Tag: The Eternals

Kirby Kurtain Kall

Though August is over and it’s now Sept. 1st, I have an estab­lished tra­di­tion of tak­ing all my Kir­by Trib­ute Month images and putting them togeth­er into one big poster image. This year is no different.

Though I drew them all and know each image well by this point, I get a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive when I com­bine them after the fact like this, apprais­ing the work I did from an over­all view.

This is now the fourth year that I’ve done Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how much more detailed and involved these small illus­tra­tions have become each year. That’s noth­ing to do with the prompts them­selves (though those can cre­ate their own chal­lenges). It’s more to do with feel­ing the need to move beyond just straight por­traits, to come up with some­thing that feels like there’s a sto­ry to it.

That’s about all there is to say. I always learn some­thing when I do these, so hope­ful­ly you’ve enjoyed this year’s journey.

“…The Perfection of Thena–!”

This is now Day 29 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. Not too many more to go! Today’s prompt is Thena of the Eternals.

I talked about The Eter­nals yes­ter­day in more detail. It was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. While on the sur­face it might have looked slight­ly sim­i­lar to some of what Jack had done with the New Gods in his Fourth World saga at DC, the inspi­ra­tion for this one came from a dif­fer­ent place.

Thena first shows up in The Eter­nals #5. She’s the daugh­ter of the Prime Eter­nal, Zuras. Thena is no shrink­ing vio­let. She has a strong per­son­al­i­ty, and a direct approach to prob­lems. When she finds out in her first appear­ance that the Deviants have resur­faced and are mak­ing trou­ble among the humans, her imme­di­ate response is, “…The Deviants must be taught to respect Eter­nals! You know that I intend to do the teach­ing!!” With that, she grabs the mes­sen­ger, Makar­ri, by the arm and strides quick­ly out of Zuras’ pres­ence to go take care of business.

But Thena also has a soft­er side. Includ­ed in my image here is Kro, the Deviant gen­er­al, with whom she once had a rela­tion­ship. Jack was appar­ent­ly ref­er­enc­ing the sto­ry of Perse­phone, daugh­ter of Zeus, who went down into the under­world. In The Eter­nals, Kro hopes to rekin­dle their old rela­tion­ship, yet there’s a lot between them that’s seem­ing­ly insurmountable.

As I said yes­ter­day, if you’ve only seen the MCU ver­sion, you don’t know the Eter­nals. You should read the com­ic, if you get the chance. Jack told some real­ly great sto­ries dur­ing his run.

That’s Thena. If you’re inter­est­ed, feel free to check in tomor­row to see who’s next.

“Spelled S‑E-R-S‑I, Thank You!”

This is now Day 28 of this year’s Jack Kir­by trib­ute Month, curat­ed by Howard Simp­son. Today’s prompt is Ser­si, of The Eter­nals.

The Eter­nals was one of the new titles Jack came up with when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. The inspi­ra­tion for this one seemed root­ed in the ear­li­er best-sell­ing book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, by Erich Von Däniken. The book the­o­rized all kinds of direct influ­ence on our ancient human cul­tures from alien vis­i­tors to our plan­et cen­turies ago. It was def­i­nite­ly ripe mate­r­i­al to inspire the imag­i­na­tion of a sto­ry­teller like Jack Kirby.

The Eter­nals in the com­ic were actu­al­ly just a more devel­oped and longer-lived race than humans, and had often been mis­tak­en for gods by ancient man because of their advanced sci­ences and amaz­ing abilities.

We first meet Ser­si in The Eter­nals #3. In #4, she tells about being vis­it­ed by Ulysses and his crew, being offend­ed by their lack of man­ners and turn­ing them into pigs. Mean­ing she was the Circe of legend.

Ser­si is a fun char­ac­ter. She’s strong (like a lot of Kir­by’s women), has a sense of humor, but does­n’t take any non­sense off of any­one. I inked a draw­ing of Ser­si by Kir­by awhile back, which you can see here.

If your only aware­ness of The Eter­nals is via the MCU film of that name, you are seri­ous­ly miss­ing out. Any resem­blance between the com­ic and that film is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. That’s all I’ll say about that, because I pre­fer to try to keep things as pos­i­tive as I can here. I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing Jack­’s Eter­nals, if you get the chance. There are some sto­ries he did there that I believe are just as good as any­thing else Jack ever did!

Hope you like my Ser­si. Tune in again tomor­row to see who’s up next, if you like.

The Fourth Host

This is Day 27 of the month-long online Jack Kir­by Trib­ute, suggest/sponsored by Howard Simp­son. If you’d like to see what oth­er cre­ators might be doing, you can use the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

The prompt for today sim­ply reads “The Celes­tials.” These char­ac­ters come from Jack Kir­by’s The Eter­nals book, one of the new titles he cre­at­ed when he returned to Mar­vel in the mid-’70s. As men­tioned in oth­er posts, it appears to me that at this point in his career, Jack just want­ed to have his own cor­ner where he could be left alone to do his own thing, and to let oth­ers do their own thing, no one get­ting in any­one’s way.

The Eter­nals seemed to be Jack tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Erich Von Däniken book, Char­i­ots of the Gods?, which the­o­rized vis­its by alien astro­nauts to our world in ancient times, shap­ing and influ­enc­ing the growth of our cul­ture. It was fuel for Kir­by to tell an epic sto­ry about three groups of human­i­ty: the Eter­nals (whom many myths are built around), nor­mal mankind, and the Deviants. Watch­ing and stand­ing in judg­ment over all are the Celes­tials, and the begin­ning of the book saw their return to Earth as the Fourth Host.

Kir­by’s designs for the Celes­tials were some of the most imag­i­na­tive char­ac­ter visu­als he’d ever come up with. Beings almost beyond com­pre­hen­sion, they did­n’t even have what you would be able to call faces.

It was­n’t pos­si­ble to draw all the Celes­tials here in this space. There are just way too many of them. So I opt­ed to draw the three I found the most visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. Arishem the Judge is front and cen­ter. On the left is Nez­zar the Cal­cu­la­tor, and on the right is Eson the Searcher.

Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to tune in again tomorrow!