WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Eternals, in theaters now.

Today, we look at the major influence that Earth X had on the new hit Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Eternals.

This is a feature called "Written in the Book." It is basically the reverse of another feature of mine called "Follow the Path," where I spotlight changes made to comic book characters that are based on outside media, as well as characters who entirely came from outside media. Nowadays, there are so many comic book films and TV series out there that we can spotlight examples of TV and film adapting specific and less famous comic book stories to other media (so no "Spider-Man lifts up debris" or stuff like that).

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THE CELESTIAL TWIST IN ETERNALS

Last week, I wrote about the very nature of Celestials and major twists in regards to a more recent Marvel Comics twist that was even DARKER than the one in Eternals, but a number of readers wanted me to write about an earlier comic book that was pretty much THE very twist in Eternals. At the time, I had avoided doing so because I thought that somebody else at CBR had written an article on that topic and I didn't want to double up on it, but I see now that I was mistaken and the other article in question was actually about some unrelated speculation so, well, here we go!

Once again, like week, with the spoiler warning out of the way, let's take a look at what twist we're discussing in Eternals the movie. The big twist is the revelation that the Eternals only exist to cull the Deviants from planets that have a "Celestial egg" in them. The Deviants started preying on the developing life on the planets and the way that the Celestials work is that each egg needs X amount of sentient life to exist to draw energy from that life so they can, in effect, hatch. The Deviants kept planets from having enough life on them, so the Eternals were created by the Celestials to go to these planets, defeat the Deviants and then just chill until the planet (now unencumbered by the Deviants) begin to prosper and expand their population until there is enough sentient life for the Celestial to emerge, destroying the planet, but allowing this new Celestial to then create many OTHER planets. The Eternals would survive the planet's destruction alongside the Celestial and then have their minds wiped and go off and do this on a whole other planet. The head Celestial, Arishem, maintains that this is still a glorious purpose for the Eternals, since these newly born Celestials create much more life than is ever destroyed in the planet that "births" them...

In Eternals, however, the Eternals, now knowing their real mission, decide to break free from it to save the planet Earth (after all, this is a planet that was able to reverse the "Snap," surely this planet stands out in some way) and in the end, they succeed in killing the Eternal within the planet Earth before it emerged.

Eternals Tiamut Celestial

The head Celestial, though, then kidnaps three of the Eternals and forces them to explain why Earth was worth the life of a Celestial. That, though, is a story for a different movie.

So, what was the Marvel comic that predicted all of this over two decades ago?

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WHAT WAS EARTH X'S CELESTIAL TWIST?

In 1999, Marvel released Earth X by the writing team of Jim Krueger and Alex Ross (Ross also did the covers and designed the characters) and artists John Paul Leon, Bill Reinhold and Melissa Edwards), where Krueger took some concept drawings for an alternate future for some Marvel characters and came up with a through line for them all that led to the series. And that through line was the Celestials.

Krueger was recently interviewed by Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool and Krueger explained wow he came up with the same idea of having the Earth house a Celestial Egg, "Earth X was one of the few moments in my life when an idea came fully formed. I had become a father the year before. The ideas and concepts and even the violence of birth, embryos, the placenta, a developed immune system in the form of germ-fighters, and more were still fresh in my mind. So the Celestial Egg and mankind being manipulated into mutated germ fighters to protect the world, the idea of vibranium as a sort of placenta sent to Earth to nurture the growing Celestial and more, all came from me. But to be fair, I was inspired by every one of Alex's images, and we both bonded even years before from all of Kirby's 60s and especially 70s Marvel Work… Kirby 70s Marvel includes the Eternals (which did offer the first scenes of early mankind being mutated into both Eternals and Deviants, but never really offered a reason why), Machine Man (the narrator of Earth X), Devil Dinosaur (who probably fought both the Eternals and the Deviants in a story that has not been told), and Black Panther (the Wakanda and Vibranium element of the story). Anyhow, I remember calling Alex one night and telling him my thoughts on why all of mankind was mutated, and the stages throughout Marvel lore that would have made in necessary), what the Watcher was really watching for (as a sort of Midwife on the moon for the Celestial's birth), that Earth was an egg and the Celestial was growing inside, and how this is how they always reproduced and more."

In a very clever twist, Krueger revealed that Galactus specifically ate worlds with Celestial Eggs in them...

So, yeah, the MCU film pretty much just adopted Krueger and Ross' Celestial Egg story from Earth X outright (they do credit them in the film, of course).

Thanks to Rich Johnston and Jim Krueger for the fascinating information. Be sure to read the whole interview!

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