up, while simultanously dealing out forgetfullness to all the other Eternals.
Peter Pan: to me, a horror story if you think it through. And Gaiman does. Any being forced to remain eleven for eternity is bound to become bitter and seriously twisted, and Sprite is. Not that he doesn't have competition in the twisted department. At first glance, two of the Deviants seem to be a repetition of the murderous double act in Neverwhere, but no, the true sadist is actually one of the Eternals, Druig, who counts as Gaiman's most chilling characters. The scene where he - after regaining his memories and powers - takes over power in Vorozheika, making some humans kill others just because he can and then plans ahead fun times of persecution for a random minority of choice (he considers gypsies, homosexuals or Slavs) - is one of the most disturbing I've read. The fact that Duras, the leader of the Eternals, promises Druig not to interfere in his country in exchange for his help later on - renders the whole "guardians of humanity" claim of the Eternals somewhat questionable.
The three Eternals who get the most writerly attention are Makkari/Mark Curry, Sersi and Thena. Of these, Thena - very obviously derived from the Greek goddess Athena as far as archetypes go - changes least upon returning to her old self; Sersi regains her powers but not her memories and prefers her current self; and Mark/Makkari does regain his old self (and then some), but mourns for the human he has been. Makkari-as-Mark is somewhat reminiscent of Shadow in American Gods or Matthew in Neverwhere - a seeming Everyman and observer who changes into a crucial figure in the course of his quest. Speaking of American Gods, and adding Sandman, Neil Gaiman has this - to me rather endearing - tendency to subvert expectations of big battle scenarios into non-fighting, peaceful solutions. In Sandman, Dream visits Hell during Seasons of Mist, expecting a big battle with Lucifer because of earlier events, and when he arrives, Lucifer has closed the place down, hands over the key and does what Morpheus himself never can - he quits his job. In American Gods, Shadow stops the big apocalyptic battle between the old and new gods which has been prepared throughout the novel by telling them what he himself has finally realized - that the whole conflict was artificially engineered, that they were conned. In The Eternals, you have two possible grand slaughter scenarios - the awakening Celestial, and later the Deviants arriving at the Eternals' doorstep - and both are avoided. The Celestial, who at first speaks lines he stole and slightly paraphrased from the Arabian Nights ("when they cast me into darkness I swore that whoever freed me would be given life eternal, given star systems to rule (...) another thousand years passed, and I swore then that whoever woke me and freed me would not be destroyed when I terminated this part of the universe, and four hundred thousand years passed, and I swore that whoever freed me would perish first and that would be my only gift"), is that rarety in the genre, a divine being capable of reason. He mindmelds with Makkari, talks things through observes, and is inappropriately amused by the human superhero showing up, Iron Man, which causes him to decide to give humanity another chance while watching them via Makkari. Later, when the Devians arrive and the other Eternals are all set for a bloody battle, Makkari confounds everyone by offering the leader of the Deviants his head, which convinces said leader that he is indeed connected to the Dreaming Celestial and to call it quits.
Sidenote: The Eternals is set in the standard Marvelverse, concurrently to Civil War. Thena, before regaining her memories, works as a weapon designer for Stark Industries, and Sersi is recognized as a former Avenger (though she has no memories of it) by Tony Stark/Iron Man. Considering that the various Civil War titles vary wildly between presenting the whole thing as a conflict where both sides have a point on the one hand (usually when Bendis is writing) and a thinly veiled All-we-hate-about-the-Bush-administration good freedom fighters versus evil fascists conflict on the other (later Millar and the later Spider-man titles by JMS) , it's interesting how Gaiman uses the background. You do have Orwellian overtones with the non-stop pro registration advertisment on tv, but Mr. Registration himself, Tony Stark/Iron Man is not presented as a villain or crazy fanatic, on the contrary; he does his usual superhero thing by saving the not yet remembering Thena and other hostages at one point, makes his register-and-return-to-the-Avengers pitch to Sersi via inviting her to dinner instead of going for her throat and gives her time when she says no, and gets one of the best lines (which is a nice call back to a certain American election campaign) when Duras, the leader of the Eternals, tells him "We were your gods": "Ive met a few gods in my time. You, sir, are no god." As mentioned before, he also amuses the Celestial enough to get him interested in the human race again. And Gaiman gives a nod to one of Stark's defining characteristics (he is a recovering alcoholic) when letting him decline wine during the dinner with Sersi in a quiet moment.
Sersi, the one Eternal who retains her "human" personality till the end, comes across as a female trickster archetype initially, in the way she uses her charm, and then turns out to be the most "human" of the Eternals in another sense than just her refusal to give up that persona: she's the one who pays attention to the various victims en route which the others sometimes ignore, be it her human friend, Thena's child, or comatose Mark (in the process of becoming Makkari again). Usually amnesia stories don't pay much attention to the loss of the intermittent self once the memories are regained; through Sersi, Gaiman makes the reader mourn for "Mark" as she realizes Makkari is really a different person, and one really does not want her to become as distant and superior as the other Eternals but remain her flawed "human" self. Which makes it a relief that she does.
There are some obvious open plotthreads at the end - Sersi might or might not join the human superheroes, the awakening of the Celestial has triggered the ominous Horde which supposedly intends to wipe out Earth once it arrives, and there's the question of the Celestial himself and what judgement he'll come to, plus what effect his mental union with Makkari will have on the later (if the Deviant's prophecy is to be believed, Makkari's future is dire indeed), but overall, I really enjoyed this miniseries and hope there will be a follow-up.
ETA: That Star Trek Test!
All the same, I can make an educated guess which part of the mythology he added/retconned/revamped. Because as the story unfolds, we get two versions of the whole origin story of the Eternals. The first one, given to Mark Curry (aka amnesiac Eternal Makkari) by Ikaris, the only one of the Eternals who already has his memories when the story starts, seems to be the one inherited: the Eternals (superhumans, only more so, good looking) were created by the Celestials (alien gods) to look out for humanity and battled the Deviants (fast breeding horrible looking monsters). The second story, given to Mark by one of the Deviants, is significantly different, and at the same time a meta critique: the Deviants were in fact created by the Celestials to serve as their food, both body and soul (hence the superfast breeding). According to the tale as told by Ikaris, the Celestials returned to stop the Deviants take over the Earth; according to the tale as told by the Deviants - or Changing People, as they call themselves - the Celestials returned to feast, and were only stopped by the Celestial who was subsequently imprisoned and brought to sleep, and upon whose awakening the overall plot centers.
Said Dreaming Celestial comes across as a Luciferian figure in the William Blake sense - it remains ambiguous whether he turned against the others for self serving reasons or whether he did indeed champion the cause of the Deviants - but overall, one tends to assume the later. More about him in a moment.
The general amnesia - the Eternals believing themselves to be human, and not being aware of their powers until various events take place - turns out to have been caused by one of them, and this is where I had distinct flashbacks to the character Kenny in Highlander: The Series, and to my one story dealing with him, because Sprite in The Eternals expresses pretty much the same opinion on Peter Pan I let Kenny express. Sprite, after spending millennia locked in an eleven years old form, has accessed the power of the Dreaming Celestial via various methods to affect a shift in the universe - to become mortal and grow up, while simultanously dealing out forgetfullness to all the other Eternals.
Peter Pan: to me, a horror story if you think it through. And Gaiman does. Any being forced to remain eleven for eternity is bound to become bitter and seriously twisted, and Sprite is. Not that he doesn't have competition in the twisted department. At first glance, two of the Deviants seem to be a repetition of the murderous double act in Neverwhere, but no, the true sadist is actually one of the Eternals, Druig, who counts as Gaiman's most chilling characters. The scene where he - after regaining his memories and powers - takes over power in Vorozheika, making some humans kill others just because he can and then plans ahead fun times of persecution for a random minority of choice (he considers gypsies, homosexuals or Slavs) - is one of the most disturbing I've read. The fact that Duras, the leader of the Eternals, promises Druig not to interfere in his country in exchange for his help later on - renders the whole "guardians of humanity" claim of the Eternals somewhat questionable.
The three Eternals who get the most writerly attention are Makkari/Mark Curry, Sersi and Thena. Of these, Thena - very obviously derived from the Greek goddess Athena as far as archetypes go - changes least upon returning to her old self; Sersi regains her powers but not her memories and prefers her current self; and Mark/Makkari does regain his old self (and then some), but mourns for the human he has been. Makkari-as-Mark is somewhat reminiscent of Shadow in American Gods or Matthew in Neverwhere - a seeming Everyman and observer who changes into a crucial figure in the course of his quest. Speaking of American Gods, and adding Sandman, Neil Gaiman has this - to me rather endearing - tendency to subvert expectations of big battle scenarios into non-fighting, peaceful solutions. In Sandman, Dream visits Hell during Seasons of Mist, expecting a big battle with Lucifer because of earlier events, and when he arrives, Lucifer has closed the place down, hands over the key and does what Morpheus himself never can - he quits his job. In American Gods, Shadow stops the big apocalyptic battle between the old and new gods which has been prepared throughout the novel by telling them what he himself has finally realized - that the whole conflict was artificially engineered, that they were conned. In The Eternals, you have two possible grand slaughter scenarios - the awakening Celestial, and later the Deviants arriving at the Eternals' doorstep - and both are avoided. The Celestial, who at first speaks lines he stole and slightly paraphrased from the Arabian Nights ("when they cast me into darkness I swore that whoever freed me would be given life eternal, given star systems to rule (...) another thousand years passed, and I swore then that whoever woke me and freed me would not be destroyed when I terminated this part of the universe, and four hundred thousand years passed, and I swore that whoever freed me would perish first and that would be my only gift"), is that rarety in the genre, a divine being capable of reason. He mindmelds with Makkari, talks things through observes, and is inappropriately amused by the human superhero showing up, Iron Man, which causes him to decide to give humanity another chance while watching them via Makkari. Later, when the Devians arrive and the other Eternals are all set for a bloody battle, Makkari confounds everyone by offering the leader of the Deviants his head, which convinces said leader that he is indeed connected to the Dreaming Celestial and to call it quits.
Sidenote: The Eternals is set in the standard Marvelverse, concurrently to Civil War. Thena, before regaining her memories, works as a weapon designer for Stark Industries, and Sersi is recognized as a former Avenger (though she has no memories of it) by Tony Stark/Iron Man. Considering that the various Civil War titles vary wildly between presenting the whole thing as a conflict where both sides have a point on the one hand (usually when Bendis is writing) and a thinly veiled All-we-hate-about-the-Bush-administration good freedom fighters versus evil fascists conflict on the other (later Millar and the later Spider-man titles by JMS) , it's interesting how Gaiman uses the background. You do have Orwellian overtones with the non-stop pro registration advertisment on tv, but Mr. Registration himself, Tony Stark/Iron Man is not presented as a villain or crazy fanatic, on the contrary; he does his usual superhero thing by saving the not yet remembering Thena and other hostages at one point, makes his register-and-return-to-the-Avengers pitch to Sersi via inviting her to dinner instead of going for her throat and gives her time when she says no, and gets one of the best lines (which is a nice call back to a certain American election campaign) when Duras, the leader of the Eternals, tells him "We were your gods": "Ive met a few gods in my time. You, sir, are no god." As mentioned before, he also amuses the Celestial enough to get him interested in the human race again. And Gaiman gives a nod to one of Stark's defining characteristics (he is a recovering alcoholic) when letting him decline wine during the dinner with Sersi in a quiet moment.
Sersi, the one Eternal who retains her "human" personality till the end, comes across as a female trickster archetype initially, in the way she uses her charm, and then turns out to be the most "human" of the Eternals in another sense than just her refusal to give up that persona: she's the one who pays attention to the various victims en route which the others sometimes ignore, be it her human friend, Thena's child, or comatose Mark (in the process of becoming Makkari again). Usually amnesia stories don't pay much attention to the loss of the intermittent self once the memories are regained; through Sersi, Gaiman makes the reader mourn for "Mark" as she realizes Makkari is really a different person, and one really does not want her to become as distant and superior as the other Eternals but remain her flawed "human" self. Which makes it a relief that she does.
There are some obvious open plotthreads at the end - Sersi might or might not join the human superheroes, the awakening of the Celestial has triggered the ominous Horde which supposedly intends to wipe out Earth once it arrives, and there's the question of the Celestial himself and what judgement he'll come to, plus what effect his mental union with Makkari will have on the later (if the Deviant's prophecy is to be believed, Makkari's future is dire indeed), but overall, I really enjoyed this miniseries and hope there will be a follow-up.
ETA: That Star Trek Test!
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I out-rank you. ;)
Date: 2007-04-14 11:51 pm (UTC)Yes, Ma'am!
Date: 2007-04-15 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-15 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-15 04:40 am (UTC)Great Heroes icon!
The Eternals
Date: 2008-02-23 03:18 pm (UTC)FYI, I was googling this and found out that an Eternals ongoing series (http://www.marvel.com/news/comicstories.516.Comic-Con_2007~colon~_Knaufs_to_Pen_Eternals) was announced at Comicon last year. I haven't run across any other news about it so I don't know if that's still on, but it's supposed to be written by Charles & Daniel Knauf.
Re: The Eternals
Date: 2008-02-23 05:39 pm (UTC)An Eternals series by the Knaufs sounds like a good idea, so hopefully it's still on. Presumably there'd be more Tony cameos. Incidentally, what do you think he made of Makkari's "the Celestial thinks you're amusing and so the human race deserves another shot"?
Re: The Eternals
Date: 2008-02-23 05:43 pm (UTC)No, he definitely says "it" not "she." I have no idea why I automatically read it that way. . .Hmm. And yes, nice twist. I had not picked up the connection to a recurrent theme in Gaiman's work of deflecting the big fight, but it's definitely there. And, well, amusing that Tony is the source of it.
Re: The Eternals
Date: 2008-02-23 06:54 pm (UTC)Because obviously you have liberated yourself of the patriarchal default assumption of gender, and I have not!
I had not picked up the connection to a recurrent theme in Gaiman's work of deflecting the big fight, but it's definitely there. And, well, amusing that Tony is the source of it.
Especially given that it happens simultanously with Civil War. So his schedule was basically:
8:00: Meeting with Reed Richards about Negative Zone.
9:00: Brooding over Steve.
10:00 Fight with Peter.
11:00 Trip to San Francisco to fight Uberbeing that looks like gigantic robot...