Thor Eternals
Thor, The Eternals Saga – In which someone who is not Jack Kirby tries to tell a Jack Kirby story. This collection gathers Thor 283-291 and a few other things; it’s kicked off by Thor Annual #7, which provides very good background by telling the tale of how… many, many years ago… Thor hung out with the Eternals for a while, and dealt with the strange phenomenon of the Celestials, and their 50 year judgement of Earth (they assume that they’re going to judge the Earth not worthy of continued existence and sentence us to eradication, which leads to plenty of misunderstandings with Odin, the Greek pantheon, etc). Apparently, Thor first encountered The Eternals many thousands of years ago when he was a just a young god, seeking worshippers in Africa and South America. They fought, reconciled, hung out for a while, and had a deadly encounter with Dromedan (we also get to meet the slithery Eternal Druig, whose Loki-like machinations cause his uncle Virako to be wiped out; his father forgive him, of course). Strange tales of Dromedan’s earth-eating worm and other bizarrely unnecessary battles. And, of course, at the end of it all, the Eternals give Thor some sort of memory wipe, so he flies off… just missing the Celestials’ third visit!
That recounts the linked tale of Thor and the Eternals from Annual #7; the tale proper begins with Thor’s visit to South America and the modern base of the Celestials to solve some mystery of Balder’s near-death and the false-Ragnarok (crazy, I know), before getting drawn into that “must save Earth at all costs, even though I have no real connection to Earth” story that both Superman and Thor share. We see Thor from time-to-time turn back into Dr Donald Blake -seems like it’s just the end of that part of Thor’s world, since I believe the Donald Blake character was phased out around this time.
Thor goes around searching for answers to riddles – why did Odin block him from re-entering Asgard after Thor tried to end his self-imposed exile, why did Odin bow to the Celestials when they came to Earth on the third visitation, who was his birth-mother, why was Odin so bent on blocking any attempt to stop the Celestials from destroying the world? He goes to South America, visits the Celestials stronghold, and meets Eternals, Deviants (like the sexy winged goth Ereshkigal, once worshipped in Mesopotamia, also called Hecate by the Greeks), SHIELD agents, nutty Deviant mutates like Karkas and the handsome Reject, and then also the ostracized Hero (blind herald of the Celestials).
To be honest, though, with all of its flaws it’s just cool to read adventures that center around the tall, dark, mysterious and silent Celestials, creatures without faces that tower 2,000 feet above us that just scream “JACK KIRBY WEIRDNESS!!!”, even if Jack didn’t draw them! There’s a great story of Thor, Karkas and Sirsi attacking the city of the Deviants and spinning a wonderful ruse for the Deviant warlord Kro.
Plenty of great rumbles between super-powered beings, like the battle between Eternals and Deviants under the streets of New York (awesome four-armed mega-beast fights Ikaris and Thor), or the mega-rumble between the Eternals and Thor on one side, and Odin and the hordes of Olympus on the other. There are also cool one-on-many battles, like when Hero takes on Thor and all of the Eternals himself, and nice one-on-one fights like when Thor is defeated by Destroyer/Sif and thrown off Bifrost, to fall to Earth and be destroyed (cool – it doesn’t happen, of course, but it’s great nonetheless). Then there are also superfluous stories, like the one where Sif fights storm giants to recover the Destroyer automaton, or when the warriors three fight Fafnir. Silly. Another superfluous story is Thor 290, where he meets the Eternal who has become a Lucha Libre wrestler called El Vampiro, who has married a human woman and who is tormented by the Deviant wrestler El Toro Rojo (the Red Bull). Huh? Actually the battle with El Toro Rojo is pretty epic, but it doesn’t make the story any less silly. Read it!
Bonus feature: list of weird items
One thing that’s funny about this collection is the amount of oaths and exclamations we get here:
“Heimdall’s eyes!”
“Odin’s blood!”
“What in the name of the Uni-mind?”
“By the Gunnunga-gap, from which all things did spring!”
“By Idunn’s golden apples!”
“By all the colors of Bifrost!”
“By all the hordes of Hela!”
“By all the sailors I ever turned into swine!”
“By the cloven hooves of Chiron!”
“By Kronos’ bottomless maw!”
Here are a few fun images from the show:
Love how Sirsi flirts with Thor here...
Check out how Hero takes out his comrades!!
The Eternals of Olympia rumble with the gods of Olympus
Quel horreur!!