We learn about what led to the Eternals creating one of the Marvel Universe’s most destructive villains in Eternals: Thanos Rises #1, written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Dustin Weaver, colored by Matthew Wilson, and lettering/design by Clayton Cowles.
Karen Charm: Zoe, what a pleasant surprise! While our main Eternals series is on hold, giving us time to sit with the reveal from last issue and for Esad Ribić to recharge, we get a healthy helping of Eternals lore in the meantime. This is essentially an opportunity for Kieron Gillen to recontextualize the admittedly confusing retcon that folded Uranians and Titans into the Eternals family and have it all fit within his grand unified theory. In that regard, I’d say he’s quite successful, but there’s so much more to the issue than that. How did you take our history detour?
Zoe Tunnell: This one was buckwild. I thought I was properly braced, given Gillen comparing these one-shots to the WicDiv specials in terms of tone and impact, but it kicked me in the teeth almost immediately and left me completely shocked. Just…wow what a crazy issue for not just Eternals as a series but the Marvel Universe as a whole given what goes down in here. And it’s terrifying on top of all that! It’s a horror story! Absurd!
Karen: Intense is more the word I would choose! Okay, study hall is in session.
To Breed or Not To Breed (That is the Question)
Karen: The issue opens in prehistoric times, 200,000 years ago to be exact, giving us a scene I guessed correctly that you would particularly love, Zoe. Would you like to do the honors?
Zoe: THEY GOT T-REXES WITH BIG OLE LASER CANNON BREATH AND ROBO ARMOR AAAAAAH IT’S LIKE THEY’RE IN MY BRAIN!!!!
It is such an absurd visual that you might think would clash with the overall tone of Eternals and this issue specifically, but it fits perfectly and also looks great thanks to some killer art from Weaver and Wilson.
Karen: Yeah, it’s really a beautiful couple of spreads. I really get a kick out of that freaked-out archaeopteryx. Weaver does a really nice job translating the Eternals’ look, more Simonson than Kirby. Wilson’s colors react quite differently with a more line-oriented artist but if anything it just shows how spectacularly versatile he is. This whole thing looks great.
We learn from a data page that the Eternals are fighting amongst themselves in what is known as the “Titan Schism.” This is the point in their history, some 800,000 years after the First Celestial Host, that there was a little disagreement. The details are pretty interesting and technical, but the short version is A’Lars wants the Eternals to have babies and Zuras does not, hence civil war. I feel like each reader is going to have a pretty subjective take on this “debate.”
Zoe: It’s a messy one! The gut instinct, for me, was to go “oh yeah of course A’Lars is right everyone should have babies if they want to have babies!” But then the idea of Nephalites are introduced, giving a name to the pre-existing concept of Eternals having part-Eternal children with humans or changing people, and A’Lars dismissal of them as “not true Eternals” is some blood purity mess if I’ve ever read it. Gillen just saying “aw, screw it” and having a page long intellectual debate between unnamed Zurasian and A’larsite in data page form is definitely a little indulgent but necessary given how dense the actual argument is.
Plus it helps that both of the parties are smug jerks so you don’t come out feeling in favor of either direction.
Karen: At least they snuck a joke into that page (“who let the Uranite in here?!”). I laughed. The arguments did kind of remind me of the way the Eternals acted when trying to find out who the traitor was, everyone logical to the point of being oblivious. I have to hand it to Gillen for establishing such a clear vision for how these beings act. Like you said, it’s hard to fully come down on one side or the other but for my part I did find the Zurasians making some valid points. (Oh god, this is the “Make More Mutants” conversation all over again, isn’t it?)
Maybe the best part about this was seeing where our usual gang of dopes end up on the battle lines. I did a double take seeing Ikaris, Thena, and Phastos all siding with A’Lars. Such a great take, both adding validity to the A’larsite point of view by association with our heroes and further defining Zuras’ character. Gillen is constructing an image of the Prime Eternal as being extremely conservative and inflexible.
Sprite aligning with him rather than joining the other heroes was another surprise.
Zoe: The divide between the Big Eternals was the first real big shock of the issue, for me. Not necessarily that Ikaris, Thena and Phastos sided with A’lars (Thena, especially, is wholly unsurprising given her history with children) or even Sprite being a Zurasian. It is that the big heroes were on the losing side of an Eternal Civil War and now they don’t even remember it.
Shortly after the debate page, when A’lars is able to work out an agreement with Zuras via the mediation of their mother Daina, we see all of the Eternals waking up after being hard reset by The Machine. They all know there was a conflict, that Eternal fought against Eternal, but no one remembers what side they were on. We even see Sprite and Ikaris, who were opposed, talking about how they could never imagine warring against one another.
There are more overtly horrifying things to come but this particular scene stuck with me in this issue more than any other. The idea of having your convictions, your ideals ripped away from your mind but leaving the knowledge that you fought for something you cannot remember intact is HORRIFYING to me on a level I truly wasn’t prepared for.
Karen: Yeah, it turns out being an Eternal is kinda hard. Not much else to say here besides I was SO excited to see Daina who looks AMAZING (kudos Weaver) and very much lived up to my expectations set seeing her name on a data page in issue 1. The fact that she lays out everything that’s going to happen so plainly, and then her smile when they “agree,” gave me chills.
“I Would But Have a Child”
Karen: War abated for now, A’Lars loads up a wacky-looking spaceplane to test his theories on a planet with more rings (technically its moon). The last time there was an Eternal schism, a colony was made on Titan that ended in catastrophe. All the Eternals who died there were resurrected on Earth and either mind-wiped or excluded. Because she never returned, we’re to understand that Sui-San is still alive out there, and A’Lars has a plan. I do not care for the tone Zuras takes about this, making me think of the classic Loretta Lynn song “Rated X.” Show some respect, sir!
Zoe: I agree and very definitely didn’t just Google that song so I would know what you’re talking about. Yeah.
I really, really like Sui-San in this issue, having very little history with her. She seems like exactly the kind of hard-ass warrior lady I enjoy and while it never veers into outright offensiveness, IMO, I was a bit disappointed by how quickly things went from her thinking A’lars was a fool come to seduce her to falling in love. I get why it had to happen, the issue is named Thanos Rising after all, but with all the attention A’lars got I would have appreciated a bit more with her.
Karen: I’ll confess that Sui-San was who I was most looking forward to seeing more from in this issue, knowing very little about her beyond her name. I just had hopes that she would be really cool and an interesting footnote in Marvel lore for Gillen to flesh out. Thankfully Weaver draws her showing up looking like a complete badass. I totally get what you mean about her attitude toward A’Lars, now Mentor, though the way it’s framed against their turning Titan into a paradise warmed me to it (again, Weaver and Wilson really delivering here). I do have a rant about Sui-San’s portrayal later, but put a pin in that for the moment.
Their wedding is a sweet scene, if oddly Christian, and chock-full of easter eggs that I definitely did not Google (I did). There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t get commented on – The bough they wed under is Eon, creator of the Quantum Bands (in this case their wedding rings). Both have roots in 1970s Captain Marvel comics and the cosmic lore that predate the first Eternals series. I’m not sure what that particularly adds to the comic overall, but it was fun to see how woven into the bigger picture this whole flashback is.
Zoe: Is the implication that these are the Quantum Bands? Quasar is out there rockin some old Eternal wedding rings in the middle of The Last Annihilation? Hilarious.
I am really impressed by how well it weaves in Cosmic Marvel bits and bobs with the main plot. It successfully feels like an Eternals story as well as a Cosmic Marvel story like you would expect from a book with Thanos’ name on the cover.
Karen: The newlyweds’ marital bliss is as touching as it is short-lived. I think Wilson really makes this page work so well with the pinks and purples. The writing here is excellent as well, as the two discuss baby names. Their mission has finally found success, and it all feels so hardwon and victorious, at last. Heh.
Justice for Sui-San
Zoe: Time for the Thanos of it all.
I agree this got uncomfortable. The shot of her in restraints, crying, as Thanos approaches to murder her is especially harrowing. Knowing she can’t really die doesn’t help as we know she wakes up Excluded and is there to this day. I know I said it never got outright offensive, but writing it out like this? It’s pretty bad. I get Gillen has to work with Thanos’ established origin and only had so much room to maneuver but the combination of Sui-San’s absolutely terrified face on this page and the cruel fate she faces for nothing more than giving birth to her son is…rough.
Karen: YEAH. So this page, I don’t like this page. I was pretty disappointed to see all these misogynist tropes play out, for all the reasons you’ve listed, for a character I was excited to read. What is this? This isn’t what I would expect from Gillen at all. I had to find out what went wrong here, which led me to Jason Aaron and Simone Bianche’s 2013 mini-series Thanos Rising. All of these scenes are taken directly from those pages and frankly, it fucking sucks. Thanks boys.
What’s worse is that’s about the most page-time Sui-San has ever gotten, so we’re kind of stuck with it – she’s just a bit player in Thanos’ story, an illustration of how “depraved” and evil he’s supposed to be. While Weaver’s page is probably not as tasteful as I’d like, it’s still a vast improvement on the edgelord source material. “She did not love it.”
Zoe: I’ve actually read Thanos Rising, the original mini, and even back in the day when I was less…conscious of storytelling choices and well before Zoe arrived I could tell it was pretty monstrous. I think this goes back to my complaint about Sui-San getting such a small focus. We get so much time with A’Lars throughout this whole issue while Sui-San gets the grand total of 5 whole pages, one of which is her gruesome, upsetting fate. If you’re going to treat A’Lars role as Thanos’ father as such a monumental thing both in the story and in the Marvel Universe, his mother being treated as an afterthought and some sort of broken thing is just profoundly disappointing.
Karen: It feels like Kronos even gets to play a bigger role than she does. Boring. Glad you and I are of One Mind about this.
Zoe: Hopefully we don’t find a draft of this review on GDrive where were at each other’s throats that Editorial made us forget about [Ed. Note: Let’s not go looking].
Karen: LOL! So from there, Mentor/A’Lars has a hissy fit and gets killed by Thanos (sorry I have no patience for him anymore). He wakes up back on Earth where the Eternals, in Zuras’ stead, make A’Lars say the words – ”Eternals should not breed.” Then bam, into the Exclusion. The pacing here, *chef’s kiss*. This part was fascinating to me, how’d it strike you?
Zoe: The visual of A’Lars’ punishment was just absolutely brilliant, artistically, and also a full-bore horror movie ending. Being trapped in a cell of pitch black darkness, only for a tiny mote of bright white light to flare up for every life Thanos takes (how the hell did they keep track of that, btw?) And becoming a blinding inferno within a week is
Yow.
It’s a really strong sequence that was only slightly undercut by the final narration from The World where Gillen dipped into his usual Very Clever tone. I don’t mind it, usually, but here it just took away from the image he, Weaver and Wilson had crafted.
Karen: Yeah, A’lars’ punishment was ingenious. I didn’t have the same reaction to the narration, though, I thought it was pretty strong and fit throughout. First having the message from petty-ass Zuras getting in a final “told ya so,” Sui-San having something of a last word herself. Knowing what I know now from Thanos Rising – that Mentor ignored Sui-San’s warnings about Thanos, how he silenced her, how he promised salvation but delivered worse damnation – having her deliver the message of basically “it’d be better if I never met you, if I never existed” to the Mentor felt as cathartic as it was tragic.
And finally, the last lines there really shook me as a terrifying preview of where this story is all going. If you remember, Thanos’ bargain with Phastos was to have the Mad Titan added to the Machine in a way he hadn’t been before. Now that he’s loose, it clearly seems just a matter of time before he finds out where his parents are. Maybe this is the thing you’re responding negatively to, but it made my hair stand up.
Zoe: Oh it was just the last part, yeah. I agree Sui-San getting the last word in and giving A’Lars the most potent final word in an argument you could think of was a nice, if wholly inadequate given everything else that happens to her, bit of satisfaction for her.
Karen: For sure. I take what small comfort I can that her story isn’t over yet. This run has already shown us that all bets are off and wild things can and will happen. This issue opened so many new questions to the larger mythos, I can only imagine what we’re going to be asking after next month’s Celestia. I’m emotionally sad, but spiritually fed by good comics.
Marvelous Musings
- Where was Eros? Wasn’t he the first born? Are we to intuit that he’s some Nephilite and not a true Eternal like Thanos? Is this Eros-erasure? Erosure?? (Zoe is okay with Erosure, for the record)
- Speaking of the Nephilite, I am honor-bound to tell you about Kro and Thena’s children. Deborah and Donald Ritter are two little blonde kids who can merge together to create a winged demon creature. For more, read Eternals: The Herrod Factor. (Thena also has a human kid in the 2009 series who becomes a spy for the alien Horde…)(Ikaris had a human kid too, but I talked about him before).
- I like how Weaver draws Sprite’s hair.
- OKAY BUT FOR REAL THIS THING GOES FULL DINO-RIDERS AND THAT’S GREAT
Zoe Tunnell is a 29-year old trans woman who has read comics for most of her adult life and can't stop now. Follow her on Twitter @Blankzilla.
Karen Charm is a cartoonist and mutant separatist, though they’ve been known to appreciate an Eternal or two.
