Today, we look to see how Marvel dealt with their ORIGINAL Eternals!
This is "The Book of Knowledge," a feature where I spotlight instances where notable revelations that affect comic book continuity were first made in texts outside of comic book stories themselves. In other words, times when stuff like the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe either introduced or resolved changes to continuity.
Recently, I wrote about how it was a back-up story in an issue of What If...?, of all places, that revealed that Thanos and the other Titans were actually related to the Eternals, with Thanos' father being an Eternal who split from the rest of the group to go found his own civilization on Titan. In that piece, I noted that Thanos obviously could not have originally been intended to be connected to the Eternals, because Thanos was introduced in 1973 while the Eternals did not debut until 1975. Longtime reader Mik B., though, wrote in to note that Marvel actually had an EARLIER Eternals before the Jack Kirby version. As you might imagine, it was a long, strange journey (mostly in the pages of various Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe) to try to make heads or tails out of what really just amounted to a naming coincidence.
THE "ETERNALS" MAKE THEIR COMIC BOOK DEBUT
In 1971, Stan Lee was about to take his first break from the Fantastic Four (Jack Kirby having left the series about a half of a year earlier) when he came to Fantastic Four #113, with art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, which introduced a new villain so powerful that Watcher was even scared of him...
In the following issue (inked by Frank Giacoia instead of Sinnott), we see that the Over-Mind is doing all of this for the Eternals, but it does not explain who (or what) the Eternals are...
Five will get you ten that Stan Lee didn't even necessarily know who (or what) the Eternals were when he first wrote Fantastic Four #114, but #115 (with Sinnott back on inks and Archie Goodwin joining the book as the new scripter) is literally titled "The Secret of the Eternals," so Lee had to come up with something quickly...
As it turns out, the Eternals were, you know, eternal beings who evolved to the point where they would be able to destroy worlds with their mighty weapons...
They had gotten so powerful that they began to turn on each other, with one of the Eternals, Grom, becoming the most powerful member of the Eternals when they turned on each other. Later, after the Eternals were conquered by another alien race (as they had pushed their conquering ways a bridge too far), the Eternals then converted their whole population into energy and poured it into Grom, who now became the Over-Mind and his duty was to avenge the Eternals by conquering the universe, starting, apparently, with planet Earth.
Well, in the next issue (with Goodwin stepping in as the main writer), the Stranger is pulled into the battle against the Over-Mind and he took the Over-Mind out of the picture and that was it for the Over-Mind and the Eternals for many years.
THE ETERNALS BECOME THE ETERNIANS
Four years later, Jack Kirby introduced HIS Eternals to Marvel Comics. Kirby's Eternals are powerful beings that were experimented on by the Celestials, near-omnipotent almost space gods...
Kirby's Eternals were designed to be on their own distinctive version of Earth, not part of the Marvel Universe. Once the series ended and Kirby stopped working for Marvel again, Roy Thomas integrated the Eternals into the Marvel Universe in the pages of Thor. So now, though, there were two different groups known as the Eternals.
When the Over-Mind was brought back in Defenders #112 (by J.M. DeMatteis, Don Perlin and Mike Gustovich), where the Over-Mind had traveled to the world of the Squadron Supreme to conquer that universe instead, there is a caption noting that Over-Mind's Eternals are different than the Eternals who had just recently shown up in Thor...
The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe then revealed in Over-Mind's entry that his people were now the ETERNIANS, to differentiate them from the Eternals...
The weird thing, though, is that Mark Gruenwald, the guy behind the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, later used the Over-Mind in a storyline in Quasar #15 (by Gruenwald, Mike Manley and Dan Panosian) and in that story, the Eternals are no longer called the Eternians, but are once again called the Eternals, only specifically the Eternals of Eyung....
THE REAL ETERNALS ARE TIED TO THESE ETERNALS
Many yeas pass, and the Over-Mind's involvement in the Marvel Universe becomes more and more minor, but he still merited an entry in the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z in 2006, and now, the background of the Over-Mind got a whoooole overhaul.
Now it was revealed that the Eternals of Eyung are, in fact, called that because they ARE Eternals! Just like how the Celestials to Earth millennia ago, so, too, did the Celestials come to Eyung and do the same thing they did on Earth on that planet, separate the people into Eternals, Deviants and Latents (Humans). So the reason they were called the Eternals is because they were just like their Earth Eternal brethren, just created on a whole other planet.
No one has actually done anything with this new revelation just yet, but I suppose it is only a matter of time before the Eternals of Eyung factor into some new story (perhaps just a simple return of the Over-Mind period?).
Thanks to Mik for the suggestion!
Okay, folks, this sort of thing is something that happens all the time, so if you have any suggestions for future "The Book of Knowledge" features, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!