Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

With the news out there now that Brian Tyree Henry's Phastos will be the openly gay superhero in Marvel's upcoming Eternals movie, I thought it made sense to answer the question that likely popped into a lot of people's heads when hearing this news, "Wait, who's Phastos?" He's not one of the original Jack Kirby members of the Eternals, so he is not as well known as the other Eternals, but he has an interesting history and is really a fascinating character.

Okay, as I noted, Phastos was not part of Kirby's initial Eternals series. In the 1980s, though, a good chunk of the Eternals headed into outer space. The 1985 Peter B. Gillis and Sal Buscema Eternals maxi-series dealt with the remaining Eternals. In the first issue (inks by Al Gordon), we see Thena (the new leader of the Eternals after the apparent death of her father, Zuras) call together the Eternals and we see Phastos for the first time, just hanging out with the others...

Phastos gets the spotlight for the first time in the third issue of the book...

We learn that he is basically the Eternal in charge of the technology of the group, but he is also a pacifist, which is an interesting twist...

This comes into play in the next issue, where he refuses to join the new war with the Deviants. He really comes off well here, honestly...

But because he was not part of the war, he didn't have much of a role in the rest of the series.

However, when the dust settled from the war, he was back to serving the rest of his fellow Eternals, as shown in Avengers #308 (by John Byrne, Paul Ryan and Tom Palmer)...

During the brief period where the Eternals decided to become a superhero team (in the New Eternals: Apocalypse Now graphic novel by Mike Higgins, Karl Bollers, Joe Bennett and Scott Hanna), which I will talk about in the future because it's so bonkers, Phastos takes on the name Ceasefire...

Okay, fast forward to the 2000s when Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. re-invented the Eternals by having the Eternal Sprite trap all of the Eternals in human lives. They have to break from their human identities to become Eternals again. The main Kirby Eternals starred in the first series but when they got an (ostensibly) ongoing series following that series, by The Knaufs and Daniel Acuna, Ikaris and Thena visit Phastos in his human identity and try to bring him out of it gently...

"Philip" is haunted by his dreams, which are the memories of Phastos...

And Athena and Ikaris aren't about to let him forget his place with the Eternals...

Finally, in the sixth issue, Ikaris just cuts to the chase and Phastos is back...

It's kind of weird that they lightened his skin in his re-design, right?

In Thor: The Deviant Saga (by Robert Rodi, Stephen Segovia and a few different inkers), Phastos is still at Olympia (despite most other Eternals having left Earth), helping to fix stuff...

We see him lamenting the life that he gave up when he returned to the Eternals (I would imagine that we'll be seeing some version of this life in the Eternals movie, just with a husband instead of a wife)...

The series involves the Deviants attacking a mostly abandoned Olympia to get access to Eternals technology. In the end, Phastos just agrees to go with them...

At the end of the series, the other Eternals returned to Earth. Presumably, Phastos later hooked back up with them.

In a 2011 X-Men storyline, the X-Men are at odds with an ancient adversary known as the Evolutionaries. In X-Men #13 (by Chris Yost, Paco Medina and Juan Vlasco), we see that Phastos felt pity on the human race and transformed some neo-humans (basically apes) into the Evolutionaries, with the intent of protecting whoever the neo-humans evolved into.

Phastos didn't realize that there would be MUTANTS, though, and so the Evolutionaries felt that mutants who were who they had to protect, but their "protection" was essentially tyrannical.

The Evolutionaries returned as a foe in Yost's New Warriors series with artist Marcus To, and we get to see Phastos' reaction to seeing what happened to his project that he meant only to help people...

The returned Zuras had a plan to "protect" humanity through the Evolutionaries by basically wiping them out ahead of another Celestial visit, but the New Warriors and the other Eternals object...

So that is who Phastos is. He's a pretty darn good character for a recent addition to the Eternals mythos.

If anyone has any interesting comic book related story that you'd like to see me feature in a future Knowledge Waits, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!